Having secured !K on United through January of 2018, I decided to return my sites back on my soon to be expiring EXP status on American. As a 2MM on AA, I have Lifetime Platinum but with the changes to AAdvantage, I will now be 2nd from the bottom versus 2nd from the top in terms of status. I am doing a run to Beijing in February with my sister to burn off the last of my expiring SWU's so thought I would poke around and see what fares may be out there that might help me get to Platinum Pro. Lo and behold, I saw the incredible fares being offered in the QR sale out of LAX in J to Singapore and thought "Hmm, this could be interesting". I managed to secure dates two weeks out for $1700 in confirmed J. I used my Chase Sapphire Reserve Card as there is a $300 travel credit that includes airfare purchases as a qualified credit - bringing the fare done to $1424. I then combined this with some orphaned SQ miles from my RTW trip last may and AS miles (since I don't fly AS anymore living in Chicago), and concocted a plan to get to another spot on the 'ol bucket list: Bali. After playing around with dates, I can up with the following plan:

January 30 - ORD-LAX on VX in F (using 25K AS Miles)

January 30 - LAX-DOH on QR in J (+1)

February 1 - DOH-SIN on QR in J

February 2 - SIN-KUL-DPS on MH in J (Using 22,500 AA Miles)

February 5 - DPS-SIN on SQ in J (Using 14,875 SQ Miles)

February 6 - SIN-DOH on QR in J

February 7 - DOH-LAX on QR in J

February 7 - LAX-ORD on AA in Y (paid $84 for the one way)

For lodging, I somehow always forget to use the free night certs from my hotel branded credit cards. Instead of waiting until the last moment to use them, I decided to use them as follows:

January 31 - Doha Marriott
February 1 - CP Changi
Feb 2-5 - Conrad Bali (170K HHonors Points)
Feb 5 - Aerotel Changi T1 ($66 transit hotel rate for 8 hours)
Feb 6 - Marriott Marquis City Center Doha (10,000 MR Points)

I decided on staying at the Marriott's in Doha due to their location near the airport and the fact that I am now a MR Platinum (via Starwood). For my first stop in Singapore, I only have a 12 hours stay and don't feel like heading into the city just to turn around and head back to the airport for my early flight to KUL so the Crowne Plaza at Changi makes sense. On the way back, I decided to try out the Aerotel in T1. Again, my return flight lands at 10:40pm and I fly out to DO at 10:45am the next day, I didn't feel like doing the schlep into the city plus I have never done the transit hotel thing before so thought, why not? Also, at $66USD for 8 hours, I figure that's about what a r/t taxi + the value of points to get a hotel in the city (and I don't feel like wasting 10K SPG or 40K MR points for just a bed and no exploration of the city).

I plan on using the Tourist VOA on my outbound stopover in DOH and pay the $30 or so for it. On the return, I have submitted my application for my "Free" Transit Visa as I am ticketed on QR stock. The only downside is I can get the free visa on one of the transits and not both.

Checked with the other half and he was okay with me taking off. As I work as an independent contractor, my work can be done anywhere so long as I have wifi. With that, all is booked and ready to go!