One of the primary reasons why I wanted to end my southeast Asia trip in Singapore was to depart Singapore in Singapore Airlines first class. Or more specifically, Suites Class, as I chose to fly back to the US via NRT and LAX instead of through ICN or HKG straight to SFO just so I…
For our time in Singapore, we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Clarke Quay. As a category 3 IHG property, it’s 20k points a night. I don’t have much experience with IHG hotels (I guess I don’t have much experience with hotels generally), but this was the nicest and hippest Holiday Inn Express I’ve stayed…
My time in Singapore was characterized by eating, more eating, and then eating some more, to the point of a constant malaise/euphoria from being so full of delicious food. One place that might be on your eating list is Tong Heng, which is known for their egg tarts (Gary from View From the Wing wrote…
The final stop on our tour of southeast Asia was Singapore. Not going to lie–one of the main reasons why I wanted to end in Singapore was so that I could fly Singapore Suites back to the US, but Singapore is also a delicious food city, which made the couple of days we spent there…
We stayed at the Bunwin Boutique Hotel for our time in Siem Reap, and I’d be happy to return again in the future. This was a solid, affordable choice with comfortable rooms, good amenities, and eager service. The hotel offers free airport pickup and dropoff, which is done via either limo or tuk tuk. We…
People in Hanoi are perhaps the most active I’ve seen in any city. Walking around Hoan Kiem Lake on an early morning, I saw people doing all sorts of activities for exercise, as well as using all sorts of fixtures for exercises. Like the guy who used a bench to do ab exercises by hooking…
To get from Hanoi to Siem Reap, we booked a flight on Vietnam Airlines. I had tried and failed to book award tickets for this segment using FlyingBlue miles, but the online award search tool kept wanting to route us through Guangzhou on China Southern instead of the nonstop on Vietnam Airlines, even though I…
I normally wouldn’t write up a review of a hostel stay, but I feel like the Golden Time Hostel 2 in Hanoi deserves a special mention. It’s not fancy by any means (but it’s a step up from a normal hostel since all of the rooms are private rooms), but the service was incredible. The…
Back to the trip reporting! Apologies for the long pause, but I hope to do a better job of finishing my trip reports in a somewhat timely manner… One of my friends told me that I should go to Halong Bay, so I tried to do research on the best tour options. Part of the…
Another underrated Alaska Airlines award redemption besides premium economy is intra-Asia flights on Cathay Pacific. You can only redeem Alaska miles for routings that are defined in their award chart, which generally means that you can only redeem miles for awards that begin or end in North America (e.g. you can’t redeem for Emirates between…
