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Last Thursday was Jr’s last day of school. In each of the 3 prior years, at this time of year we were on a plane to Europe. Paris, Barcelona, Florence…. ahh, the good life. After a few months, we would hop across the pond to the good ole U S of A to visit friends and family before returning to Asia.
But when it came time to plan this year’s epic adventures, none of us were feeling very… epic. Or adventurous.
So this year we pieced today something different.
Summer Plans 2019
By the time you read this, we will be outside Da Nang, Vietnam, noshing on a crunchy bánh mì and building sand castles on the beach.
Want to get away this summer?
Do it for free using the Chase Sapphire Preferred, the best card for beginning travel hackers!
This is our first of several shorter trips around Asia. We were looking for simple and easy normal vacations with direct flights, where we could retreat back to the comforts of home after each destination. So here we come, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Bali. Plus, we will be skiing in Japan in January.
Vietnam is our first real non-solo trip as we are going with another family, so 4 of us adults and 3 kids. We have a nice big Airbnb 100m from the beach for $45/night/couple with breakfast included. With other kids to play with, maybe I’ll even be able to sleep in? Please?
Home away from home (haven’t tried Airbnb? Get a discount on your first stay.)
After a few days there we head into the city of Da Nang for a faster pace. The kids will love the hotel’s rooftop pool and the adults will love the adjacent bar. There will also be more beach action. And bánh mì action.
Belle Maison, Da Nang, Vietnam
I’m using my soon to be expired Expedia points to get 2 free nights, and the remaining nights were about $65 each with breakfast included. Jr will probably eat $65 worth of watermelon.
There are now several 2 1/2 hour direct flights to Da Nang from Taipei. We were able to book on a discount airline (Jetstar) with a checked bag for $260/person roundtrip.
Total cost for the whole trip will come in around $1,200.
In July we are headed over to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia (Sabah.) I’ve always wanted to visit and there is supposed to be good diving.
Flights are quick and easy too, about $200/person roundtrip with a 2-hour flight time. When I first started looking at hotel pics, I really liked the look of one hotel until I realized it was a Hyatt. I refuse to pay for any Hyatt properties, so we are staying at another great looking hotel, the Le Méridien.
I considered using points for this stay, but paying $100/night now helps me meet the minimum spend on my new Bonvoy card. This will save me $350/night on our ski trip to Japan this winter. (Learn more about the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Visa Signature Credit Card.)
The total price for this trip comes in around $1,200 as well.
And finally, in August we are headed to Bali, Indonesia. Winnie and I have been before back in 2006 or thereabouts, so it will of course be completely different now.
We have 3 different places we will stay over the course of 2 weeks, each with a different overall vibe.
The first is a relaxing resort style place with multiple swimming pools. The second is an Airbnb in the clouds above Ubud. And the last is a kid’s play resort.
I used IHG points for the full stay at the Holiday Inn Resort Benoa at a valuation just greater than 0.5cpp. That’s not the world’s greatest redemption, but good enough. (IHG point earning opportunity – check out the IHG(R) Rewards Club Premier Credit Card.)
I booked this place with a view on Airbnb because it was cheaper than booking through any of the hotel sites. Total price for 3 nights was $395.
Nice View! – Taman Bebek Bali
Kids of all ages like waterslides, so a hotel with one of those is a good way to finish the summer. The reviews on the rooms and breakfast are all glowing too.
Total price for 4 nights was $527, but I got a new Capital One Venture Reward Credit Card with 50,000 points to offset $500 in travel expenses that wipes that out. I had actually booked this stay on another card earlier but canceled and rebooked with the new card, accidentally saving $3 in the process. Gotta love dynamic pricing. Learn more here.
Waterslide – Bali Dynasty Resort
Kid’s pool – Bali Dynasty Resort
For flights, I booked them using Chase Ultimate Rewards Points so our net cost was $0. This was just at 1.5cpp via the Sapphire Reserve portal, so we will get miles for the travel as well. There were cheaper flights on the discount airlines (half the price), but they all required a connection. As a direct flight from Taipei, a flight time of 5+ hours is plenty.
A great card for beginning travel hackers to earn Ultimate Rewards Points is the Chase Sapphire Preferred(R) Card. It has a great welcome bonus, no foreign transaction fees, and super flexible points.
Putting it all together, this trip to Bali cost us about $400 plus a bunch of IHG points, UR points, and Capital One Venture Points.
All 3 trips will cost less than $3,000, or about half of what we spent on our Europe trip last year.
Hanging Out in Taipei
In between these trips, we will be hanging out in Taipei. We get a bit of travel and a bit of home, so we can continue to do all of the things we enjoy in this fine city… such as melting into a pool of sweat on the floor in the scorching temps and oppressive humidity. I jest, of course. Kinda.
Jr’s Montessori school has a summer program that he will be joining periodically. 2 weeks costs about $500, and they have a fun schedule of field trips and big art projects. Plus he will get a bunch of play time. We also have tickets to The Lion King traveling Broadway show, a small orchestral performance, etc… it will be a good summer holiday.
Blog Stuff
Last year during our big round-the-world trip, I scheduled a bunch of guest posts to keep things happening here on GCC. This year I’ve been much lazier and focused on other life things like swimming and biking. As such, things might get a little quiet around here as we stay busy with parenting and traveling.
I’ll still be on the forum answering questions, but perhaps with an above average delay.
If you happen to be swinging through the area, I’m always up for an (iced) coffee.
Summary
No epic trip for us this summer, but 3 vacation style getaways – Vietnam, Malaysia, and Bali. We will also be skiing in Japan this winter.
In between, I’ll be in the pool or the AC.
Have a Great Summer Vacation!
Cards and points programs mentioned in this post for those interested:
Chase Sapphire Preferred(R) Card - Intro bonus worth $750+ plus double points on all travel. $95 annual fee. This is a great card for beginning travel hackers! | |
Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card. - Intro bonus worth $750 in travel credit or more via point transfers. Learn more here. | |
IHG(R) Rewards Club Premier Credit Card - 150,000 IHG Points welcome bonus after $3k spend in 3 months. Free night certificate on card anniversary. $89 annual fee. | |
Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Visa Signature Credit Card - 125,000 Bonvoy Points welcome bonus PLUS a free night (50k point value), after $5k spend in 3 months. Free night certificate on card anniversary. $95 annual fee. |
Editorial Note – Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
You guys are travelhacking like a pro. Those trips all look great. We’d love to visit those places too. The water park and pool will be a great hit with Jr.
Have a great summer!
He is becoming a strong swimmer now so it will be fun to hit the water parks!
Have a great summer too, Joe.
Sounds like fun. Enjoy your summer vacay! Curious, why do you refuse to pay for a Hilton property?
He said Hyatt – but yes I am interested as well.
What a bad story led a refuse to stay at Hilton’s?
How are you getting such low actual dollar costs for the hotels? When I casually search these sites (from the US and from Brazil) they come much higher. For example Bali Dynasty shows $420/night for late Aug2019, whereas you show ‘Total price for 4 nights was $527’ before your CC reduction. Please share your TH technique :-)
I didn’t do anything special, prices on hotels.com were about $100/night+tax.
I’m curious why you won’t pay for any Hilton properties?
sounds like an epic summer to us layfolk anyway! Happy travels…..
Looks like you guys will be traveling in style but at a much discounted rate. Travel hacking at its best. I have no idea it’s that cheap to go between Vietnam and Taiwan, definitely need to take a look at that next time we fly into Taiwan.
I’m curious about the Hilton comment, like other readers above. Bad experience with Hilton before?
There are a ton of discount airlines around Asia now, so you can get almost anywhere for <$300.I had a bad experience with the *Hyatt points program (the original post should have said Hyatt, I updated it.)I once lost about $1,000 worth of Hyatt points when they expired. I called, and they said sorry, nothing can be done. So over the next 10 years or so, as I made travel decisions for me and my team, I refused to stay at Hyatts. They've probably lost $1 million in revenue from that phone call. I'm petty like that.
Makes sense I’d have done the same.
Nice, you should let Hyatt know in some way. I am all for punishing corporate America when they wrong me, but it’s all the more impactful when you can quantify it and let them know what they missed out by wronging you.
They know. They don’t care.
It’s better for the quarterly report to remove the points from the books.
I totally get disproportional vengeance. Haven’t had any Pepsi products myself in 10 years for a somewhat similar reason.
Not sure how you valued Hyatt points, but probably 50-100k points? How did you amass that many and then have enough inactivity to let them expire? I wouldn’t say the company wronged you, necessarily, since the expiration is a clearly stated policy. But it’s definitely not hospitable for them to be so unsympathetic for who presumably used to be a high-roller customer. Sorry to hear about your encounter.
I traveled a lot for work for many years, and then had a 1-2 year stint where I didn’t travel much at all.
Yikes, this was a tough read….What value is this blog post to readers?
You brag about travel destinations, good deals and advertise for credit cards.
Waste of time. Enjoy your money
Every year I share our travel plans, explaining our costs and how I reduced them.
Every year somebody chooses to respond like this.
Enjoy your summer.
I found value here Dave. But I enjoy learning from others
Dave,
I’m not sure why this post is a tough read? GoCurryCracker travels the world and we learn how to save on travel from these posts. Isn’t that awesome?
Lazy. I like it. Last summer was our lazy summer. 1 month in an oceanfront condo in Bahamas and doing basically nothing touristic the whole time. Swim, lounge, nap, snorkel, pool, rinse, repeat. Got to admit it’s a nice way to pass the days. Enjoy!
I like doing all of those things. Especially the naps when it gets really hot.
Looks great, have a good trip. Several of these places are on my list!
Sounds like a glorious summer! Thanks for continuing to share your plans and travel hacks. As someone fast approaching FIRE, it is always helpful and inspiring to read your updates. Don’t give any credence to the nay sayers – they just look foolish. Thanks!
Wow, sounds awesome. Looking forward to your report on Kota Kinabalu.
We are planning to retire in the next 12-15 months to start some slow travel. Our plan is to start in Southeast Asia take advantage of lower cost of living areas earlier in the retirement journey as you have suggested in other posts.
I’m new to the travel hacking thing and, to be honest, it hurts my head a little. It seems like a lot of tracking of credit cards. Also, because we don’t really spend much right now, we would have trouble meeting the minimum requirements on multiple cards at one time.
Given our time frame for retirement, when would you suggest we start applying for credit cards?
Would it make sense to apply for the Venture card first to take advantage of the no fee for the first year, meet the requirement with our limited spending, and then apply for Chase Sapphire after?
Love the blog… love your brain. Keep up the good work!
Now is a good time. Starting with the Chase cards is best as they have strict limits on how many cards you can apply for from all banks.
Just do as many cards as you can meet the minimum spend on (ideas here.) Maybe that is one every 6 months or one every month, whatever works. One good approach is to minimize tax withholding and pay estimated taxes… I just paid $3k in taxes on a credit card so minimum spend met in one purchase.
Or if it does cause headaches, don’t do it at all. No big deal. I think you will find it is far easier than paying all of life’s bills every month, something we all just do without thinking about it.
Thanks for the links. Brilliant! I’m all over it. I’m assuming I’ll have to be careful about points/miles that expire?
Not really… You generally have at least 2 years, and any activity at all resets that timer.
Go Curry: Sounds fun. We have only ever used points for air travel. Your post today got me thinking again about learning to use hotel points as well. We stay in Airbnb’s so often, the hotels are kind of a thing of the past though for us. Thanks for teaching!
We do more Airbnb now also – more space, a kitchen, often less expensive… it’s great. Especially with kids.
For our upcoming ski trip to Japan, there wasn’t much to choose from and really nothing in the ski village. Instead, we got a rather large hotel room and use of the nice looking hotel onsen, breakfast, and a ski storage room. I do like the $0 price tag verses $350/night.
I’m inspired by the pictures and itinerary. My husband and I become empty-nesters in the fall, and we love going to the Philippines in Jan, so this gives us great ideas for side trips while we’re there.We’d like to earmark first quarter of each year to go around Asia since we’ll be already in the Philippines. Bali is already top of my wish list. Will definitely check out the places you listed!
Not sure why Dave got all bent out of shape?
This sounds like a great summer! I like this idea of multiple shorter trips rather than an epic whole summer. It is nice to come back to a home base (or home) in between so you can have some downtime
Thanks GoCurryCracker,
We have read through many of your credit card blog posts and decided to start the travel hacking with the Chase Saphire Reserve. We have used credit cards for years, tracking our expenses, and indeed enjoying the benefits, but your blog has helped us understand other advantages that we would not have otherwise thought of.
Thanks so much for the great blog posts Jeremy and Winnie. It’s fun to read about folks who think entirely different from ourselves. And, thank you also for the helpful links.
K & K
We’ve had the CSR for a few years now and use it for all of our travel and dining out expenses (our 2 biggest expenses besides rent.) Unless we are working on the minimum spend on a new card, everything goes on the CSR.
I guess we have different definitions of “epic.” Each of those 3 trips sounds epic by my standards! Sounds like you all will have a blast. Enjoy.
I have been following your blog for a long time and absolutely love reading it! I have a question for you/possible post idea (if I’m super duper lucky!) My husband and I hope to travel with our (future) kid too and are thinking a lot about the timing of retirement and having a baby. We are on track to retire in five years when I am 35 and are trying to decide if we should have a baby soon or closer to our FI date. I know it’s a personal decision, but do you have any considerations to offer from your position of experience and wisdom? I’m trying to make sure we consider all possible effects/benefits of waiting vs. having a baby now in an effort to have thoroughly thought through this very big decision! From a financial perspective, it seems like it would be better to have a kid pre-retirement for tax reasons and to take advantage of low cost health insurance and parental leave policies. But there is the obvious disadvantage of not being able to spend as much time with them during their early years.
Thank you so much for continuing to write this blog. You guys are such an inspiration and your posts are so helpful!!
I have no wisdom but plenty of its opposite. I like that we had the option of spending more time with Jr than with coworkers and that we didn’t need to balance career and parenting. The first few years are both rewarding and exhausting, and the people who manage to do it all are stronger than I am. For this, I lean towards waiting until at least one parent can comfortably not work.
With an already strong monetary base, I wouldn’t weigh financial ramifications too strongly. Children will cost you more than you could ever possibly reap in terms of tax, health, or employment benefits, particularly if paid childcare is required, and you don’t need parental leave when there is nothing to leave. Consider a destination birth for low-cost and high-quality childbirth.
On the other hand, the only thing better than spending 24 hours per day every day with your child is spending 16 hours. We now pay for full-time pre-school for Jr, which started at his request. He enjoys the time to play with a lot of kids, and we enjoy the adult time.
Your most important consideration is biological. Women are born with all the eggs they ever have, so 35 years of age = 35 year old eggs. Every year over 30 you age increases risks of infertility, congenital malformations and just about every pregnancy and delivery complication. Everyone thinks these days that IVF is the answer to all of these problems, but unfortunately it can’t fix old eggs!
I love your style Jeremy. You give no fu$cks which makes you a bad ass on the naysayers. This is why you were able to achieve FI. I’ve been reading other FIRE blogs and they’re all still hustling with side incomes which I respect while you’re just enjoying the good life. I’m still cracking on towards FIRE. Once I get the fiancé on board we’ll be chillin by the pool with you and Winnie. Cheers!
Mostly I just give the opinion of people I don’t know the appropriate consideration ;)
My wife and I love Kota Kinabalu! Borneo is such a culturally rich region and has a very diverse but compact geography with the mountains and sea just a few hours apart.
Any plans to climb up Mount Kinabalu? The actual climb isn’t one for the kids though so that might be difficult unless you’ve got a nanny. But the base area, Kundasang, is nice to chill out with the cool mountain air. Try Sosodikan Hill for a quick 20 min hike with the kids to catch great views of the sunrise over Mt. K.
The best dive spots in Sabah are actually in the east, around Semporna and Tawau. That’s where the famous Sipadan island is. In KK, we skipped the standard island hopping and chose a private island day trip instead, just to ensure we got the “idyllic island” experience. If we had more time, we might have given island hopping a chance as it can be a hit and miss with the crowd that sometimes appear but to be fair I had a good time around Manukan island 15 years ago when I visited.
We did a post of our trip’s highlights there last year.
https://www.sippingcoconuts.com/amazing-borneo-part-1/
(not sure if the link will show)
(also pardon the “coming soon” posts which never materialised…haha. Cos, life.)
Unfortunate to hear about your experience with Hyatt. They are by far and away my favorite brand and I find a lot of value in their lower tier hotels (as well as the upper tier Andaz and Park brands). Sounds like a great summer ahead
I thought it was unfortunate as well. I’ve spent a lot of nights in the Grand Hyatt in Taipei and the Park Hyatt in Seoul.