Big & Tall Travel

What We’ve Been Up To

Since we returned from our big Iceland cruise, we have taken a short cruise in the Caribbean on Celebrity with my mother-in-law…

And a longer cruise in the Caribbean with Silversea…which was an adventure in and of itself. However, I neglected to get any good photos of the various.

What’s Next

While we don’t have another trip planned until December 2026, it will be a big trip. Both my wife and I are taking about a month off of work to visit Asia! We’ll be celebrating four fantastic years together as well as my 40th birthday.

We’ll begin our adventure mid-December by taking a yet-to-be determined flight from the DC area to JFK. Once at JFK, we’ll check-in for our nonstop flight to Singapore. Dear Wife and I were very lucky to snag two business class seats on Singapore’s Airbus A350-900 ULR. I was able to get a bulkhead seat too, which seems fortunate; I’ve read that the footwells on the non-bulkhead seats are smallish. With my size 15 EEEE feet, I’m sure I (and my feet) will be happier with the open foot area the bulkhead affords. Dear Wife will be two seats behind me, unfortunately. Even if we’re not sitting side-by-side, I prefer to have her nearby.

Nineteen hours later, we’ll arrive at Singapore Changi Airport around 6am local time, two days after we leave New York. The total for this flight was 330k Krisflyer miles and $11.20. Thank you credit card points.

From there, we will catch a ride on Grab or taxi to our hotel. We’ll be staying at the Conrad Marina Bay for two nights.

About a month ago, I signed up for the American Express Hilton Honors Card. The signup bonus then and through 4/15/26 is 70k miles and a Free Night Award. Not bad for a no AF card. I used the Free Night Award for the standard room, a King Deluxe. Dear Wife used her $300 FHR credit from the American Express Platinum Card for the other night. I used the Hilton App to ask the hotel to connect/merge the two reservations. While they weren’t able to merge the reservations, they did say it would be easy to do when we check-in. The hotel also confirmed with me that they’d be able to hold our bags until check-in time, as we will likely arrive at the hotel quite early.

Our itinerary in Singapore is still being worked out, but there are a few things we know we want to do. We want to experience the Hawker centers, see the Merlion, and visit the botanical gardens. Plus, I’m sure Dear Wife would love to do a bit of shopping.

The Rest of Our Adventure

After our time in Singapore comes to a close, we’ll hop on…you guessed it…a Silversea cruise. This time, we’ll be on the Silver Muse on a voyage from Singapore to Hong Kong over 14 days.

Our cruise itinerary includes two nights in Ho Chi Minh City, a day at Hue/Danang, a day and a half at Ha Long Bay, and then nearly three whole days – including New Years Eve – in Hong Kong. And plenty of sea days.

We booked a guarantee rate room for this cruise and apparently at the right time too; the rate we paid for two people is about 3/4 of the rate for one person now!

At the end of our cruise, we’ll fly from Hong Kong to Shanghai and make our way to Suzhou, China. There we will visit with Dear Wife’s family and I will meet my father-in-law for the first time. What a terrific birthday present!

After a week or so in China, Dear Wife and I hop from Shanghai to Tokyo for our long haul flights. Yes, flights. We found that we couldn’t get award tickets together so we decided that we would fly separately. Dear Wife will fly first from Tokyo Haneda on United to Chicago and then back to DC. I will fly a little later the same day from Tokyo Haneda to Vienna, Austria on ANA then on Austria Airlines to the DC area. She will get home almost a full day before me.

As the plan comes more into focus, I’ll update along the way.