A Little Bit of Background...
This is my third attempt at a trip report and hopefully will be the most successful. I confess that I didn’t finish up the second one as there were a fair number of views, but zero comments. I guess I bored everyone to death. But hey, even Eightblack has unfinished reports... I have read many trip reports here and marvel at the great ones. Even the ones that I don’t care for as much are so much work and I really do appreciate the time and effort that goes into even making a short one with no pictures. Hopefully, this report will neither bore nor infuriate you.
Trip Genesis: My wife and I are in our lower 40’s and have two girls aged 13 and 11. Each summer, the girls go to sleepover camp for seven weeks in the Poconos. The only day we see them is on Visiting Day, the third Saturday of camp. My wife and I work together at our own business and luckily, the summer is a slow time for us work-wise and we are able to take a nice, long vacation between Visiting Day and the end of camp.
The last three summers we cruised. The first cruise we did was from Athens-Istanbul (Greek Island) on the Silver Spirit. We extended on both ends for three nights. The second summer cruise was from Barcelona to Venice on the same ship and we extended in Barcelona and instead of staying in Venice, we went to Milan. Why Milan you ask? Because after our Italy trip on the ship, we went home and got our kids from camp and then returned to Italy for a 10 day or so land trip to Italy with my girls and the in-laws. The third cruise was in 2013 and from London to London around the British Isles and Iceland on the Silver Cloud. This was really amazing and we are huge fans of Silversea. They really do it right.
So, having had three consecutive summers of cruising, we were looking for something different. We would have done another cruise, but we didn’t want to go to Alaska or the Baltics and we’ve done the Med twice...We realized that what we liked was that the cruise allowed us to have a combination of touring and relaxing. We could take an excursion in the morning and come back in the afternoon for a late lunch and lounge by the pool. Don’t even get me started on how much fun trivia is! Or afternoon tea with the little sandwiches!!
We looked at Europe as it is an easy flight from our home in Baltimore. My wife really likes a larger beach resort as opposed to a hotel on a cliff in Italy. Me, I’m game for anything, but very happy to please my wife. There were no hotels/resorts that we could find that really interested us in Europe, having previously been to the Cannes and Monte Carlo. I wanted to do some combination of Paris and something else relaxing, but just couldn’t find anything that thrilled us.
For several years we’ve been collecting points through credit card signups, bonus points, work spend, personal spend etc. It seemed like it was high time to put these points to use. My wife agreed to go to Bali after hearing how nice it was and we then planned an almost three week jaunt through Southeast Asia.
Our trip broke down as follows:
Hotels:- Nine nights in Bali (6 at GHM Legian Seminyak {awesome} and 3 at Four Seasons Sayan {meh}) – all charged on Arrival Card.
- Three nights in Singapore (St. Regis {excellent except concierge}) – Cash and Points
- Two nights in Macau (Conrad {fantastic, great upgrade}) - Points
- Four nights in Hong Kong (Intercontinental on Salisbury Rd. {great view}) - Points
Flights:
Our flights between USA and Asia were on Korean Air (First Class to ICN and Business to DPS) from IAD-ICN-DPS and then back on Cathay (Business Class) from HKG-EWR. We took LCC’s from DPS-SIN and SIN-MFM and then the ferry from Macau to Hong Kong. We landed in EWR and used a free night (credit card anniversary I think) at the Spring Hill Suites at EWR. The next morning we took Amtrak to Baltimore Penn Station to conclude our amazing trip.
In the interest of transparency, we used points for the big flights that were accumulated from credit card signups and spending. I don’t recall the amount for the Korean flight and the Cathay flight was 55,000 points/pax plus taxes. We paid for our LCC’s and the ferry of course. Points were used for the Conrad in Macau as well as the Intercon. I got the points for the Conrad by purchasing gift cards at CVS back when it was a bonus category. The IHG points were achieved by each of us getting their credit card and meeting the minimum spend. I think we used all of the signup points (80,000) and threw in maybe $100 each.
I am going to try to have this trip report cover three areas: transportation, hotels and what we did in each destination. The trip was fantastic. We had really great flights and wonderful hotel stays. Each locale was interesting and we ate well and even relaxed a bit! Now I’m working on next years trip.
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I've added a map as people seem to like them.
Thanks for following along.