Itinerary:
Home => New York City => Singapore => Phuket => Penang => Kuala Lumpur => Taipei => Macau => Hong Kong => Macau => Zhongshan => Guangzhou => Shanghai => Los Angeles => Detroit => ?? => Chicago => Home
I began planning for our Summer 2019 trip to Asia during the fall of 2018. The primary impetus was to return to Asia to see all our family and friends over there. Considering Kelly’s work as a school teacher, we’d likely have to wait a full year if we didn’t travel back this summer. I rarely plan trips that far in advance, but I got started early because this looked like it would be my largest travel planning project to date. Not only was it going to be at least six weeks long (it’s now ballooned to 10 weeks!), it would also be our first overseas trip with a second child. With so many logistics to consider, I figured I should get a jump on planning as soon as possible.
Timing was a tricky aspect. Kelly’s math team would be competing at Nationals in Las Vegas in the middle of July, which meant we could either take a 6-week trip before nationals or a 6-week trip afterward. After some time sketching out what those trips would look like, she ultimately decided to forego attending nationals and instead coach the team during the intensive 2-week math camp immediately following the spring semester. So we would instead leave on our trip several weeks into summer break, allowing us more time for travel but also putting us right in the heart of busy travel season with peak fares.
The trip began to take shape around a flight deal I found: $541 to fly from New York to Singapore on All Nippon Airways (excellent airline!!) and then from Shanghai to Los Angeles on United Airlines. Since we are more than happy to visit friends/family in NYC and LA to break up our travels a bit, and given what I was seeing with the price trends and less desirable date/airline/layover options after tracking countless itineraries for several months, I ended up pulling the trigger on this deal in early January. What was even better was that I was able to use my Chase Ultimate Rewards points for this booking. Over the months that I was researching, I did find several arguably better deals that could have worked for us, but none that would price out with my UR points. It’s always nice not to have to shell out actual cash for travel, but especially when it is six months in advance.
With these markers established, I began filling in the rest of the trip. Penang and Zhongshan were required stops, to see the majority of my and Kelly’s relatives, respectively. Kuala Lumpur was a stop of convenience, as it is a very short and cheap trip from Penang and offers much better connections to East Asia. Hong Kong and Macau were also no-brainers as gateways to Zhongshan and also home to another set of friends and family. Taipei initially did not make the cut, but as our overall time for the trip expanded we made it a priority to visit. As it turns out, over the past year Taipei has gone from our 5th choice for relocation up to our #1 choice, so it is really great that we will be spending some time there on this trip.
To my surprise, there were no cheap flights to get to Shanghai from Hong Kong or Macau. $180pp was about the lowest it would drop to. As I reluctantly considered high speed rail or overnight train options, I stumbled upon very cheap United miles redemptions (8000 miles) for flights either from Guangzhou or Shenzhen to Shanghai. Both airports are borderline convenient for us, so we decided to go for it and selected Guangzhou as neither of us has been there before and it has a bit of charm and appeal. Ultimately, as world-class cities I am sure Guangzhou and Shanghai will be enjoyable, but in hindsight it would have been great to cut out these two segments from our trip. It’s hard to estimate how much money we saved by doing it this way, but it likely would have been worth paying more to fly from HK instead. Oh well, we will make the most of it. Guangzhou is looking like it will be an anniversary getaway for me and Kelly, and her parents will bring the kids to us when it’s time to fly onward to Shanghai.
The final addition to our Asia itinerary was Phuket. About a month ago, I had completed booking all of our travel details for Asia except for the flight from Singapore to Penang. The flight options were either not as cheap as I thought they could be, or not the best schedule. I had been flirting with the idea of checking out Johor Bahru and flying out of there, which was about 75% cheaper. Alas, all flight options from either city started creeping up and up and I still hadn’t booked anything. Another concern during all of this was whether I was allocating enough time in Penang. Ideally I wanted to spend two weeks there, but now we were facing one week or less. Through it all, other things happening in our lives made it apparent that we would likely be returning to Penang next year. So finally, I saw the situation as an opportunity. If I thought outside the box and was willing to sacrifice days in Penang, maybe we could go somewhere relaxing for a few days between SIN and PEN. This would be the midpoint of our time traveling without grandparents (my parents will meet us in Taipei and Kelly’s parents will be in Macau, both likely to be around and helping with the kids until we leave Guangzhou) and if we could get a quick resort-like excursion including child care it could be paradise!! To make a long story less long, after looking at cruises and resorts in various Southeast Asian destinations, I settled on Phuket due to the overall price of the flights, the resort and the activities and amenities available there.
From Los Angeles we will fly to Detroit for a coaching workshop Kelly is attending, then drive to Chicago to spend time in our vacation home before flying back to Miami. Every part of the trip has been purchased/reserved except for the flight from LAX-DTW and any stop we might make on the way from Detroit to Chicago. And that’s it!! Whew.
I have not mentioned some of the details we discussed and debated, which include whether or not to take short flights and travel slowly around the world (eg stopping in europe en route to Asia) whether to pay more for nonstops and avoid layovers (our ANA flight has a layover in Tokyo, but an expensive all-premium class Singapore Airlines nonstop is available from EWR to SIN) and whether we want to go to new cities that we haven’t been to before, which is always an exciting part of travel for us. I felt like new cities were not necessary at all and the focus should be on the kids meeting family/friends, but in the end the cookie crumbled in such a way that we get to visit Guangzhou for the first time, Phuket for MY first time, and Shanghai for Kelly’s first time. We also went with the layover approach in Tokyo because the price was so good and being Priority Pass holders, layovers aren’t so bad. We skipped stopping over in Europe, largely because it seemed more trouble than it was worth with all our belongings in a foreign and unfamiliar place. One last decision we had involved which strollers and car seats to bring. We briefly contemplated traveling without car seats: foregoing car seats altogether when legal (NYC taxicabs, basically everywhere in Asia) and simply renting them when required by law (rental cars in LA and Detroit). We decided the risk isn’t worth it and we will be able to manage bringing two car seats. I also purchased a luggage strap (haven’t yet tried it) which can be used to tie a car seat to rolling luggage…WHILE A CHILD SITS ON IT! Not sure if it will work well or if it is even necessary, but I’ll report back later.
There were many other minor details that were considered throughout the booking process (I didn’t even touch on hotel booking) but these were the significant items. Hopefully in the future I’ll have a better handle on what is best for our family and I won’t have to go back and forth so much on different options. In any case, I don’t anticipate booking a similar 10-week trip again…in the future if we take such long trips, they will likely be at a much slower pace of travel and not nearly as complicated.
