When we returned from Southeast Asia in April, it was the first time in many years I had zero international trips planned for the future. Even through the Covid era, we had our safari planned (and pushed back several times).

Then, around the first week of May, I got an award alert from Straight to the Points. I’ve met Spencer, who runs the site, and he is a genius at finding award space that otherwise might go unnoticed for a few days or weeks. He sends an alert to subscribers, giving us a chance to book before the major blogs publicize the award space.

He sent out a Cathay Pacific First Class award alert for early next year. The key was that many flights had two award seats available, which is unusual for Cathay First Class.

My wife had mentioned that she wants to go to Bali (among other places) as the shelling is supposed to be good there and well, it’s Bali so it would be a fun place to visit anyway. I also know there are some great Hyatt properties there to take advantage of my Globalist status.

I texted her “hey there’s Cathay Pacific First Class space, can I see if we can get to Bali early next year?” She said yes, so I started searching. I found two first class seats on LAX to Hong Kong with a reasonable morning connection in Hong Kong onward to Bali in business class arriving in the afternoon. I also found award space from JFK which would be much easier to position to from Atlanta, however the JFK flight with First Class leaves around noon so not only would we have to fly to JFK the night before to ensure we didn’t miss the flight, we would also have to spend the night again in Hong Kong before we caught the one Cathay Pacific flight to Bali the next morning. LAX seemed like the more efficient First Class option.

As for the flight back, at first we considered continuing on to the Philippines and visiting another beach or two there, but the itinerary became very complicated as we would have to fly via Manila and probably overnight there as well. We also considered going to Western Australia as it’s only about a four hour flight from Bali but in the end, we decided to just stick with a few different spots in Bali and spend 8-9 days there rather than a longer 2+ week trip away.

I looked at options for the flights home and found an amazing option on a date that worked for us. Qatar QSuites from Bali to Doha to Atlanta with only a three hour layover in Doha. We really enjoyed QSuites when we flew it last year, although my seat was broken so we did not get to fly the backwards facing “double bed” seats. This time, we’ll hopefully get to fly it twice, on an A350-1000 from Bali to Doha overnight then on a 15 hour daytime flight on a 777 from Doha to Atlanta. Of course, there’s always a chance we’ll get “Qatar’d” and end up in a non-QSuites plane for one or both segments, but that’s the risk with Qatar Airways. Not having to position domestically from some other airport on the way home will be an easy way to end the trip.

For positioning to the outbound Cathay flight, I booked a Delta flight that arrives at LAX around 6:30pm with our Cathay flight set for 11:20pm. That should allow for any delays or issues as there is an even later Delta flight that would still get us in to LAX before 9pm. Delta used to allow Regional Upgrade certificates to be used on these flights even though they are on A350s configured with DeltaOne. Unfortunately, it seems that for now, they have limited these available upgrades to Global Upgrade certificates only. But, the good news for us is that the plane is also configured with Premium Select in a 2-3-2 configuration so my Comfort+ upgrade secured those seats for us which are actually even nicer than domestic first class seats (just without the included meal). We might still get upgraded due to my status anyway as there’s a lot of DeltaOne seats on this aircraft.

Lounges we can access on this trip should be pretty epic. We plan to visit the Qantas First Class Lounge in LAX, one of the Cathay First Class Lounges (either the Wing or the Pier) in Hong Kong (probably not both as we only have about a two and a half hour layover) and one of the Qatar Al Mourjan lounges in Doha.

So, what are these flights costing us? The Cathay Pacific First Class flight from LAX-Hong Kong normally runs 160,000 Asia Miles per person, but in a strange quirk of the award chart, adding the five-hour business class flight to Bali actually reduced the cost to 147,500 miles per person. I placed the flights on hold and transferred points from American Express. In 2017, I had major delays transferring from Amex to AsiaMiles, but this time they arrived instantly and I was able to call back and confirm the booking. Taxes and fees were about $100 per person. The Qatar flights were 100,000 Avios per person which I thought was a pretty good deal for 25 hours in QSuites. Taxes and fees were around $200 per person, mostly due to Bali departure taxes. I had previously transferred a bunch of Amex points to BA Avios during a transfer bonus.

As for hotels, we ended up with nine nights to work with in Bali. We are arriving around 3pm after a long couple of days traveling so I did not want to initially stay too far from the airport as traffic is known to be a nightmare in Bali.

We will start off with four nights at the Andaz Bali. I was able to book this for the off-peak rate of 17k Hyatt points per night (vs. the standard 20k rate). While the Hyatt Regency next door is available for 8k points (or ~$120 per night), I decided we would be better off staying at the Andaz which consistently rates very highly among points and miles aficionados. I’ve applied a Suite Upgrade Award for our stay. The Sanur area is supposed to have great shelling and is walkable to restaurants and shops. We could also perhaps take a boat for a day trip to one of the islands off the coast of Bali while we are there.

From there, we will move on to the Alila Ubud for three nights which is in the mountain/jungle interior of Bali. While there, my wife will get to see a lot of monkeys and perhaps shop for some local crafts. I booked a Terrace Tree Villa directly on a cash rate as this hotel does not upgrade Globalists any more. The basic room is only 12k points, but the villas look spectacular and are relatively cheap compared to most luxury hotels elsewhere in the world. While we are based in Ubud, I also plan to do the sunrise volcano hike at Mount Batur.

Finally, our last two nights will be at the Alila Uluwatu Villas. This is a luxury property on a cliff at the southern tip of Bali. Every villa has a private plunge pool. I was able to book this at the off-peak rate of 35k points per night (vs. the $800 cash rate). There we can relax, enjoy the resort, and maybe even hike down the 600 steps to a secluded beach. We could also easily visit the Uluwatu temple. The resort is only about 30 minutes from the airport as well, so it should allow us to start our return journey with less hassle.

We’re really looking forward to this trip next February/March. While it’s towards the end of rainy season in Bali, we hope we’ll get decent weather most of the time. This one should be more relaxing than our whirlwind trip around Southeast Asia in April.

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