2014 Year in Review

I know this is a couple of weeks late, but better late than never, right?

2014 was my heaviest year for travel yet. I flew 189,524 miles in 2014, almost all of which were for leisure (5,739 miles were for work).

Most of my miles came from flying to Asia. I started off 2014 in Tokyo, and I would return to Asia 7 more times throughout the year.

I requalified for American Airlines Executive Platinum status this year by flying nearly 110,000 revenue miles at an average cost per mile of just over 6 cents. I didn’t miss flying United at all.

Here are some highlights:
Best flight: Singapore Suites from NRT to LAX (still to be written up)
Best lounge: JAL First Class Lounge Narita (I know many will disagree considering that I also visited lounges like the Thai Royal First Lounge in Bangkok and the Qantas First Lounge in Sydney, but the JAL lounge has a sushi bar in the lounge! With actual sushi chefs!)
Best hotel: Conrad Koh Samui
Favorite food: all of Thailand; all of Singapore; Ester in Sydney; Maido in Lima
Favorite travel experiences: visiting a maid cafe in Tokyo; Patara Elephant Farm; relaxing on Koh Samui; cruising on Halong Bay; participating in early morning exercises with locals in Hanoi; eating until I couldn’t move in Singapore; getting “befriended” by two old Chinese ladies on the Great Wall of China who proceeded to fleece me; a four-hour long brunch at Temple Restaurant in Beijing; eating at a temple in Kuala Lumpur

This year, I’m probably going to try to fly fewer miles, but spend more time abroad. There were multiple times during the year where I would be gone 4+ weekends in a row, which made it hard to be a good friend to my friends in San Francisco. Of course, as I write this, I already have over 40k miles planned before the end of February…