Our family traveled to Maui. It was a nice, relaxing break and I got to properly snorkel and see lots of fishes in the ocean, which is something we were unable to do during our Big Island visit in 2022.
(more…)Author: yonghokim
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Johannesburg
This is the first part of recounting our trip to South Africa in March 2025. To write this up, I recorded myself narrating our trip for 2 hours (Christine chimed in at times), then transcribed it with Google Recorder and had Google Gemini AI craft a blog entry out of the transcript. (Gemini version 2.5 Pro Preview 03-25).
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New York
We did a long weekend trip to New York, sightseeing/food crawl, catching up with Christine’s cousin after 10 years.
We visited:
- New World Mall at Flushing Chinatown
- Top Thai Vintage
- Zucker’s Bagels
- Joe’s Shanghai at Manhattan Chinatown
- Central Park
- All’Antico Vinaio
- Chelsea Lounge
I booked American Airlines F using FinnAir Avios, which has a very affordable pricing of 40k one-way anywehre within the US in first. (It was even cheaper at 30k until a few weeks ago).
Originally I booked in AA Y LAX-JFK via 11k/pp FinnAir and MR Delta Y via 17k/pp Amex Travel (after BizPla 35% refund).
I had been monitoring LAX-JFK partner availability daily on Qatar Air’s app (it has the least friction to run searches regularly). I accidentally found the SNA-JFK 1:30pm two days before flight when it randomly popped up on a AA search, and booked it at 38k/pp. Then changed my mind, cancelled it, which brought it back to BA inventory. Chatted with FinnAir support after a 2 hour hold, and booked it. Unfortunately FinnAir booked the ticket as “Yong Ho / Yong Ho”, copying and pasting the wrong name. I should have caught the error while support was still on chat. I only realized later of the error, and AA couldnh’t change tghe name for me. So I cancelled it and used the remaining 80k balance (I had 160k Avios sitting after a preliminary transfer bonus in the summer) to rebook it with the correct name.
Then, one day before the return flight, found JFK-LAX inventory for 8am, at 44k and probably on BA/QR/AY as well. If the AY 80k Avios refund (from the incorrect SNA-JFK booking) had been processed by then, it would have been a perfect use of the 160k Avios. Since the refund hadn’t processed yet, I used 87k AA. Christine wasn’t feeling well, so we decided this was worth it. It helped a lot with arriving rested. Cancelled the Delta booking for a 1-year credit on Amex Travel’s system.
Cost: $550+300k points
- $10+80k FinnAir Avios SNA-JFK AA F T-2
- $10+87k AA JFK-LAX AA F T-1
- $0+112k Marriott Fairfield Inn Chelsea 2N
- $0+20k Hyatt Place Manhattan Midtown 1N
- $255 Subway, Taxi, Bus
- $225 Food
- $40 Other
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Toronto
Places: Kensington Market, Distillery District
- Kensington Market
- Leaf Doner: Antakya Doner Wrap
- Latin Taste: Pupusa
- Top Gun Burger: Poutine
- Wanda’s Pie in the Sky
- Looking back, we should have spent the time visiting St. Lawrence Market as it was only open on Saturday this weekend and it was more in tunne with Christine’s interests. It was closed for Sunday due to Canadian Thanksgiving.
- Dollarama
- PAI Thai Restaurant
- Mogouyan Hand-Pulled Noodles
- Music Garden – Goodnight Sunrise
- The Distillery District
- Kluny Boulangerie
- Soma Chocolate Maker
- Mezes Greek Restaurant
- Drive-through through Danforth, historical greek town
- Corktown
- On our return flight, Air Canada did a equipment swap from A333 v.1 to A333 v.3, kicking 24 people off PE
- LA Hamhung Restaurant
- LA Myung In Dumplings
Costs: $780+113k points
- $230+98k Flight Air Canada (12.5k LAX-YYZ Y, 36.4k YYZ-LAX PE, x2)
- $0+45k Hyatt Regency Toronto (3 nights)
- $550 Food
- $220 Bus and Taxi
- -$220-30k Air Canada refunds for seat downgrade to Economy
- Kensington Market
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Cancún, México
Our family went on their first points-fueled trip: a week-long hotel staycation at Hyatt Ziva Cancun. Originally we decided to not join this trip, as we didn’t have nearly enough UR points, and going to a tourist-exclusive hotel staycation was not high on our traveling wishlist. But after we got two Hilton Free Night Awards last year, we thought maybe a way to use the Hilton FNAs could be to combine them with a short stay at the Hyatt for an extended weekend trip that overlaps with family’s.
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