January 2014 Trip Planning

January 2014 Trip Planning

We began planning our trip in July or August, at the height of the brutal Tokyo summer, with somewhere in Southeast Asia as the goal.  Since we had not previously traveled through the area much, we could pick just about anywhere and it would be new and exciting.  We decided to try to get down towards Singapore and Kuala Lumpur to take advantage of some affordable intra-Asia flights on the low cost carriers there.  We also decided to go in 2014 because it would help Joe start re-qualifying for hotel status with Starwood and Hyatt since we were already set for 2013.  As we have said previously, we feel we get significant value from the benefits of hotel status so it is something we will try to maintain.

After much thought, we ended up with the following itinerary:

Singapore for 2 nights

Langkawi, Malaysia for 3 nights

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for 2 nights

Krabi, Thailand for 3 nights

Koh Samui, Thailand for 4 nights

Bangkok for 1 night

We visited Singapore over our 2012 Thanksgiving trip, had a great time, and were excited to go back for a short stay.  A starting point in Singapore also allowed us to fly on the Singapore A380 from NRT – SIN which is about as good as an 8 hour flight in coach can get.

Langkawi is a beautiful beach destination and was picked largely because it had $11 (before fees) flights to Kuala Lumpur.  The flights to get to Langkawi were a bit more expensive than we would have liked, but the flight times were convenient and still under $100 per person. 

We wanted to stay at the Grand Hyatt in Kuala Lumpur because we had heard great things about it, had a Hyatt Diamond suite upgrade certificate we could apply to our paid cash rate, and for an upscale city hotel, it was very reasonably priced.  We had also wanted to see the Petronas Towers and the hotel was said to have amazing views of them.

We picked Krabi because there was a reasonably priced Sheraton there with a lounge, a nice beach and a continuing direct flight to Koh Samui.  There are also numerous direct flights from Tokyo to some of the other more famous Thailand beach locations, so this place made sense since we were already close.

Koh Samui inspired much of the vacation because we had two free weekend nights from a Hilton credit card sign up to use at any Hilton property in the world.  The Conrad Koh Samui is one of the most expensive resorts in the Hilton portfolio, so we were hoping to be able to use our nights there.  Unfortunately, there was only Saturday night available (on our second of the four nights in Koh Samui) so we were forced to book 1 night before and 2 nights after, leading to lots of transfers.  Still, we wanted to see the Conrad so we decided to forge ahead.

Due to the political turmoil going on in Bangkok, we decided it would be smart to avoid heading into the city, so we changed our flight from Bangkok to Tokyo so we would just have a layover in the airport.  Heading home through Thailand also gave us the opportunity to fly on Thai Airways’ A380 which is always exciting.

Overall, we had an incredible trip and a handful of changes, mostly for the better, throughout.  The girls were pretty good considering how many hotel transfers and flights we made them go through.  They were awful in Singapore, but were mostly well behaved for the rest of the time.  We learned a great deal about what makes sense and what doesn’t for us when it comes to traveling and vacation, and will likely make a number of changes for our future trips.