Dream Honeymoon

Dream Honeymoon (or so I hope)

I will be getting hitched about 3 months from now, and I made a promise to my fiance.  She would tolerate me flying excessively and changing credit cards every few weeks if I planned the perfect honeymoon.  She listed the following stipulations: There must be a beach.  That was all from her.  Being new to the miles game, I wanted something luxurious and I really wanted to get there on points.

I set forth with some SkyMiles and HHonors points looking for the best value.  As we're getting married in June, I thought Europe might be nice - Cote D'Azur looked simply stunning, but very expensive - so points would be necessary.  As it turned out, Europe (specifically costal regions) fails on the Hilton Hotels front, so I continued seeking locations.  Nothing in Europe really fit the qualifications of being near a beach and available from Hilton. 

I then turned towards other potential locations.  Tahiti?  Perfect on the location front, and Hilton hotels with plenty of award availability.  Unfortunately, using SkyMiles limited me to either AirFrance or Air Tahiti Nui, neither of which were showing two seats in business class (again - the luxury thing) on any of our potential dates.  I also came to the realization that this was a bad deal for SkyMiles at 150,000 miles round-trip if available.  I can buy an 8-hour LAX-PPT ticket in Y (coach) for around $1200, and I couldn't find interesting places to take a stopover.  Not a great deal in my mind.

Conrad Koh Samui

More locations were tossed around.  Thailand and the beautiful Koh Samui resorts?  Vetoed by the wife-to-be because of the lack of an easily accessible beach.  

Africa and the Seychelles resorts?  They looked beautiful but somewhat difficult to access.

We went through a large number of places before finally settling on what we deemed to be the best possible location for us.

The Maldives

We will be staying at the stunning Conrad Maldives Rangali Island for a total of 6 nights.  We managed to nab this award stay about a week prior to the announcement by Hilton that their award categories would be (drastically) changing.  Our total came to 225,000 miles with the GLON award pricing (25% discount for elites on 6-night stays), which left me with plenty of points remaining for another hotel on our stopover.  Unfortunately, this rate is no longer applicable as of 3/28/2013, so move quickly if you have any points available for this.

This resort boasts a few great amenities like amazing over-water villas and an underwater restaurant, as well as some amazing sea life.  I cannot begin to describe how excited we are for this adventure.

Singapore

Being lovers of food in general, but especially Asian cuisine, I knew that if at all possible a stop in Singapore would be essential to a great experience.  We were inspired by the curmudgeonly Anthony Bourdain, who usually gripes and complains through most of his travel show.  On his visit to Singapore, he was another person - spewing a glowing review about everything he saw and ate.  Here we'll be staying at the Conrad Centennial Singapore, and I used 100,000 HHonors points to book 2 standard nights and 1 cash and points night.

Flights

SkyMiles got us an amazing value on this trip, as we'll be flying all in J (business class) on two airlines, CZ (China Southern Airlines) and MH (Malaysia Airlines).  Using the amazing resources on FlyerTalk and ExpertFlyer.com, the Delta phone agents, and a lot of patience, I was able to put together the following itinerary.

Day 1-3: LAX - CAN on CZ in J

I'm beyond excited for this flight, as I'm a plane junkie - and I've not been on an A380 yet.  This flight features lay-flat seats and a pretty nice layout. See this post from Rocky at UPGRD regarding this product.  I am anticipating a highly enjoyable experience.

-Hopefully we'll get some great use out of the China Southern First Class Lounge on this trip, as we have an 11 hour layover here.

Day 3: CAN - MLE on CZ in J

This one's not too exciting, but it's on a Boeing 777, which is a nice plane - and it gets us to the Maldives!

Day 3: MLE - VAM on VP (FlyMe!)

Short hop to a small island - (followed by a speedboat transfer to the Conrad)

Days 3 - 8: Enjoying the Maldives

Day 8: Conrad to MLE (Seaplane transfer)

Very much looking forward to snapping a few great picutres on this flight

Day 8 -9: MLE-KUL on MH in J

Following this flight, we'll enjoy MH's nice lounge in KUL

Day 9: KUL - SIN on MH in J

Day 9 - 12: Enjoy Singapore

Gotta get myself some chicken rice!!  I welcome any suggestions for your highly recommended chicken rice stands.

Day 12: SIN-CAN-LAX on CZ in J

I'll be sure to post a trip report when all is said and done.

All of this was had for 120,000 SkyMiles per person (but with some hefty surcharges because of the use of MH for travel).  I'm happy provide some details on how to actually make a trip like this happen using SkyMiles in an upcoming post, as it's certainly not as easy as using some of the other alliances.

Additionally, there's a lot of argument in the FF community on the value assigned to these awards - and this will be broken down in a future article