Our trip home from our honeymoon will surely be a bit sad… we will have spent time in Mauritus, Egypt, and the Maldives. However, we have some cool flights to get us back home so the trip home should be enjoyable as well!
- Introduction
- Flights from San Francisco to Mauritius
- Lodging in Mauritius
- Flights from Mauritius to Luxor
- Egypt Lodging
- Flights from Cairo to the Maldives
- Maldives Lodging
- Flights from the Maldives back to San Francisco
I’ll write a longer post some time about award travel to MLE in general, but let’s just say there aren’t many options. Luckily. there are flights nearly every hour to Colombo, Sri Lanka from MLE, and these flights are typically only $150 or so in each direction. There is decent award availability on Star Alliance out of CMB, but another option to consider is flying out of Bangalore. There are slightly better award options to get to Bangalore (BLR) than to CMB. Air India flies daily from MLE to BLR. We booked two paid tickets on Air India from MLE to BLR. Each ticket was $177 after taxes and fees. So that gets us to Bangalore, and we’ll try and grab some good Indian food that evening.
From Bangalore to come back to San Francisco, you can either go east or west. It’s pretty much directly on the other side of the world. Either works. Lufthansa, for example, flies non-stop to Bangalore from Frankfurt. We opted to go the other direction. Our routing is BLR-BKK-NRT-SFO.
Bangalore to Bangkok is served by a two-cabin Thai Airways flight, and we’re in Business Class for this flight. It’s an overnight flight that leaves at 1AM and lands at 6:15AM. Unfortunately, we won’t have any time to enjoy the Thai lounge (with free massage). Our next flight to Tokyo, also operated by Thai Airways, leaves at 7:35AM. I’m actually VERY excited about this flight.
- Points Type: United Mileage Plus
- Amount of Points Used: 80,000 miles x 2 = 160,000 miles
- Award Fees: $127.30
- MLE-BLR Air India Tickets: $177×2 = $354
We’re booked in First Class on this plane, and it is a 777-300ER, a plane that Thai leases from Jet Airways. This means that First Class is actually fully enclosed suites. I have never flown on anything like that before so I’m really excited to give it a shot! Once we get to Tokyo, we have a couple hours, enough time to take a shower at the United Club, and then we’re flying United Global First from Tokyo to San Francisco.
Many people have told me how silly I am for booking a United flight with an award ticket, as the experience is going to be a huge letdown compared to the other carriers. While that may be true, there weren’t any other award ticket options for coming home! Also, I’ve gotta be honest… I’m pretty excited to fly United Global First :-). I’ve flown just shy of a million miles on United Airlines, and I’ve still never been in United Global First! Also, this flight is mostly a sleeping flight. So while United’s service and food may be poor, I’ve heard the Global First seat turns into a really comfortable bed.
