Circle around Asia via Singapore, Japan and Palau.

[henrus]

I bring the latest of my crazy adventures, Singapore, Japan and Palau all in 11 days.

Planning for this started back in August last year. Qantas was devaluing reward seats on 5 Aug and it started as a search for reward seats leaving Australia to somewhere in Asia for the Easter break. I could take leave 3-12 April and despite having QF Platinum I wasn’t able to request reward seats on what I had in mind out of Brisbane. My two other criteria was all daytime flights and ideally extra legroom seats if in Economy.

I’d left the searches to the last minute but with just hours to the devaluing I found a BA economy reward seat from Sydney to Singapore which paired nicely with a QF BNE-SYD reward seat. Now I’ve been to Singapore plenty of times and whilst a lovely place to visit I wanted to go somewhere different and had ideas on either Laos, somewhere new in China or more of Malaysia and Thailand. The pacific was also in mind but again a lack of reward seats and me not wanting to pay sky high prices for a flight out on Good Friday, Singapore it was to start with.

I also had Palau in mind but the Easter Saturday BNE-ROR wasn’t cheap however the return Sunday 12 April came in at ~AU$400 so I snagged that with the plan of somehow getting from Singapore to Palau.

To Palau it was either going to be United or China Airlines. United flies a large number of routes around the Pacific including 3 destinations into Palau so I figured I’d start with those routes but fares were sky high north of $1k for a 3-4 hour flight and after lots of searching I found a reward seat via KrisFlyer for NRT to ROR. Finally Singapore to Japan was the last ticket booked and amazingly Cathay came in cheapest at ~$500 one way on 2x daytime flights with a nice 4 hour connection in Hong Kong.

All in Economy for about $1300 plus some 38,200 QF points and 13,500 SQ miles (transferred from VA), the final route booked was BNE-SYD-SIN-HKG-HND/NRT-ROR-BNE.

 

[henrus]

Now the first criteria of all day time flights had been met attention turned to seating. On BNE-SYD I’d booked row 6 (which at the time was just a regular economy seat), British Airways and Cathay provide Oneworld Emerald with free exit row seats, on United I paid US$50 (AU$76) for the exit row and finally for ROR-BNE I’d selected seat 5A once again a normal seat, row 4 was available for US$100 but I figured I’d just wait and see closer to departure.

Fast forward a couple of months and in early November 2025 Qantas introduced Economy Plus seating so my row 5 seat became extra legroom plus I was able to change BNE-SYD also to row 5.

Finally about a month before departure family was heading to Sydney and I managed to get two reward seats via a request, BNE-SYD on the same flight. The helpful Fiji based agent did the booking and also linked my booking to their seating us all in row 5 economy plus with their booking also getting my group 1.

Next up with 10 nights away, hotels became the next search 2 nights in Singapore, 3x nights in Japan and 4x nights in Palau.

In Singapore I had one remaining stay plus from Accor which under the old system (effectively purchased for $214) meaning one free night of which the Swissôtel was available however they wanted over $600 for the second night so ended up booking that for one night and then trying the Mercure on Stevens for the next (a new one for me). Tokyo was more expensive than normal and I couldn’t figure out why until someone pointed out it’s cherry blossom season so I initially had plans to spend one night in Tokyo then into the mountains. Finally Palau I’d initially booked the Ocean Star Hotel for about AU$200 per night.

Over the coming months I made a couple of small changes first up was scrapping the Ocean Star and booking at the Palau Royal Resort in which direct was AU$350 per night.

The second change was about 2 months before travelling I randomly looked at Suntory Yamazaki to see if I could get a tasting time slot and much to my surprise I was able to secure one the morning after my arrival in Tokyo, plans then changed and I booked a JAL flight down from Haneda to Osaka which now meant a night near Haneda, then I booked with my Qantas hotels $50 voucher from Qantas points club a hotel in Kyoto followed by a night in Tokyo.

Despite initially getting a confirmation screen and code just minutes after booking the Kyoto hotel I got an email from Qantas hotels saying the booking was now pending and with me stupidly booking late at night when all support was closed it was a wait until tomorrow situation. Without me asking the next morning I got an email saying they were looking into it and they’d get back to me in 24 hours, well 24 hours passed then did 48 and finally I got impatient only to call and be told they’re still working on it (at this time the hotel was still available for booking on QF hotels website) it then was almost a week until I was told it was full and they couldn’t honour the booking.

I landed a refund as a credit of my voucher plus extra payment so had $70ish to spend plus a brand next extra $50 voucher to apologise for the stuff up. Annoyingly you can only use one voucher at a time so I ended up using one in Osaka instas then rebooking the Tokyo option using the other.

Anyway enough of the pre ramble, now onto the trip…