Bangkok, Seoul, Taipei, May 23-June 2, 2024

This trip was a year in the making. Quite literally.

It all started with my wanting to take EVA Air Premium Laurel Class from TPE to anywhere in the States so I could experience business class on the Taiwanese carrier with catering coming from Taiwan. Understandably, business class, especially on an Asian carrier, can be quite expensive in cash so I scoped out ways to book it using one of my points currency. After some research, I settled on using Air Canada’s Aeroplan as I already had 50K certificates on hand and I could do a redemption using one of those and top it off with however many points it would cost to get me anywhere in North America. Further research showed it would be difficult to get a flight to JFK so narrowed my focus to either ORD or IAH and just deal with booking a flight onward to NYC from Chicago or Houston afterwards. On June 13, 2023, 355 days out from my return flight from Asia, I managed to snag TPE-ORD for one 50K cert + 25K additional points. I’d book a flight home on Delta for the next morning as the flight wouldn’t get into O’Hare until past 9 pm, well past the last flight out, after clearing customs and immigration.