Review Hong Kong + Bali Trip Report - 275k

jredmond02

New Member

A little background on myself. I am a long time FlyerTalk lurker and travel quite a bit for business. Really got into mile/points game hard last year and normally use points to supplement cash/upgrade experiences on my normal travel and trips with the lady. So much so into mile/points game that my Amazon store is making almost as much money as my real business I have run for 10 years. After finding an insane cash price to Hong Kong on DL this trip came about.

Points Breakdown:
Delta SFO-HKG (40,000 Skymiles/$44 cash) X 2
Grand Hyatt Hong Kong (37,500 Chase UR CP Rate)
Singapore Air HKG-SIN-DPS Business (23,500 Chase UR) x2
Grand Hyatt Bali (30,000 Chase UR CP Rate)
Garuda Indonesia DPS-HKG Business (40,000 Skymiles) x2


I had to do a small position flight to SFO but that was a piece of cake. I used the Delta Pay by Miles option to comp $400 of the ticket (since you can only do $50 increments) but the round trip earned me 14,334 MQM which we both needed for a status level bump so it worked out in our situation.


The Hong Kong Grand Hyatt was amazing. It was the most impressive club lounge I have set eyes on. We won't even get started how out of place I looked in my linen shorts and t-shirts. I status matched my SPG Plat. over to Hyatt so this was a great use of a DSU. I requested a high floor and got one due to construction going on below. The phone they provide to the suite was by far the best feature of the place that we could tether and have WIFI around the city.

Singapore was not the best/easiest way to get to Bali but I have wanted to try out their product and my lady got to shop at Changi Airport so it was a win/win. We had a nice 777 flight to Singapore and loved the food service the most on the flights. Not sure I would route this again doing the trip over but it was nice to try a new airline people hype up so much. The KrisFlyer Business lounge at Changi was A+.

The Grand Hyatt Bali property is gorgeous and well maintained. It is a close drive to the airport and I liked the Nusa Dua location as it was away from most of the action. Used a DSU here and got a room that was probably 1,200 square feet that I don't even think we walked into 500 feet of it. They met us from our car service and walked us all the way to our room and checked us in there which I thought was really cool. Uber was so cheap in Bali it was ridiculous to get us around. We used a tour guide two days recommended from FlyerTalk that we loved as well. Our driver took us by the Andaz (former Hyatt Regency property) that doesn't look like anything has happened on it so that is a bummer.


I booked this Garuda Indonesia flight with no intention of flying it from DPS-HKG. I wanted to snag two Cathay Pacific seats in business but wanted a return flight home after reading about issues of getting into the country without a return flight. Cathay opened up everyday of that week but the day we needed to get home and position to Hong Kong for the return legs. Oh well, I ended up LOVING Garuda as we scored a 777 flight that was in a 1-2-1 configuration. We sat in the middle but I snagged an end seat photo. The whole business class had 5 people in it and service/food was much better than I expected.

The trip home door to door took over a day and a half so that was a bit dreadful but a really fun trip.


Lounges Used Rating (1-5):
KRISFlyer Singapore Air Changi 4.2
Skyteam Hong Kong 4.0
Garuda Indonesia Bali 3.5
KRISFlyer Singapore Hong Kong 3.5
Delta Skyclub SFO 3.1
Delta Skyclub SEA 2.9
 
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