As I’ve mentioned a few (dozen) times, we’re finally headed to South East Asia next month. I rebooked the whole trip at the beginning of the year and included a Delta flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles to position for our flight to Singapore later that night.

About a month after I booked everything, my wife told me that she had to be in San Diego for a court hearing two days before our scheduled flight to Singapore. She told me that she could just fly home the next day and fly out with me as scheduled. What she didn’t realize was that we were already flying out of LAX so it made no sense for her to fly home just to return right back to the west coast. She obviously does not get involved in planning these trips.

What made more sense was for me to just accompany her to San Diego, spend a few days there and then drive up to Los Angeles for our flight to Singapore. Her flight and our hotel for two nights in San Diego will be covered as a work expense. That left me with just my flight, a rental car and one night in a hotel out of pocket. Not only that, but her flight home from JFK after our trip will be covered as a work expense since she’s not flying home from San Diego but waiting to fly home until after our Asia trip.

I ended up booking an evening non-stop Delta flight to San Diego and using Regional Upgrade Certificates to upgrade us to First Class for the dinnertime flight. Unfortunately, this will mean missing out on our previously booked A350 flight to Los Angeles with Delta One Suites. For our two nights in San Diego, I am taking the opportunity to earn a couple of Hyatt elite qualifying nights at someone else’s expense. I booked the Manchester Grand Hyatt as it’s close to the courthouse and should provide some nice views right on the seaport area.

I’ve reserved a rental car with National to be picked up at the airport after we check out from the hotel (we’ll just Uber there). From San Diego, we will drive up to Oceanside, about an hour north. There we will stay at the Mission Pacific, a nice Hyatt resort right on the beach. I had an expiring Hyatt Category 1-7 certificate and as a category 6, this hotel fit the bill. I could have tried the Park Hyatt Aviara or the Alila Morea, but with my wife’s ankle issues, I thought that a place right on the beach would be easier for her.

We will try and get 4pm checkout as our flight to Singapore is not until 11:20pm from LAX. We plan to meet some friends in the Los Angeles area for dinner before heading to LAX to return the car and prepare for our 17.5 hour journey in Singapore business class.

One added wrinkle is that this extra three nights in cooler weather will have us bringing clothes we don’t need for Southeast Asia (including business clothes for my wife). I’m going to bring these clothes in an extra duffel bag and ship them home when we check out of our hotel in Oceanside so we’re not dragging too much stuff with us on an extended vacation.

Despite the extra logistics involved, the added work trip has actually saved us some out of pocket costs on the positioning flights and allowed us to break up the long journey to the other side of the world. I’ll definitely provide a California trip report separately from the bigger trip report about our Asia vacation.

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