Planning

I have three kids… which basically means my life is governed by having three kids… Our last trip to South East Asia was 2013 I think- it also was our first Aman trip (Amanjiwo, Amandari, Amankila)... now my parents (foolishly) agreed to watch our kids and let us take a trip… my wife has been aching to see Angkor Wat so that made the top of the list… she has also read Crazy Rich Asians (which I am not) and decided that she wanted to see Singapore as well… so Angkor Wat and Singapore it is… Given that we didn’t want to burden our parents too long with our kids, we decided on 8 days in Asia, which meant a 4/4 split…


My wife, fortunately or unfortunately knew of Amansara, which meant that we were staying at Amansara… It is, unfortunately, incredibly expensive but at least quite inclusive. I booked via Citi Prestige for the fourth night free the Discover Angkor Rate which included over the Daily rate:

• Spiritual water blessing with Buddhist Monk at Wat Atwear Pagoda
  
• A traditional noodle breakfast at Amansara’s wooden village house in Angkor Park
  
• Private visit to Conservation D’Angkor museum and day trip to the remote temples of Beng Melea & Koh Ker with picnic lunch
  

The rate was also $100 cheaper than the standard daily rate, which includes:

• Daily excursion to Angkor temples with English speaking guide
  
• Remork transportation within Siem Reap town
  
• Daily breakfast, afternoon tea, and a choice of lunch or dinner with non-alcoholic beverages
  
• Return airport transfers & laundry (excluding dry cleaning)
  

The GM at Amansara also threw in a complimentary massage for two for 90 mins….


The Siem Reap portion of the trip was easy; the hard part was Singapore. Now ideally Singapore would be the first portion of the trip (the old adage of always finish with Aman), however the flights made flying to Siem Reap first easier than returning from Siem Reap…. So where to stay in Singapore is the age old question. It seems that there’s a general consensus that there’s pretty much not a clear cut winner in the market. Fullerton Bay gets high marks, but none of the room types interested me (well that’s not true; the rooms with the outdoor jacuzzi did but try as hard as he did, Besvisor could not get a confirmed upgrade to that room). As much maligned as the MO is; Besvisor was able to confirm an upgrade to a Marina Bay Suite with the 4th night free…


So, trip planned eh? Well, I continued to check in with my wife re: Singapore about what she wanted to do… because I’ve been to Singapore and all I could forsee doing is shopping and eating… So I asked her to put together some things that she wanted to do there.. So she finally got to looking at what there is to do in Singapore when she realized: there’s not much to do there except shop and eat (and apologies to Sinaporeans I know that it’s a much more intricate city than that)... I also dangled the option of another Aman in SE Asia to her… I offerred up Amanoi, Amanpuri, Amanpulo, and Amantaka as options… so she spent time looking things over and decided that Amanpuri would be great, as it was the first Aman and who doesn’t want to go to the first Aman! I finally had to sit her down and be direct with her: Amanpuri is incredibly large, older room type and I really really wanted to go to Amanoi, which incidentally was offering a 4th night free.


Flights

I know most of you guys don’t bother with the silly points/miles game but one of the main reasons I can afford to stay at an Aman occasionally is that the flights are not paid for out of pocket. I was able to find space from DCA-BOS-HKG-REP on Cathay in F with the return on Vietnam/Korean CXR-SGN-ICN-IAD in C/F. Now the flights from REP to CXR are not straight forward. Vietnam Airways offers a direct connection with 6 hour layover in SGN. I looked into a private aircraft option, which at $12,000 was a bit more than I wanted to spend… I decided to book a combination of flights of 3.5 hour layover on Cambodia Air Angkor and Vietjet. Amanoi offerred up fast track service at SGN, which I took advantage of. It went swimmingly and I was able to actually catch an earlier flight to CXR, even with immigration, baggage, and buying a new ticket. We were able to cut that layover time to 1.5 hrs. So, I wholeheartedly recommend the fast track service if you’re trying to make a tight connection in SGN… and air tickets are really amazingly cheap in Vietnam so it’s easy to book a new one and not worry about the cost of your previous ticket.