Planning the next big trip - 6 to 3 weeks before departure

My friend Bill from our camel excursion in Cabo San Lucas

 

A Little Background

 

It was only last month when we returned from a 10 day vacation in Cabo San Lucas. The whole family went (including the mother-in-law who lives with us, and my daughter Lily's friend).  It was a nice getaway. All pool, beach and sun. A great way to escape the cloudy, dreary weather of Seattle.

 

My name is Eric Bozinny, and I'm currently unemployed going on seven months now. I was laid off from Microsoft back in October of 2012, and have been looking for my next opportunity ever since. Early on, I thought I was going to get lucky - I had a couple of good phone interviews with Facebook, and the company even flew me down to Austin for in-person interviews. Alas, they chose not to continue with me.

 

Fast forward through a very slow winter of very few opportunities worthy of pursuit and to the weeks before our trip to Cabo. I had a total of four phone interviews with Google, and upon my return to Seattle after our Cabo trip, I was invited to California for 4 hours of in-person interviews. They seemed to go very well - very conversational, lots of back and forth. I returned home, and a week later, I received the news that they went with someone more qualified. The recruiter qualified the rejection with the news that everyone felt I was good for Google, and should I find a job worth pursuing at Google, I would get a big boost from the recruiter and from the notes given by the interviewers (who all were impressed by my interviews).

 

How did I feel after the rejection? Well, very rejected. I went to the café where my wife works as a server four days a week, and broke the news (over a yummy omelet and hash browns). She was very supportive, and was glad that I wouldn't have to move to California (since the family would have stayed behind in Seattle due to the school specializing in educating kids with dyslexia that my son Liam attends).

 

An Idea is Born

After a few days of getting over the shock of losing out on the Google opportunity (it was hard not to imagine all I would need to do should I had moved to California), my wife Leslie came up with an idea at which I initially balked, but had grown to embrace. She proposed taking our kids on a trip to Bali and Thailand. Her argument? We had the miles for the trip, we had the time to take an extended, leisurely trip, and it would be the first time the kids have left North America (whereas Leslie and I had been to Bali (3x), the Maldives, South Africa - lots of great international destinations).  I thought she was nuts. I'm unemployed, for goodness sake. However, she pointed out that we had enough money saved to hold out for some time, and when other chance would we get the opportunity to travel for six (6!!) weeks in such an amazing part of the world.

 

Planning the Trip

 

The first thing I do in planning for a trip of this complexity and length? Create a spreadsheet, of course! I create column headers for date, day of the week, city, hotels/flights, costs, etc. It's a great way to play with different combinations while keeping track of total costs by summing up the costs of the individual elements. Next we had to make some early decisions:

 

• Who's going? After much family discussion, we decided to take our two youngest kids - Lily (13) and Liam (9). Our oldest, Savannah, is graduating from high school this year, and has no desire to travel internationally (which confounds me). Instead, she'll visit friends in California for a few weeks, before coming home to cohabit with my mother-in-law (who lives with us).
• Where are we going? Leslie definitely wants to return to Bali. We both find Bali to be a magical place, and really want to return to visit our friend Carole who runs a bed and breakfast in the northwest part of Bali. Also, Leslie wanted to try out Thailand. In the past, I've always talked her out of it because of the monsoons that bring rain to Thailand in the northern summer.  She won out this time. Bali and Thailand are the main destinations.
• When are we going? I turns out we have two 'hard stops'.  My oldest daughter is graduating on June 12, and we can't miss that. On the other end, my daughter has tickets to see One Direction on July 28, tickets we bought over a year ago (hmm...I wonder where the hell I put those tickets). So we can leave as soon as June 13 and return as late as July 27.
• How to get there? Using frequent flyer miles, I had a couple of choices. We could take Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong, use our stopover to buy a return flight to Thailand, before continuing on to our final destination of Bali. The other, relatively new, option was to book Emirates, flying directly from Seattle via Dubai to Singapore, then using it as a base of operations to buy separate flights to Thailand and Bali. There are downsides to each option. First off, I wanted to book the four of us in either First Class or Business Class. For each airline, premium cabin mileage availability is typically released less than a month before departure. With either choice, I'll be booking flights within weeks/days of our desired departure days.  Towards this end, it was important to have access to tools that can give me good information on award availability. I subscribed to two important tools - Expertflyer.com (web service) and the KVS availability tool (download). You can search dates and find out what flights have the seats available to travelers flying on awards. It's a different bucket of inventory, and just because there may be seats available on a flight (for sale), the airlines may not have put aside seats for those flying on miles.  By using these tools, it's possible to find out the moment (via email alerts) when the appropriate space becomes available. Then, I simply call up Alaska Airlines and have them book the space.
• Where will we stay? There were a few non-negotiable items. We want to stay at Carole's in the north, in Ubud, and on the peninsula (Jimbaran/Nusa Dua/Uluwatu).  Thailand was wide open, but we were trying to decide among Phuket, Koh Samui and Krabi. Also, do we spend time in Hong Kong (if we take Cathay Pacific), Dubai and Singapore (stopovers if we take Emirates). We wanted to procure rooms where all four of us can fit into a single unit, or with units that connect or are otherwise next door to each other.
• What activities will we do? Lots of fun things to do - elephant treks, white water rafting, volcano bike tours, ziplining, temple tours, snorkeling, diving, etc. Most of these activities we'll likely book at our hotels, but there may be a few worth booking ahead of time.

 

Destinations

 

 

After much research on Trip Advisor (a must have tool), we learned that June/July is the low season in the part of Thailand to where we had planned to travel; we learned that Phuket is very touristy and Koh Samui rather isolated (and expensive to travel to airfare wise). Eventually, we decided upon staying in Krabi - the gateway to all the beautiful bay islands (like the islands seen in "The Beach" and in "The Man with the Golden Gun")

 

Bali was always at the core of our plans. We wanted to spend the majority of our time on the island, but also wanting to spread our time among several different hotels.

 

Finally, we decided to use Emirates for our flights, so that gave us time in Dubai and Singapore, where between the two we'll be able to spend a week.

 

 

Booking our Flights

 

 

Booking premium cabin seats require either booking a year out (when the airlines load a few award seats into their systems) or by booking very close to the date of travel (when airlines realize they won't sell all their seats, and make award seats available in order to get some value out the inventory; when booking with miles in this case, Alaska will pay Emirates some dollar amount for those seats, seats that otherwise would go empty).

 

I couldn't base our trip on solid dates because I don't know which dates will have availability. I created a buffer period on each end of the trip. Singapore is our buffer location. If we get a flight when desired, we'll have 3 nights to spend in Singapore. If we can't get a flight until 3 days after my desired departure, we'll skip Singapore and go straight to Thailand. The same buffer exists on the end of the trip.

 

Using 700,000 Alaska miles, my goal is to book 2 First Class seats and 2 Business Class seats. Mom and Dad in the front, the kids in the back (well, middle, really). First class costs 200K miles each to Asia from North America and Business costs 150K miles each.

 

Based on our itinerary, we wanted to depart Seattle on June 13, arriving in Dubai on June 14, spending 4 nights in Dubai before continuing onto Singapore on June 19.  My plan is to return from Singapore via Dubai on July 24.

 

This is where the anxiety begins. A few weeks ago, none of these flights were available in our desired cabins. Using Expert Flyer, I created an alert to email me when 2 first class seats and 2 business class seats became available on June 13/14/15.  Then, while umpiring a rainy baseball game for my son's team on May 16, my phone vibrated and the email informed me that the seats were available. After the game, I rushed home and got on the phone with Alaska to book those seats, along with the onward flight to Singapore. I nailed the seats I wanted on the June 13 flight, and found four seats in business class on a 1 stop direct flight from Dubai to Singapore (stopover in Colombo, Sri Lanka). This wasn't my ideal flight, I want to eventually get on the A380 non-stop flight from Dubai to Singapore in First and Business, but those award seats weren't available yet.  Moreover, I had to book a return that fell within a 90 day window of our departure. I couldn't book my actual desired return since the award space wasn't released, so I booked a return on September 3 from Singapore>Dubai>Houston>Seattle. I have no intention of using this flight. It's just a filler to ensure I have a return booked, and so my itinerary isn't misinterpreted as a one way flight (which would leave us stuck in Singapore with no way home).  Total cost for these flights? About $100 per person in taxes and fees. Not a bad deal given the retail value of the first class seats alone is about $20K each.

 

Next steps? I've got flight alerts set for the A380 flight to Singapore from Dubai on 6/19. Worst case, we have seats on a flight that fits our desired date (even though in business and not in first). Unfortunately, since I'm not an MVP Gold with Alaska, every change I make will result in $400 worth of change fees ($100pp). I'm hoping to limit these changes to 2 of them. One for the aforementioned change to the A380, and another change to obtain our desired return on or about July 24.

 

Finally, I booked flights on Tiger Airways (the Ryan Air of Asia) to get us from Singapore to Krabi, and then from Krabi to Bali (via Singapore). The base airfares were cheap (<$100 per person from Singapore to Thailand); however, they ding you for baggage and for seat selection (otherwise, we could all be sitting in different parts of the plane)  This should be an adventure. Cattle class all the way.

 

Where will we stay?

 

 

We've finalized all of our hotel stays. I can tell you that we'll be staying at eight different hotels on our trip in four different countries. However, I'll keep these undisclosed until I arrive and blog about our experiences at each of them.

 

I'll post again about one week before we leave with updates on the journey. Once we start the journey, I'll be posting more frequently, and with more photos!

 

 

Our 25,000 mile planned journey