Author Topic: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)  (Read 29269 times)

Offline CS91

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CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« on: August 31, 2016, 10:20:23 AM »
Here goes part 1! Gonna do my best to actually finish this one but it may be a bit slow because haven't written up anything yet and I'll be quite busy over the next month between moving and starting work but I'll try my best!

Background

A few months after I was done booking my MLE trip, I started thinking about what to book for my Bar trip in August. For those of you who don’t know what that is, most law students, after graduating and taking the Bar, book a big trip as a way of celebrating and getting away and enjoying life one last time before starting work. I knew that I wanted to go somewhere far because once I start working, even when I do take vacation, I wouldn’t really have enough days to blow two days travelling.

We were aiming for about a 12-15 day trip, and originally we were thinking about going to Hawaii and splitting our time there between two different islands. But then I realized that I’d have about a week and a half off between my last exam and my graduation in May, so we decided to go to Hawaii then for 6 days (Hawaii TR, yes, I know, I never finished it) and choose a different destination for my Bar trip.

So it was back to the planning board. I read through some TRs and asked on the Next Vacation – Ideas thread, and MarcoPolo suggested Thailand as a great place to take a kid who will be one at the time of travel, and to add a country or two on the way there and back. I went to Thailand (Phuket and Phi Phi Island) and Hong Kong as a kid with my parents and remember it being beautiful, and thought it would be cool to take my wife and kid, and see other parts of Thailand.

We originally thought of doing Hong Kong, Thailand and Singapore, but after seeing SQ’s unfavorable lap infant policies (10% of revenue fair) and realizing that I didn’t have enough points for 3 seats on SQ F/R, we decided on South Korea instead (KE charges 10% of award fair for a lap infant). Now that we decided on the cities that we’d be visiting, it was time to book. I’ve read about people encountering headaches and issues when booking award travel, but I was not prepared for the curveballs that I was about to be thrown… If you're not interested, feel free to skip the flight portion as it's pretty lengthy.

Booking

Flights: Before looking for flight availability, I did a quick search for the hotels that I wanted to stay at to see if there was availability for the dates that I was targeting. Thankfully, availability seemed wide open so I started working on the flights.

The plan was to fly on KE for the JFK-ICN-CNX flights, PG for the CNX-USM-HKG flights, and CX for the HKG-JFK flight. I started with CX because I know that was the hardest to find availability on. I was lucky enough to find 3 J seats available (as expected, there was no F availability) for the dates that I needed, so I called AA to put the flights on hold. The plan was to book my seat under my account (I had enough points for the one seat), and my wife and daughter’s seats under DW’s account (she was about 20k points short, but had just hit the bonus on her Citi AA Plat. card and the statement was closing two days later so I thought I was good). More on this later. Once the CX flight was on hold, I looked at KE availability, and found two F seats (Kosmo Suites 2.0) available for the dates that I needed, and called them up to put that reservation on hold. Side note – every airline should strive to provide customer service like KE. Their reps are extremely pleasant to deal with. After just a couple of minutes on the phone, the reservation was on hold so I got to work on the PG flights. That’s where I encountered my first curveball.

I looked on EF and found availability that would be bookable through FB for the two PG flights. After being reminded by D93 (this is going to be the first of many times that he gets thanked in this TR; to say that he came in the clutch for me while booking this trip is an understatement) that MR to FB transfers are instant, I decided to wait until FB confirmed that they could book the flights before transferring. I picked up the phone, called FB, and was told that two days ago FB got a notice from PG that they were terminating their relationship and therefore they couldn’t book the flights. Bummer. But I decided to so some of my own research. I googled and googled and found nothing about this apparent termination. I then looked on FB’s website and it said that they are affiliated with PG. Time to HUCA! So I called back, landed on a representative who saw the availability and put the reservation on hold for me and told me to go ahead with the transfer. Score, right? I saw the reservation on my end under my login, and the rep told me that he had to put me on hold for a minute but that I should go ahead and transfer in 40k points to my FB account. I logged on to Amex, input 40k, was about to click transfer, and for some reason, and I have no idea why, I didn’t click. I decided to wait for the rep to come back on the line so that I can confirm that everything is set one more time. After a few minutes, the rep came back and the first thing that he said was “please tell me you haven’t transferred the points yet!!!” I told him that I hadn’t, and he said that while I was on hold, the system didn’t allow him to go to the next step of booking it and when he inquired why, he was told that the relationship had been terminated and the flights weren’t bookable. I dodged a bullet, but now I had to figure out how else to get this booked.

So I did some research, bothered D93 a bit more :), and learned that AB, CX, EY and JAL were my other options of booking PG flights. I had a lot of MR points and not that many extra SPG points, so I started with the first three choices. AB couldn’t find availability (can’t search for the type of fair that these airlines need to be able to book on EF), CX was impossible to get a hold of and partner award bookings need to be done by submitting a form and waiting 7-10 days for an answer – no thanks. Before trying EY, I decided to give JAL a call and see how many points it would be and if they could find availability. I landed on an extremely nice rep named Erica who was able to find availability on the flights that I needed. She told me that because of the current promotion, both flights combined would be 10k JAL miles per person (they use a distance based award chart), but that unfortunately she wouldn’t be able to hold the flights for me. So I decided to transfer 20k SPG points to JAL and keep my fingers crossed that there would still be availability once the points showed up in my JAL account.

While waiting for the JAL transfer to go through, I went back to ticketing my CX flight. Problem was, the 5 day hold was expiring on Shabbos afternoon (the day after New Years), and while DW’s Citi AA statement had closed and it showed that she earned the points, the points had not posted to her AA account within the standard 24-48 hours. I called Citi on Thursday night (New Years Eve) and they said it could take up to two weeks, so I called AA and they said that they were experiencing delays because of the Holidays. So I thought about what to do and then I remembered that somewhere deep in the Citi AA thread, someone had reported that AA allowed them to book a flight and have a negative point balance because they conferenced in Citi who confirmed that the points were en route. So I called back AA, landed on a rep who knew about that process but informed me that in order to do that, they needed the help of AA Customer Service who was closed until Monday morning because of the Holidays. I tried getting them to extend the hold, HUCA’d countless times, but kept getting the same answer – they can only do such things on AA flights, not partner airlines. So I had two options: A) release the hold before Shabbos and hope that it goes right back into inventory, or B) let the hold expire on Shabbos afternoon and then log on right after Shabbos and hopefully the seats went back into inventory and haven’t been scooped up yet. I didn’t like my chances with either, so I went back to my savior, D93, and Whatsapp’d him on Friday morning (15 minutes before Shabbos for him) and asked him if he’d be so kind to log on to my wife’s AA account after Shabbos was over for him, and if the points posted to have it ticketed (I gave him my cc number), and if the points didn’t show up, to release them and see if it went back into revenue. He said that he’d be happy to help me out and that he’d let me know what happened after Shabbos. Needless to say, I was sitting on pins and needles all Shabbos, and right after Maariv, ran to my phone, opened Whatsapp and saw a text from D93 saying that the points hadn’t showed up, but…he released the hold and the tickets went back into revenue!!! New 5 day hold to work with. Phew! So I waited until Monday when customer service would be open and called and asked to have me account in the negative once Citi confirmed the points were on the way. I HUCA’d and HUCA’d (at least 15 times) but nobody knew what I was talking about and I was ready to throw in the towel. I decided as a last attempt, I’d call Citi to see if there was anything that could be done. I called Citi, told them the situation, and they looped in AA CS. AA CS told me that they didn’t see the points anywhere but that they’d make a “special” exception and let me ticket the reservation anyways and go into the negative because Citi confirmed that the points were earned. Finally!!!! In order to do that, they looped in Advantage reservations, who looped in a supervisor (at this point there were 5 of us on the call) and after about an hour and a half, the tickets were on request! I honestly thought about making a Kiddush ;D.

The next morning, I woke up, checked my JAL account and the points had shown up! I picked up the phone, called JAL, landed on Erica again (!), and booked the PG flights. All that was left was to contact PG directly to add the lap infant to the reservation. PG isn’t reachable by phone unless you speak Thai so I sent them an email and took care of it all that way. (About a month later, once I had recuperated from the AA fiasco, I finished the KE booking that I had on hold.) Finally, thanks to a little luck, a lot of persistence, and D93 being my savior, the flights were taken care of!

Hotels: Once the flights were taken care of, I took care of the hotels. I called SPG and booked the LM Chaing Mai for 6 nights (base room), and then called the Sheraton Samui and booked a base room there for 5 nights.

Then I called Hyatt to book the Hyatt TST in HKG, and of course, the hotel was booked and there was no more award availability. I flaunted my Diamond Status, told them that because there were base rooms available for revenue bookings that they had to let me reserve it on points according to the T&Cs, and after pushing them a little, I got a supervisor to book me into the room and confirm my reservation.

For our hotel in ICN, it took me a couple of weeks to decide whether we should stay at the new Hyatt in Incheon which is supposed to be beautiful, or at the Grand Hyatt in Seoul. Pro of staying in Incheon would be being able to take advantage of the free tours that KE offers, and pro of staying in Seoul would be the better location. After talking it over with a friend who’s been to Seoul many times, we decided on the Grand Hyatt Seoul for a few reasons. 1) better location if we just wanted to walk around at night, 2) if we stayed in Incheon and wanted to actually see a decent amount of Seoul, we would’ve had to do two of KE’s Seoul tours which would have been a lot of bus rides back and forth between Seoul and Incheon, 3) doing two of KE’s Seoul tours wouldn’t have left enough time to see the DMZ, and 4) most DMZ tours provide pick up from your hotel in Seoul which is convenient.

A couple of days after I finished booking the Thailand hotels, the bonuses for our Citi Hilton Signature cards (75k each) posted, and I decided to look and see if the Conrad Koh Samui was available for the dates that I’d be there. It was, so I quickly applied for the Citi Hilton Reserve card (we were booked to be in USM for Shabbos) and kept my fingers crossed that it would still be available when the certificates posted to my account. Why not go for gold, right? Fast-forward a month and a half. Free night certificates from Hilton Reserve card posted to my account so I called up and booked us at the Conrad Koh Samui for 5 nights and cancelled the Sheraton Samui. Once I got the points back for the Sheraton Samui, I called back SPG and upgraded to the Executive Suite at LM Chiang Mai. NOW we were set!!

Total Cost
JFK-ICN on KE F (2 Adults + 1 Lap Infant): 199,500 KE Miles + $501.59 YQ
Grand Hyatt Seoul (1 Night): 1 Anniversary Night
ICN-CNX on KE J (2 Adults + 1 Lap Infant): Included in above mileage and YQ
Le Meridian Chiang Mai (6 Nights–Executive Suite): 44,000 SPG Points
CNX-USM on PG Y (2 Adults + 1 Lap Infant): 20,000 JAL Miles + $247.50 YQ
Conrad Koh Samui (5 Nights): 2 Free Weekend Nights Certificates + 228,000 Hilton Points
USM-HKG on PG Y (2 Adults + 1 Lap Infant): Included in above mileage and YQ
Hyatt Regency TST (2 Nights): 1 Anniversary Night + 15,000 Hyatt Points
HKG-JFK on CX J (3 seats): 165,000 AA Miles + $167.28 YQ

Total Dollar Value of Flights and Hotels: $50,783.93

Offline jshelton

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #1 on: August 31, 2016, 11:23:23 AM »
WOW! Cannot wait to hear more! You are my hero

Offline David Smith

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #2 on: August 31, 2016, 11:33:29 AM »
D93, if you read this, we miss you.
Who do you think you are fooling? You think you are going to pull a quick one on your Creator? Good luck with that.
JTZ

Offline jonnydm

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #3 on: August 31, 2016, 12:00:25 PM »
Have seen some of your pics on Facebook.. Great write up so far.

Offline CS91

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2016, 12:14:53 PM »
Have seen some of your pics on Facebook.. Great write up so far.
Do we know each other or are you a stalker?  ;D :o

Offline LoLo

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2016, 12:20:00 PM »
D93, if you read this, we miss you.
+1

Great work CS91, looking forward to the rest.

Offline jonnydm

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #6 on: August 31, 2016, 12:21:59 PM »
Do we know each other or are you a stalker?  ;D :o

Learnt in 'YNA' at the same time... I think you were the year below.

Offline Yehoshua

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #7 on: August 31, 2016, 02:43:05 PM »
Great start to hopefully a great TR! Looking forward to the rest!

Offline E-MAN

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #8 on: August 31, 2016, 06:16:09 PM »
Wow!

Online B.D.Da'ehu

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #9 on: August 31, 2016, 07:07:29 PM »
D93, if you read this, we miss you.
You can be assured he read this!

Offline Denverite

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #10 on: August 31, 2016, 11:20:33 PM »
Excited to hear the rest!

Offline BarryLincoln

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #11 on: September 02, 2016, 12:00:06 AM »
This is great.   Looking forward to the rest...

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #12 on: September 02, 2016, 01:07:58 PM »
Great read! Boy those stresses from flight books are crazy, eh? All part of the fun. Glad things worked out!

How was CKS 228K? Isn't it 80K or 95K a nigh depending on season?

Offline CS91

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #13 on: September 02, 2016, 01:15:48 PM »
Day 1: Flight to ICN and Tuesday Night in Seoul

As I mentioned in the planning section, I was booked to fly KE F from JFK to ICN in KE’s KosmoSuites 2.0.



Because our flight was a few hours after Tisha B’Av, we drove from PHL to Long Island on Tisha B’Av afternoon and the plan was to break our fast at DW’s cousin’s house and then go to the airport (we left our car at their house). About 5 minutes before we were going to leave to the airport, news broke that there was a shooting at JFK Terminal 8. Fantastic. I went to JFK’s website and it seemed like only the flights out of terminal 8 were being cancelled, and since we were flying out of terminal 1, our flight seemed to still be on. I called KE to make sure, and they told me that the flight was on schedule, and that I should go to the airport because if I missed the flight, it would be my fault and they would charge me to get on to another flight. So we packed into the car and headed to JFK and figured we’d see what the situation was. At first everything seemed clear, but then as we veered off towards the exit for terminal 1, we saw that it was bumper to bumper and traffic was at a complete standstill. We waited a bit, but everyone was just confused as to whether or not the airport was in a total lockdown or not. No cops to direct traffic or anything. After about 35 minutes (there wasn’t even anywhere to turn around), cops finally came and diverted everyone out of the airport because they said that the whole airport was being shutdown. I called KE as we were driving back to DW’s cousins house, and they started telling me that it’s my fault if I miss the flight because the flight was still 100% scheduled to take off at the normal time.

When we eventually got back to DW’s cousin’s house, I called back KE and told them that I wanted to be placed on the 2pm flight the next afternoon. The supervisor told me that until I officially miss my flight or it’s cancelled, she couldn’t do anything. At that point, I was honestly so pissed off (especially because by then it was announced that there wasn’t actually a shooting), I told the supervisor that I wanted her to hold 2 seats for me on the next 5 flights out of JFK to ICN, or else I’d lose it on her like she’s never seen. (I know, a little harsh, but I was starting to get really depressed. I planned this trip 9 months out, and it’s one of the things that helped me to keep pushing while studying for the Bar. So the idea of the trip being ruined was devastating to me.) She responded by saying, “yes sir, I’ll do whatever you want,” and proceeded to place 2 seats on hold in F for the next 5 flights out (I wanted all the holds because I didn’t know when JFK would resume normal operations so I wanted the first flight out). So I basically had about $100k worth of flights being held for me ;D. Turns out in the end my original flight was cancelled and JFK just did an incredibly poor job communicating with the airlines. After getting confirmation of the holds, I went to sleep for a few hours and when I woke up in the morning, I saw that JFK was back to normal so I called back KE to have the seats for the 2pm flight confirmed. The 2pm flight is on an A380 so that meant KosmoSuites 1.0. Because of the flight change, we were now scheduled to land in ICN at 5pm on Tuesday instead of 4am, which meant that I had to cancel the DMZ Tour that I had booked for Tuesday morning. Oh well.

Anyways, we eventually made our way to the airport, and when we checked in, the agent at the counter right away realized that because we had changed our reservation, we weren’t guaranteed kosher meals but immediately made some calls and told me she was doing everything she could to get us our meals. (We brought along sandwiches just in case.) I also had them check two of our bags all the way to CNX and one of them just to ICN so that we didn’t need to shlep all 3 of our suitcases into Seoul when we didn’t need them. After check-in, it was off to the lounge. The KE lounge at JFK is nothing special. There are separate sections for F and J so I only saw the F part. Had a bit of food and some drinks (alcohol and non), but although underwhelming, definitely a better place to sit and wait than the gate.

Model of KE's A380 at the entrance of the lounge:


What else do you do while you wait for boarding  ;D


It was eventually time to board, so we headed to the gate. When we arrived at the gate, our daughter was sleeping in her stroller so the gate agent offered that we could take the stroller on board so that we could quickly transfer her from her stroller to DW’s lap so she hopefully stays asleep which I thought was really thoughtful and nice. They also held up everyone else from boarding while we got settled in so that we didn’t feel rushed (the stroller was blocking the aisle). This was our first F experience, and wow, the seats are HUGE compared to J.







Amenity Kit and Bose Headphones


Gianfranco Ferre PJs – VERY comfortable


The seat configuration in F on KE’s A380 is 1-2-1 so we had the two middle seats, and the gate agent told us that she was giving us seats in the third row because the two single seats on either side were empty so we could use those for our daughter (another nice thoughtful touch; most airlines would probably say that I can’t use an empty seat in F because I didn’t pay for it).

Our daughter ended up waking up during takeoff so we chilled a bit, gave her some lunch/dinner, and then put her to bed in the empty seat. Although I was really looking forward to trying Kosmo 2.0, the configuration on the A380 was a lot better for flying with a kid because I was able to keep an eye on her while I was watching a movie etc. instead of having her in a closed suite.

Once our daughter was sleeping, I went upstairs to check out the onboard bar. I didn’t take a picture of it (left my phone at my seat) but here is a picture that I found online.

Stairs to upstairs




There is also a small bar for F passengers




The flight was overall really enjoyable. DW and I each slept about 6 hours, and I think our daughter slept for about 10-11 hours (she’s incredible on flights). The FAs were amazing. They offered to watch our kid if we both wanted to sleep (though we didn’t take them up on it) and were constantly coming over to talk and play with her (not in an overbearing way). The one time our daughter cried, two of them came over and gave her ice cream and a teddy bear (which she happens to love) and made her laugh. Overall, the service was amazing and I would love to fly KE again. Even if I wanted to critique something I don’t think I can.

After landing in ICN we got our bags and went to the KE Limousine (bus) stand to buy tickets for a bus ride into Seoul. They have different bus lines which stop at different hotels, so I told them we were staying at the Grand Hyatt and we bought two tickets for a total of ~$32 USD. The bus came a couple of minutes later and from when we left ICN until we pulled into the Grand Hyatt was about 1:10. We thought about taking the train into Seoul but I don’t think it would have saved us any time because the train takes you to Seoul Station and then you still need to take a taxi/subway from there (and it’s more expensive).

Drive into Seoul


We got to the hotel and checked in at about 7pm and dropped our bags in our room and had a quick bite to eat. The hotel room was small, but decent looking, clean and definitely did the trick for just one night.



Hotel's pack and play with a miniature blanket and pillow :)


View


We then decided to go to the North Seoul Tower, which is basically a lookout point over the whole city. It’s only a 5-minute drive from the Grand Hyatt so we took a cab from the hotel to the cable car and purchased tickets to take a cable car ride up to the tower (you can either take the cable car or a bus to the tower; no taxis are allowed up there). I don’t remember the exact price of the cable car, but I want to say that it was somewhere around $15 USD for two people (return). The line was a bit long, but when we finally got to the top where the tower was, there were some really nice views from the lookout points.

North Seoul Tower


View from outdoor lookout point


There’s also an option to take the elevator to the top of the tower, so we decided to do that. I think this was another $20 USD for two people. The top has an indoor lookout, kind of like what you have in the Freedom Tower in NYC – a big circular room with windows all around. You have incredible views of all of Seoul. It’s really a massive city and beautiful to look at. The windows were pretty dirty and it was hard to get a good picture because of the glare but here is what the observation deck looks like.



When we were done taking in the nice views, we went back down to take the cable car down to catch a cab to the hotel, but the lines were incredibly long and our daughter was getting a bit cranky so we decided to take the bus. Problem was, I needed cash for that. Lesson learned – NEVER leave a foreign airport without taking out cash. I knew this, but for some reason got lazy in the airport and thought to myself that the hotel definitely had an ATM machine (which it didn’t, because the lobby was under construction). There was no ATM around the lookout, and the convenience store by the lookout didn’t have one either. I tried asking the clerk to charge my cc for the amount of cash that I needed, but he barely understood what I was saying. He ended up telling me it was okay if I bought something for the amount that I needed in cash, which I didn’t understand because he ended up basically giving me free cash (or free bottles of water depending on how you look at it), but whatever. The bus finally came, but I didn’t know which stop to get off so I asked the bus driver which stop to get off so that I can hail a cab. I don’t think he understood what I was saying because he motioned for me to get off at the first stop, which after getting off and finally finding something who speaks English, was told that it’s a hard area to catch a cab from. Luckily, a cab drove by a few minutes later so I flagged it down and had him drive us to the hotel. A bit of a struggle, but we made it. All part of the fun, right?

By the time we got back to our room, it was a bit past midnight and we were exhausted. We slept until 3am when our daughter woke us up (jetlag) but finally got her to go back to sleep after watching some Daniel Tiger.

Offline CS91

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #14 on: September 02, 2016, 01:23:52 PM »
Great read! Boy those stresses from flight books are crazy, eh? All part of the fun. Glad things worked out!

How was CKS 228K? Isn't it 80K or 95K a nigh depending on season?
Honestly, it wasn't fun at all haha. Probably could have used therapy lol.

95k per night but 5th night free so works out to average of 76k/night and only used points for 3 of the nights (because the other 2 nights were certs). So 76k*3 is 228k.

Offline Yehoshua

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #15 on: September 02, 2016, 02:08:36 PM »
Nice first segment. Too bad you couldn't try the closed suites, but like you said it was probably best when travelling with a kid (though we had closed suites but didn't leave our daughter in them alone).

Offline @Yehuda

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #16 on: September 02, 2016, 02:44:05 PM »
Honestly, it wasn't fun at all haha. Probably could have used therapy lol.

95k per night but 5th night free so works out to average of 76k/night and only used points for 3 of the nights (because the other 2 nights were certs). So 76k*3 is 228k.
Haha
They let you get 5th night free pricing even when 2 of the nights were certs?? I didn't know that!

Offline benjie1305

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #17 on: September 02, 2016, 02:46:58 PM »
Haha
They let you get 5th night free pricing even when 2 of the nights were certs?? I didn't know that!

Shh.
Work hard, Play harder!

Offline CS91

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #18 on: September 02, 2016, 03:29:41 PM »
Day 2: Touring Seoul, Flight to CNX, and Check In at Le Meridian Chiang Mai

We woke up pretty early on Wednesday morning. I’m a Diamond member so for breakfast we just had some fruit from the hotel. After breakfast, I went down to the concierge to get directions on how to take the subway and then we headed out. Our flight to CNX was at 7:10pm so the plan was to take the 3:45pm bus back to the airport.

Daytime view from our room:


We walked from the hotel to the subway station, which was about a 20-minute walk through a mostly residential area. I found an ATM machine on the way, so I took out some cash for the day so that I didn’t run into any more problems like the night before. (Side point – I opened a Charles Schwab checking account before the trip and it worked out great. And getting a free $100 was a nice plus.)

The subway station that is closest to the hotel is Itaewon Station, which is on Itaewon road. Itaewon has a lot of stores, restaurants, and shops and is apparently a nice place to walk around (we didn’t really spend any time there). We took the subway straight to Gyeongbokgung Palace. It should have been a 20-30 minute subway ride, but it took us about 45 minutes because we got a bit confused when we had to transfer (the signs aren't that great IMO) and nobody spoke English. The subways in Seoul are the total opposite of subways in NYC; they’re clean, don’t smell and the platforms are air-conditioned.

Itaewon Street


Subway Platform


Train


You would think that a massive palace complex would be located outside the city, but nope, it’s literally down the block from huge office buildings. We got there towards the end of the changing of the guards (I think this happens at 10am and 1pm IIRC) so we watched the end of the ceremony and then bought tickets to enter the palace (I don’t remember exact price but it was really cheap). We walked around looking at the different buildings for about an hour. They were really cool and some of the detailing was really nice, but I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Entrance


One of the guards:








Throne Room


Detailing on the roof of the buildings:


The palace is literally in the middle of the city


After we were done there, we walked to Incadong Street (about a 10-minute walk from Gyeongbokgung Palace), which is a touristy street with a lot of souvenir type shops. After finding a place to sit and eat lunch, we walked down Incadong Street for about another hour to hour and a half going into some of the stores and buying some souvenirs.

Incadong Street


We eventually made our way back to the subway station and took the subway back to Itaewon Station (this time without getting confused). We didn’t have our daughter’s car seat with us and didn’t want to walk back to the hotel from there (it was downhill to the subway so it would’ve been an uphill walk) so we decided to wait for the Hyatt shuttle which comes every hour. We spent our time waiting inside a Baskin Robbins because we were a bit too tired to walk around and it was really hot outside so it was nice to sit in an air conditioned store for a bit (and from the time that we got to Itaewon until the bus was scheduled to come was only about half an hour anyways).

We got back to the hotel, quickly packed up, showered and checked out. I bought tickets for the bus from the hotel and after another 1:10 ride we were back at ICN. Side point – our daughter fell asleep at about 2pm while we were on the Hyatt shuttle and slept straight through packing out of the hotel, the bus ride to the airport, security, the lounge, boarding, and the first 3 hours of the flight. Pretty sure she was jet lag ;D.

Once again, the KE lounge was nothing special. Nicer than the one in JFK, but still underwhelming. We hung out there for a bit until it was time to board, and then made our way to the gate. The flight to CNX was on an A330 (picture taken from online).



The flight was about 5 hours and uneventful for the most part. We all slept a bit, ate dinner and then entertained our daughter for the last two hours of the flight that she was up for. Once again, KE’s FAs were really nice and the service was amazing.

Upon landing in CNX and making our way to customs, they luckily let us skip the line because it was pretty long and the customs agents work sooooo slowww there. It literally took the guy 10 minutes to scan and stamp our 3 passports. We then collected our bags, bought a SIM card (I paid 399 Baht, which is about $12 USD for a 6GB, 10 day plan – if only Verizon was so cheap) and got a cab to the hotel for about 250 baht (we needed a bigger car because we had a lot of luggage).

When we got to the hotel, I asked about being upgraded to the Diplomatic Suite (I had emailed them a few days before and from their broken English, my understanding was that they would upgrade me if the room was available). They woman at the counter said no even after I showed her the email so I just dropped it. The Executive Suite is still really nice and spacious so it wasn’t worth arguing (it seems like every other TR that includes CNX involves a stay in the Executive Suite at LM so I’ll skip out on the pictures). At that point we were so tired, we just wanted to get to the room and go to sleep. Luckily, our daughter somehow slept through the night even after sleeping for about 7 hours during the day so that was the end of her jet lag.

Offline Yehoshua

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Re: CS91's Bar trip to Asia (ICN, CNX, USM & HKG)
« Reply #19 on: September 02, 2016, 04:30:49 PM »
Wow, you're getting these posts out quickly! Besides from the DMZ tour, was there anything you didn't do in Seoul that you would have liked to do?