Welcome to FlyerTalk!

Wow. You have a very short planning period, and many questions that overlap into multiple categories. Since the scope of your request is far too broad for the Asia forum, I'm going to move your post over to our Information Desk which is designed to assist with exactly such inquiries.

Meanwhile, I suggest you explore the Hyatt, Starwood and IHG areas of our Hotel Loyalty Programs forum to see what FlyerTalkers say about the options in areas you are thinking of visiting. We also have a Japan destination forum and a Thailand destination forum which might help you to narrow down your itinerary a bit.

Good luck!

~Moderator



// mod hat off...

Regarding some of your questions, when you say AA distance based awards, I'm guessing you mean the Explorer award. If that's correct, you need to be aware that the program was terminated a few days ago. See this post in our AA forum: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...pr-2014-a.html. You can still make your trip, of course, but you'll have to make multiple award redemptions to do what you're talking about.

Also, you are correct in your understanding that you will receive 25k AA miles for every 20k SPG points you transfer into your AAdvantage account. Depending in how many awards you need to book, this might be a very good idea. It can take several days for the transfer to post, so you won't want to wait too long if you expect to use this feature.

Again, good luck with your planning!