United BusinessFirst Back Home

Flight #65 – United 91 
Tel Aviv (TLV) – Newark (EWR)
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Depart: 11:10PM / Arrive: 4:20AM (+1 Day)
Duration: 12hr 10min 
Aircraft: Boeing 777
Seat: 5A and 5B (BusinessFirst)
Earned: 0 miles (5,692 miles flown)
Cost: 100,000 miles + $44 taxes / person
Redemption Value: 2.8 cents / mile 
Lifetime Miles: 129,919 miles

After a great week with my extended family in Israel, we're back home and ready to get back to reality. My father's got his meetings and conference calls. My mother's starting some part time work this week. And I'm starting daycare/pre-school (3 days a week) tomorrow.

For the past 22+ months, I've been with my parents almost 24/7 with the occasional date night breaking my consecutive hour streak from time to time. Candidly, I could probably use a break from them, so I'm sort of looking forward to making some toddler friends at "school."

But at the same time, it does take me some time to warm up to new people (a trait I inherited from my mother), so I'm sure the first few days will be more emotionally demanding than I'm expecting. But don't worry, I'm not going to one of those crazy intense uber elite Manhattan pre-schools that you may have heard about. As my 30-something father says, "we're keeping it real" (as if people still use that expression) and going for an educationally oriented day care just a few blocks away from our apartment.

I suppose, insecure white some people say my academic trajectory could be severely derailed forever based on the course I set out when I'm 2 years old. But as my father likes to remind me, I'm half Asian so I'm gonna be pretty damn smart no matter what school I go to. And if I'm lucky enough to get my mother's looks (and height), then I'm hopefully not going to have to scramble for a last minute Senior Prom date like my father did back in the late 1990's.

As for our family travels, we're planning on staying local for the next few weeks (and by few, I mean 3). After all, Columbus Day is just around the corner...

I'm Famous!!!

Well, maybe not famous, but like my father before me (who had his photo in the New York Times a few years ago), I made my own appearance on a very popular travel / miles & points blog called Mommy Points this past weekend.

I checked it out this past Saturday while we were driving up to McCall, Idaho, and my family got some nice comments (OK 1 nice comment) from the readers.

If you haven't seen it yet, you can click here or just scroll down and read it below.

From Mommy Points (post dated May 11, 2013)

First, can you tell me a little bit about your family?

My parents and I live in Manhattan and are pretty frequent travelers. In fact, my Korean-American father actually met my Uzbekistan/Russian mother in Israel while he was on a 14 month around-the-world travel adventure after quitting his Wall Street job at a hedge fund back in 2008. I realized early on that being a part of this family means loving travel.

If you’re good at dates and math, you’ll realize that I’m pretty young. I’m about to turn 18 months old. I was born in November 2011 and had my own passport 19 days after I was born. My first flight wasn't until February 2012 when I was about 3 months old, but flown almost 100,000 miles so far before my 18 month mark.

Earlier this year, my parents encouraged me to start blogging our travel at Lap Child Diaries so that I’d have something to look back on when I’m older (since I’m likely not to remember most of what happens before my 4th birthday). But what started out as a travel diary for me has evolved into something that helps my parents’ friends keep tabs on where we are and how we were able to pay for it. It’s not really a “points/miles” news blog as much as it is a travel journal, but I try to address requests and questions we get about the frequent flyer points/miles.


How have your traveling patterns changed (or not changed) since you have had kids?

Well, I’ll have to speak for my parents on this one since I wasn't around for the “Before” part. I’d say they've had to make some adjustments, but they've refused to turn me into an excuse for not going somewhere. My father works in finance and my mother stays home with me, so we are pretty flexible with our four weeks of vacation a year. One week is spent in Israel visiting my grandparents, two of the weeks are spent somewhere in the US/North America, and one week is spent in a distant international destination such as Argentina or Japan.

After I was born, they kept to this strategy, taking me on every trip, even the 10-15 hour flights. The biggest change is having to check luggage, bring a car seat, and what we plan to do when we’re at our destination. Having me around doesn't let them enjoy the nightlife, fine dining, or adventure excursions, but my parents are very happy just enjoying spending time with me wherever we go.


Where all have you traveled with your children, and what have been some memorable experiences on some of those trips (both good and bad)?

Well, this might be a short list for some people, but I've tagged along with my parents to Chicago (3x), Miami, Block Island, Houston, Phoenix, San Francisco, Corpus Christi. Internationally,we've been to Israel (2x), Bermuda, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Turkey, Thailand, Argentina, Chile, and Canada.

My personal favorite was Miami where I went swimming for the first time, and also Thailand where we spent five weeks visiting Chiang Mai, Chaing Rai, Bangkok, Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Krabi. And my all time favorite moment was going to Tiger Kingdom in Chiang Mai where I was able to play with a real baby tiger.


What are some tips for traveling with kids that you have learned along the way?

My parents used to get bulkhead seats when flying to give us some extra space and bassinets, but found that it’s easier to keep me under control when I don’t have so much space.  Now we sit one to two rows behind the bulkhead. Also, we prefer sitting closer to the lavatories because, well, you know…

Another new trick is to fly overnight on longer flights (5+ hours) so that I’ll be more likely to sleep. Of course, it does run the risk of me not sleeping and frustrating everyone around us while they’re trying to get rest, but I’ve been able to keep it together for most of the time.

And finally, the thing my parents always bring with them on flights is a few cheap plastic bags – the kind you get from the drugstore. Apparently, lap children like me create a lot of trash between all the plastic wrappers, dirty wipes and snacks, there’s no way a flight attendant could keep up. So we just keep a plastic bag with us to keep all our garbage until the flight attendant comes by.

As for hotels, we’ve found that the nicer luxury hotels such as St Regis Bangkok, Park Hyatt Buenos Aires, and Conrad Koh Samui ones are generally VERY family friendly. The next tier down with hotels such as W Hotels, Westin, Hyatt Regency isn’t quite as family focused in our experience because they seem to cater more to the business travelers, though there are many that do have amenities for children.


How do points and miles figure into your family travels?

We’re very fortunate in that we can travel more often than most. Points and miles allow us to make those trips better. For example, last year, we were going to fly to South Korea so that I could meet my two great-grandmothers living in Seoul. Instead of flying economy on United, we used our MileagePlus miles to fly round trip business class on United and Asiana. From reading the blogs about free stopovers, we added a few days in Tokyo on the outbound so we got to enjoy two cities on one premium class trip. Since I flew as a lap child, we only needed two award seats. We were planning on staying at the Westin Tokyo anyway, but it was a perfect time to use our Capital One Venture Rewards card that came with 100,000 points at sign up. That was enough to cover three nights at the Westin Tokyo.

Another example is when we were in Koh Phangan, Thailand this past February when Hilton decided to devalue their program. My father had 240,000 Hilton HHonors points (from opening Hilton Amex and both Hawaiian Airline credit cards), so we used the GLON Award for 6 nights at the Conrad Koh Samui for 225,000 points. After the devaluation, a night at the Conrad Koh Samui costs 80-95k points for just one night! Since my father learned how to get instant Hilton Gold status, we were enjoying free breakfasts every morning!

Sometimes, the points/miles/status thing isn’t necessarily intentional. We decided to go to Mendoza, Argentina to visit the wine country. Obviously, I’m too young to drink, but my parents thought it would be a nice change of pace from Buenos Aires. So we paid cash for four nights at the Park Hyatt Mendoza and used 6,000 Hyatt points to upgrade to a regular suite. But since my father was a Diamond, they upgraded us again to the amazing Presidential Suite. It was amazing!


What future trips are on your horizon?

Well, my parents and I are going to Berchtesgaden (Germany) and Paris at the end of May for about ten days. I’ve never heard of Berchtesgaden, but my father reads onemileatatime.com and Lucky mentions how much he loved the Intercontinental, so we decided to go there. He signed up for the Chase Priority Club Visa to get the 80,000 Priority Club Point sign up offer to almost cover three nights at the Intercontinental.

Then for Paris, we couldn't read all the blogs talking about how amazing the Park Hyatt Paris Vendome is and not go, so we’ll be there for six nights. We got two of those nights in a suite after signing up for the Chase Hyatt Visa and status-matching challenge to Hyatt Diamond.

What would you say to other families that are nervous about the logistics of hitting the sky (or road) with the little ones?

I realize that not all babies are the same, but you can’t let your children become excuses. The first few times might be painful for everyone, but very few things in life are so simple and easy. Know what the process will be like (getting to/from airports, getting through security/customs, etc) and pack very light. We babies are remarkably resilient and don’t need as much “stuff” as some American parents probably think. You can probably get most things you’ll need when you’re there. Remember, no matter where you’re going in the world, they probably have babies there too!

Happy Mother's Day!

It's been a wild and crazy 18 months for me, but I've loved every minute of it because I was with you. I love you, Mommy!

Aug 2008 - How I Met Your Mother

My parents first met in 2008 while they were both traveling - not too dissimilar to many of my American readers who were lovechilds of College Spring Breaks gone awry but born too early to reap the publicity and stardom that accompanies being on MTV's Teen Mom.

Around 5 years ago, my father had been working on Wall Street after graduating college and saved up some sheckels by living in a modest studio apartment, shopping at Old Navy, eating Chef BoyRDee spaghetti for dinner and only taking girls out on 1st dates (before things got serious/expensive). He tells me he didn't love his firm and quit suddenly one day (same day his 2007 bonus check cleared interestingly enough) to "walk the earth," but I know the truth. He was inspired to find the woman who would one day become his baby momma.  That and his company's IT guy got a hold of his Google searches at work and the list wasn't pretty.

My mother was also traveling (sort of).  She was on a group tour with her school classmates going from one end of Israel down to the other.  She tells me that originally she didn't want to go on the trip, but thankfully for me, she did.  As you can see from the photo, my mother is stunningly beautiful.  Even though my father doesn't know much about football, he still tells people that he "clearly outkicked his coverage on this one."  (I'm not sure I understand what it means, but it sounds like something a douchebag would say).  But nevertheless, my mother is undoubtedly out of my father's league but for some exceptionally odd reason, she was born with some horrible disease called "yellow fever" which clearly proved to my father that there must be a God.

While my father was planning his world adventure, he randomly decided to go to Israel despite being neither Jewish nor fond of aggressive Middle-Eastern taxi drivers.  Nevertheless, he had always wanted to visit the Dead Sea and have that generic photo of him floating with his feet out of the water (so lame), thus he stopped at a nearby hostel near Masada.

For those of you bad at math (ie, non-Asians), I wasn't conceived yet in 2008, so I can't tell you the exact details, but here's my father's account of the story.

August 12, 2008 (Masada, Israel) - Many of you I've spoken with over the past few months have expressed a common desire to venture off into the nether regions of the world; some even told me they were thinking about doing it solo (we're still talking about traveling here).

However, these tepid individuals (just like myself before I first attempted doing so) also conveyed an uncertainty if they were the type of person who could strike out on their own for extended periods of time and be outgoing enough to actually meet new people along the way sans a Wingman.

When I tell them anyone can do it, they look at me like I just took some crazy pills. Because of my apparent (and self-imposed) reputation of being Socially Aggressive, many of my friends feel like only someone outgoing like me could pull off this kind of solo adventure. They'd be wrong.

I fully believe, like many things in life, being extroverted isn't something you're inherently born with, but rather, in many situations is completely an active choice that you decide to make or not. And honestly, you can fake it when you're not really feeling the moment. Case and point: yesterday when I arrived at the Masada Youth Hostel at the southern base of the ancient mountain fortress.

Because I didn't realize the last Jerusalem bus to Masada left at 1PM, I had to arrive much earlier than I anticipated to the hostel and consequently, my room wasn't yet available and I was sent off to the pool while I waited.

Now, as I approached, I heard the yelling and screaming, so I knew there were going to be young teenagers poolside. Just great. Given my stressful morning journey fighting with locals to get on an overly crowded bus, I wanted nothing to do with their nonsense. I found my quiet corner in the shade to hide from the 95 degree desert heat and hopped in the chlorinated water at the shallow end of the pool along with the Israeli version of the AARP who looked like they were about to go watch Murder She Wrote at 3PM before having dinner at 4.

As many of you know, one of my biggest fears is the Elderly. So after about 30 seconds of being way too close to anyone who may have lived in the 1930's, I contemplated making my way to the deep end and possibly mixing it up with some kids who were probably born in the 1990's.

It was at this precise moment, when I was literally in the geometric center of the pool, that I had to decide which direction to go both physically and figuratively.

I could either (A) stick it out in the shallow end with the Day of the Living Dead and keep to myself or (B) head over to the deep end where they were blasting Flo Rida and Israeli dance music from their mobile phones and try to make some new friends. And I had to decide quick because I'm not a great swimmer and my feet couldn't reach the bottom. 

 I distinctly remember telling myself, "Songer, let's go do what you do best" and swam up to make friends with the teenagers. Unsure of how to approach this particular situation, I threw down my "I'm an American from New York City" card pretty early on.

All of a sudden, as if the music stopped, all the teens turned around and I was the new star of the pool. They started all swarming around me like I was a teen celebrity. So this is what it must be like to be R Kelly.

They were all pre-Army age (which I think means under 18 years old) from Haifa (up North) and on some sort of a Israeli Teen Tour headed to Eilat the next day. Coincidentally, I too was going to Eilat the next day. And to answer the obvious question, yes some of the girls were jail bait-quality. Then, Ellie (the angry looking 250 lb Tour Leader/Chaperone) came walking down the pathway towards the pool. I wasn't a social scientist, but I was pretty sure that he wouldn't approve of a 29 year old adult male fraternizing with 15-17 year olds. Looked like the party was over before it started. 

But before he got there, I pulled out my waterproof digital camera and started taking photos of everyone while in the pool and even dunked it underwater a few times. The Israeli teens stood there stunned like I had just turned water into wine. 

So by the time Ellie got into the water, there was already a powerful buzz going around about the American with the magic camera. The large portly man swam up, looked me up and down and approached to speak to me in very broken English. Frightened of being yelled at for being too old to hang out with these kids, I looked attentively at the man....And the tension was finally broken as he smiled and said, "Can you make photo of me under water?" 

Suddenly, I was back to Hannah Montana rockstar status in the group. I continued to be their paparazzi and took an assortment of pool pictures for them and fielded their hundreds of questions about Manhattan, the 9/11 tragedy, Obama (who they disliked, by the way, out of fears of him being pro-Muslim), NBA basketball, Justin Timberlake and American movies. Ellie liked the waterproof camera shots so much, he made me take about 10 of him underwater. 

But this foreigner connection paid dividends. He invited me to join them all for dinner (I would have had to pay for it otherwise) and also offered to take me to Eilat with them on their Teen Tour Bus the following day. Nice, free ride! Oh, but there was one more thing...

Maybe it was because I started looking decent in a bathing suit again, or the fact that I was an exotic Asian-American in Israel, but there was this one girl who seemed to have developed a crush on me - she actually told me she really liked my slanty eyes. I mean, seriously, I couldn't even make this stuff up.

Of course, just my luck, she was about 5'6", Uzbekistanian, a former model, fluent in 3 languages and had a body that would definitely inspire searches for "Israel age of consent" on Google.

So for those of you who scored well on the Reading Comprehension sections of standardized exams, the message is that I definitely made a conscious decision here and it paid off.

I always have doubts about approaching strangers and putting myself in situations outside my comfort zone. But in this case, I actively chose to be outgoing against my general inclination to stay in the shallow end. But because of putting myself out there, I got a free dinner, a free bus ride to Eilat, and met a beautiful girl. As Virgil said, "Fortune Favors the Brave."

So that's apparently how my mother and father met that fateful summer day and 3 years later in 2011, I was born.  Given their relationship started while on the road, they feel that Travel is something meaningful for their lives and consequently have decided to force it down my throat from birth.  Given I have neither the life experience or verbal communication skills to argue otherwise, I have reluctantly gone along with their madness as their Lap Child Infant.

Let's just hope my father stays this cool and open-minded when I turn 18 and want to meet older international guys.