As with all great adventures, we start on a bus to the airport.



I won't bury the lede - this entire trip was booked around some award availability I found last fall on QSuites from JFK to DOH, Qatar first class on an ex-Cathay plane from DOH to HKG, and then a return from TPE to LAX in Starlux (actually, originally my return would be in Finn Air's new business class, but then I saw Starlux availability pop up and I couldn't resist).

Since I would be back in East Asia again, I wanted to revisit some places I hadn't been in years, most notably Mainland China which I hadn't seen since the pandemic, as well as Taiwan, which I last visited in the 2000's. Japan I'd been to more recently, but it's such a fun place that I'm always happy for a chance to go back. I ended up cramming objectively too many cities into my three week trip, but I'll be hitting Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Tokyo, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, maybe a day-trip to Kobe, and Taipei. I'll only have a day or two in each city, but hopefully it's a good time anyways.

Most flights I'll be taking were booked with points, with only a couple cash fares mixed in.



It's a beautiful, sunny summer day here in Ithaca, with the temperature hovering at a positively tropical 50 degrees (or 10 degrees Celcius). Ithaca Airport really did get screwed by the pandemic, having just finished a massive renovation just in time for all the airlines to pull out. There's only 3 flights a day now, 4 if we're lucky. Still, my trusty ol' 5000 FlyingBlue points for a redemption to JFK pulled through for me.

Outbound
ITH - JFK, Delta Y (5k FlyingBlue miles)
JFK - DOH, Qatar J (70k Avios, via BA)
DOH - HKG, Qatar F (50k AAdvantage miles)

In theory I was supposed to be able to book JFK - DOH - HKG on one through-ticket for just 90k Avios, apparently. However, no matter what I did, I could not get that ticket to price correctly on either BA or Qatar's website, despite saver seats clearly being available (since I could see it on AA's site). I ended up shelling out an extra 50k AAdvantage miles to book the second leg separately. With an 8 hour connection in Doha, hopefully being on separate tickets wouldn't be an issue.

I spent a few years in Hong Kong back in the 2000's, and I always loved flying Cathay. I hear they haven't been the same since the pandemic, but since Qatar was now flying a bunch of their old planes around, I wanted to finally try their first class seat which I'd never done before. The extra cost to check off that bucket list item seemed worth it to me. Besides, I'd get to check out the first class lounge.



Other Flights
HKG - PVG, Cathay J (16.5k Avios, via Qatar)
TSN - NRT, Spring Japan Y ($158 cash, via Trip.com)
HND - FUK, JAL Y ($90, via JAL)
KIX - TPE, Starlux PE (10k Alaska MileagePlan miles)

Admittedly, I splurged on the Cathay redemption to Shanghai, but since I hadn't visited a Cathay lounge since 2008, I really wanted to see what they were like these days. The Premium Economy leg on Starlux was actually just the cheapest flight I could find that day; cash fares weren't much cheaper than $100 anyways and there was no Economy award space I could see, so Premium Economy it is. I was planning on taking advantage of the cheap United redemptions for domestic Y in Japan but just days before I was going to book they jacked the price of that. Thus I ended up just buying a ticket with cash. The flight that surprised me the most was how expensive the supposedly low cost leg from Tianjin to Tokyo ended up being (admittedly I did pay for a bag). It was actually the most expensive single ticket I booked this trip.

From Shanghai to Beijing, Beijing to Tianjin, and the whole Fukuoka-Hiroshima-Kyoto-Nara-Osaka bit, I'll be taking high speed rail.



Inbound
TPE - LAX, Starlux J (75k Alaska MileagePlan miles)
LAX - BOS, AA J (40k AAdvantage miles)
BOS - JFK, Delta Y ($158, via Delta)
JFK - ITH, Delta Y (same ticket as above)

Yes, I'm flying back from Taipei to Los Angeles to Boston to New York to Ithaca. I'm an adult. I do what I want. You can't stop me.

Shockingly, the Delta ticket from Boston to Ithaca ended up being a few pennies cheaper than the Tianjin to Tokyo flight.

Actually the return flight is more complicated than that. The only redemption out of LAX I could find that evening was the AA flight to Boston, leaving exactly 75 minutes after my inbound on Starlux lands. This means I need to get off the plane, clear Global Entry, walk over to the AA terminal, go through PreCheck, and then get onboard in under an hour, assuming my inbound is on time. This may have been the dumbest thing I've ever booked (in my defense, the redemption is refundable and I do have a backup plan - I just really hope I don't need to use it).




And now I sit at the gate, awaiting my first flight. No promises how often I manage to update this thread, since my schedule is so packed, but I'll try to update it as I go. Either way, should hopefully be a fun time.



There's my plane. Let's do this.