Heading Home for Chinese New Year: Introduction

• Introduction
• Hilton Bentley Miami South Beach
• Miami to Zurich - Swiss First Class
• Swiss First Class Lounge
• Zurich to Bangkok - Thai First Class
• Sofitel So Bangkok
• The Private Room and SQ First Class Lounge
• Singapore to San Francisco - Singapore Suites
• Singapore to San Francisco - Business Class

__________________________________________________________________________________

I know it's been a couple of weeks since Chinese New Year has been over and this trip report is long overdue. It just have been one of those few crazy weeks at work.

You know we couldn't just take the easy way home and fly coach on United or Singapore airlines. Swiss first class has to be one of the hardest redemption to obtain but there was a time when there widely available due to a glitch on Lifemiles. Too bad it's gone now but I managed to get snag 2 seats in Swiss first class from Miami before connecting to Thai first class to Bangkok before the glitch was shutdown.

Since we've never been to Miami before, we decided to spend a night and I used up one of my free night certs from the Citi Reserve Hilton credit card at the Hilton Bentley Miami South Beach. We also definitely had to at least stay a night in Bangkok for some massages and Thai food before flying back to Penang. We opted this time to try out the Sofitel So Bangkok.

For the trip back to the US, we would be flying on Singapore Airlines. I'd redeemed a first class award through Krisflyer on their SIN-HKG-SFO flight when it was still operated by their 777-300ER aircraft in anticipation of the switch to a Airbus A380 and allowing me to try out the oh so elusive Suites class. There was only one seat available so Lydia had to "slum" it in business class.