As I mentioned last week, I had to cancel and rebook our Southeast Asia trip due to my wife needing another ankle surgery (which is this week). I’ve rebooked us for the first two weeks of April and I wanted to explain what I have booked and how it might actually be better than my original plan (with a few caveats).

We are headed to Los Angeles from Atlanta on a Sunday afternoon in a Delta A350. Luckily, it’s one that has Delta One suites (not one bought from LATAM with 2-2-2 seating), and I was able to upgrade us directly into Delta One Suites using Regional Upgrade certificates. I ended up paying $350 cash for each of these tickets as we each had a $238 ecredit to use plus a new $200 Amex Platinum airline credit which picked up most of the rest of the cost. We’ll have about a five hour layover at LAX after our cross-country flight.

On arrival at LAX, we will walk over to the Tom Bradley Terminal and check-in with Singapore Airlines for one of the longest flights in the world, nonstop to Singapore in business class. At first I saw availability for this flight using Aeroplan miles so I quickly transferred 207k points from CapitalOne (saver award was 87.5kpp but flex award was 103.5kpp and I thought it was worth it for the flexibility). However, the points did not arrive for a few days and by the time they did, the seats were gone. Luckily, I saw availability directly through Singapore Airlines Kris Flyer, but it was a standard, not saver award. While it was 128,500 points per person, I had plenty of Citi Thank You points which took 12 hours to transfer and I was able to book those seats for us. While I hate having points marooned in airline programs, I am fairly sure I’ll be able to use the Aeroplan points at some point. I’m also hopeful I can snag the bulkhead seats for us when the option opens up 96 hours before the flight although I may have to set a 2:40am alarm a few days out as the flight time is 11:40pm from LAX.

We’ll be spending two nights in Singapore at the Conrad Centennial (booked using two Amex FHR credits for a net cost of around $200 per night) before heading to Siem Reap, Cambodia nonstop on Singapore Airlines business class booked with 24k Kris Flyer miles that my wife had in her account from canceling the last set of flights from the previously planned trip. We’ll spend two days and nights (at the Park Hyatt) in Siem Reap seeing the temples and enjoying the food before we have a car and driver take us to Phnom Penh for two nights and two days to see the museums, memorials and markets there staying at the fairly new Hyatt Regency.

From Phnom Penh, we’ll catch the Qatar Airways fifth freedom flight to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in business class booked with 16.5k British Airways Avios per person. We’re spending three nights there at the Park Hyatt and will also enjoy a day trip to see the Cu Chi Tunnels.

Continuing on, we will take a rescheduled Vietnam Airlines economy flight (booked with cash) to Hue where we’ll spend a day seeing the imperial capital of Vietnam before being driven to Da Nang and the Hyatt Regency for our last three nights. We’ll be spending time in both Da Nang and Hoi An, plus perhaps take a ride out to Ba Na Hills and the famous Golden Hands bridge if time and weather permits. On our last afternoon, we’ll catch another Vietnam Airlines flight booked with cash (this time in business class) to Ho Chi Minh City to begin our journey home.

For our flight home, I just could not find any business class award seats at all. I started looking at cash prices and found that the deals for a one-way business class ticket were not too bad at all. I considered a flight on Korean Air via Seoul for about $3k per person which would also help both of us toward elite status on Delta, but in the end I found something even better. I booked ANA business class via United for $2k per person (which will be reduced significantly by the value of the Aeroplan miles we’ll earn flying the cash ticket, by the 16,000 Bilt points I earned by booking the tickets on Rent Day and by the $800 refund on the taxes from the canceled ANA award tickets.) Our itinerary leaves Ho Chi Minh City late in the evening on a 787 redeye to Tokyo where we have about a four hour layover before we head to JFK on the new “The Room” business class. We’ll fly back from JFK to Atlanta on Delta booked with cash (including applying another $200 Amex airline fee credit).

I’ve flipped the itinerary to start in Singapore and end in Vietnam and I think I like this better as we’ll start in a bustling city to fight off the jet lag and end at a relaxing beach resort in Da Nang. Hopefully, everything will work out and we’ll be able to take the trip as scheduled.

If you have questions about this post, let me know in the comments or send me an email at emptynestermiles@gmail.com. If you are thinking about opening a new credit card, please use one of my links.