
By no means would I suggest going this route (unless you enjoy months of anxiety), but we booked our flights to/from Asia for our honeymoon about six months before I mentioned anything to my employer about taking off to the other side of the world for a month. It is all working out in the end, however, as they’re cool with the trip and everything can continue as planned. A major weight is now lifted, and I can continue planning the trip joyfully rather than racked with guilt and anxiety.
Initially, the plan was to spend a week in Thailand, head down to Singapore for a few days, then swing through Taipei for a couple days before doing nearly three weeks in Japan with a one-day layover in Seoul, South Korea.
Earlier this fall, I started to second-guess Singapore for a couple of reasons, namely, 1) it really is flying out of the way before we head to Japan, 2) the flights were INSANELY expensive to get from Singapore-Taipei-Tokyo, and 3) I could not NOT stay at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel for $900/night if I was going to be in Singapore (I blame Crazy Rich Asians). All in all, the three days we’d spend in Singapore was going to cost us like 30% of the budget we planned for 30 days. It just didn’t seem to make sense anymore, so we started to look at alternatives – somewhere we could get to easily for a couple days in between Bangkok and Tokyo.
Staring at Google Maps, it’s fairly easy to narrow down the options for stopovers between Bangkok and Tokyo:
- Taiwan
- Philippines
- China
- Vietnam
- Cambodia
- Laos
- South Korea
We eliminated the Philippines because we want to do a longer trip there in the future to islands and beaches, Vietnam because Bill will have already gone there before I meet him in Thailand, South Korea because we will end our trip there, and Laos because the VISA is kind of expensive. Cambodia was out too because that required more than a couple days. I liked the idea of Hainan because US citizens don’t need a VISA to visit the beachy island off Mainland China, and the five-star hotels were cheap as hell. Hong Kong also was a possibility (no VISA required, and I liked the proximity to Macau as well).
I ended up running a few scenarios on Google Flights to see what would make sense and found that Emirates flies a double-decker A380 from Bangkok to Hong Kong. Since I’ve recently become an aviation geek who wants to experience things like the Emirates onboard bar & lounge, Hong Kong was officially added to our itinerary! And while it may be controversial since they’re both (legally) part of China, I am counting Hong Kong as one country and Macau as part of Mainland China (another country), so this little side trip knocks off two more countries on the 50 Before 50.
The updated itinerary: a week in Thailand, two days in Hong Kong, two and a half weeks in Japan (roughly scheduled between a handful of destinations, but staying flexible to try and hit Mount Fuji on a sunny day and the snow monkeys in Nagano on a snowy day) and two days in Seoul before heading back home via Doha, Qatar.