198. Singapore, Hong Kong & China: Megan's 17-Day Family Trip on Points

Points Talk®: Your Travel Dreams, Made Possible by Points

Megan shares her family's 17-day international adventure across Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing, made possible through strategic

Key takeaways

• Using credit card points and miles can make complex international family trips affordable and feasible.
• Premium Economy flights on Singapore Airlines provided excellent value for families with long layovers and comfort.

Main topics

• Using points and miles for international family travel
• Disney parks and castle collection completion

Notable quotes

"It just kind of ballooned out of control a little bit." – Megan on the unexpected expansion of her family trip.

Conclusion

Megan's journey exemplifies how strategic use of points and miles can turn ambitious family

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Megan's back today to share about her 17-day trip to Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing. Her family has now visited all six Disney castles around the world, and they also sailed on the Disney Adventure out of Singapore. Listen in to hear how they used points and miles to save. Speaker 2 (0:18) Welcome to Points Talk. We are Speaker 3 (0:20) three moms who've discovered how to leverage credit card welcome offers to get hundreds of thousands of dollars of travel expenses for nearly free. We've used credit card points and miles to take vacations to places like Hawaii, Paris, Greece, Maldives, Japan, and so much more. And the best part, we each still have 800 plus credit scores. Imagine being able to take the vacation of your dreams for nearly free. It's totally possible and we're here to show you how. Speaker 1 (0:50) Hey, I'm Alex. And I'm Pam, Alex's mom. And I'm Jess. Let's talk points. All right. So today we have some good news and we have some sad news. The good news is that Megan is back on the podcast to talk all about her family of fives trip to China. They went to Hong Kong and Shanghai so that they could visit all, is it six Disney castles that there are currently? For now. Speaker 4 (1:14) Yeah. Speaker 1 (1:15) So they marked off. The last two Disney castles that they had, they also went on the Disney Adventure Cruise out of Singapore. Cannot wait to hear about that. The sad news is that Megan's last day with us was on August 31st. She has been instrumental to our team for the last three years, and we are so sad to see her go. But she has been working on her own brand behind the scenes, and she's going to tell us a little bit more about that before we get started with her trip to China and Singapore. Speaker 4 (1:46) So over the last like year and a half, well, actually we had this idea for like a very long time. I think I told you guys about this like last March, like 2025. So it's been a while. So I have been working on growing my own brand, Travel Keeper. I offer trip planning services like as a travel agent and travel consults. Like if you just want to get on an hour call and talk through your trip or you're DIYing Speaker 3 (2:09) a lot of it, but you just Speaker 4 (2:09) want to talk through it, that's an option. But the big thing I've been really working on is a family trip planning app. And I recognize that there were all these like apps where you could like put all your stuff in. And I've been using the same Google Docs since like 2013. So and but none of them really were geared towards families and none of them were geared towards the way that we travel, where it's like we're paying cash for some things. We're using credit card points for some things. We're using free night certificates, like all that stuff. This I've created one of the only if I mean, I think it's the only one that allows you to track your costs and keep track of your itineraries and points, free night certificates, your credit card credits. And then it calculates your cash, like what you want to pay and like your savings that you have with your points. So if you're keeping a spreadsheet doing all that, this does it like everything for you. I'm on place so you can do all the basic functions for free. There's also a pro tier that allows a couple. fancier features like sharing with collaborators or like working between your computer and your phone to be able to take it on your trip. And that's $39 a year. And that's like the newest part of this. But the best part is all of this is just me. My husband like everything because he works inside or has worked in cybersecurity. So he makes sure that like everything is like secure and safe. And I don't track anything. I don't want to make money off of people's content or their information. So everything is encrypted end to end. So if you ever use like the Signal app, it's kind of like that. So everything is scrambled on your device. It's yours. You only keep the key. I can't see anything. And any feedback, I like everything. Every update I've made has come from your feedback. So anybody that's using it, my DMs are open. My email is open. And it's like it's constantly getting better. Yeah, Speaker 1 (3:58) I noticed that when you share. When you share about it, you're like, oh, this person sent me this DM. So I made this change. And the thing that's nice is like, because it's just you and your husband, you can just, you can roll these things out quickly. You know, it's not like it has to go through a chain of like, okay, let's do this. Let's approve it. Like, no, it's just like, if it sounds good to you, you just do it. So I love that. Speaker 2 (4:18) Yeah. And you can just download it for free. I love how it has so many features, Megan. I have not. signed up for it yet because in my mind I'm thinking, you know how I do guys. I always say, well, I don't have a family, Speaker 3 (4:31) even though I'm traveling with family all the time. Speaker 2 (4:35) But I can tell that this is something that I want in my life. I'm going to be downloading it. And, you know, I love that it keeps track of your costs and what you're paying cash. I always wonder, what did I really pay for that? you know, because in cash, because I don't know. So yeah, so I think it just Speaker 1 (4:54) sounds amazing. I was gonna say Pam is the one out of all of us who has shown up at the hotel on the wrong day. And so this could be a really good addition. This could be a really good addition to your app stack, Pam. Speaker 2 (5:07) It Speaker 1 (5:07) could, it could, Speaker 2 (5:08) it could. Speaker 4 (5:09) Yeah, so you can put every detail of your itinerary in there. You can add little notes and you can just download it for free. And the free version really does a lot. And I kind of want to keep it that way because. Honestly, I don't want to make money off of something you don't need. So all the features that are paid actually cost money to run. So I'm trying to keep it that separate. So anything that doesn't cost me anything stays on the free version. Anything that does cost me money is on the pro version. And you can find them on the App Store under GoTravelKeeper. And on Google Play, I actually got the name TravelKeeper. So I updated that one recently. Or you can just check out my website on GoTravelKeeper.com and find all the links. Everything I just talked about there. We Speaker 1 (5:49) will link all of that in the show notes so that you do not have to try and find it on your own. Speaker 2 (5:55) Yes. Thanks, guys. Well, I even think you're pro tier. I mean, $39 a year, that's nothing. You know, I'm sure it pays for itself over and over again. So I am actually can't wait to, you know, get off this call, load it and start using it. Because yeah, as Jess said, I sometimes do get myself in a bind. Speaker 4 (6:18) And tell me if anything can be better, please. Because that's really the only way it gets to become a way that everybody wants to use it. And like, I am just so open to feedback. I'm not going to be offended if Speaker 1 (6:28) you don't like Speaker 4 (6:29) something or it Speaker 1 (6:30) could be better. Sounds great. All right. Well, Megan, tell us. So let's get into the trip now. By the way, none of this is Megan is not paying us anything to say anything about Travel Keeper. We're just she was so great to us. So we figured it's the least we can do. But let's get into. How this trip came about, I think I know the reason for the Disney castles. And then maybe you just decided to like throw the Disney adventure out of Singapore in there since you were going to be on that side of the world anyways. Yeah. Speaker 4 (7:00) And that's just how my trips always kind of go. They like start out like, oh, we're going to go for a week. And then this turned into like a 17 day trip plus like an extra day in New York City. So it was just it just kind of ballooned out of control a little bit. But when my kids turn 10, they get to pick the trip destination for our family. And my twins turn 10 next week. So this is, what, the end of August. And so they picked, they wanted to go to Disney. And I was like, guys, we go to Disney, like, a lot in the Speaker 3 (7:28) last couple of years. You're like, you can choose anywhere you want to go. And you're choosing Disney, which we love Disney. But, like, anywhere you want to go for your birthday trip. Speaker 4 (7:38) Yeah, like for Rose, we did the Harry Potter. You're like, you don't need to convince me to Speaker 3 (7:40) take you to Disney. I'm already going to be taking you. Let's choose something else. Speaker 4 (7:44) Yeah, I was like, let's think a little bit bigger because we can do that. It's a direct flight from Rochester. Like it's not a big deal to go to Orlando. So we compromised and I kind of like negotiated with them to go to the Asia Disney parks. So the girls had been to four of the parks. They hadn't been to Hong Kong or Shanghai. And Tim and I hadn't been to Shanghai yet. So those were like our goal of like, OK, well, we'll all go to Hong Kong and get our the girls will get their fifth park and then we'll all get our sixth park together at Shanghai. So it just Speaker 3 (8:12) really worked out to do it that way. Speaker 4 (8:13) So, of course, over this trip, we positioned in New York City. We went to Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. And really how it came about was that I got those direct flights from New York City to Singapore. And I'll get into more like the points that we use and everything in a minute. But so I got those flights and I was like, well, if we're going to be in Singapore, let's just get over the jet lag while we're there. So we spent two days in Singapore. And then I was like, well, the Disney Adventure Cruise just started sailing in March. So let's move back for the end of July because that'll be an easy way to just not have any pressure of like waking up early or staying up late or like trying to fit in all the sightseeing. Speaker 3 (8:53) That's a classic Megan thing right there. Well, we're already going to be here. We might as well add this. Speaker 1 (8:59) This is Tim's favorite thing to hear, right? When you're like, well, we're already going to be there. Speaker 4 (9:05) And as usual, it's kind of like, I have to get it all planned out before I even tell Tim about it because he just gets overwhelmed with all my constant changes. And I'm like, oh, we're going to do this with this. And he's like, wait, didn't you just tell me we're going to do something different? I'm like, yes, but this is the Speaker 3 (9:19) final plan. Speaker 4 (9:19) You're like, it's already all Speaker 3 (9:19) taken care of. You don't have to do anything. Just show up. Speaker 4 (9:24) Yeah. And we used a ton of points. So I kind of... I think Pam wrote a blog post like in 2024 about like where we would go if we had 100,000 points. And I was like, I want to go to Shanghai Disney. I need to check off my last Disney park. Like that is on my list of goals. And so I've been saving points like specifically with this trip in mind. And we used a ton of points, like close to like 1.6 million points for the five of us. And that still didn't cover everything. Speaker 4 (9:53) It covered a lot. It cut off probably almost $20,000 worth of the cost of the overall trip. But obviously, like we couldn't pay points for the cruise and we didn't pay points for a couple of the hotels. We got the family right. But I think the most important part that I kind of want to cover is that we went to China without a visa. And I think a lot of people are really curious on how we did this. So I want to make sure I kind of explain it. And then I'm going to include the actual link in the show notes so you can see like the government official website and make your own decisions on it. So right now, China has a 240 hour visa free transit policy. And so that is like 10 days. So it starts midnight the day you arrive, plus 10 days. So you basically get your arrival day and 10 days in China without having to go through the lengthy like. Visa process. Last time I went to China, Tim and I went 2014. That was actually our first trip on points. And it was like 300 some dollars. We had to like send our passports to get the visa. And it was kind of this whole ordeal. And I was like, I'm not paying all that just for a couple of days just to go to Disney. Yeah. Speaker 3 (11:04) So Speaker 4 (11:04) this really worked out to be like a good loophole. And the key is that the place you arrive from and the place you continue on to after China cannot be the same. So you can't go from like the United States to China back to the United States. So like what we did is we went from Singapore to Hong Kong. And for this policy, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan count as third regions. So those count as separate like regions slash countries in this policy. So we went from Hong Kong to Shanghai and then we took the high speed train from Shanghai to Beijing. So you can move within China once you are in the country. And then we exited from Beijing to. Singapore. So Hong Kong and Singapore were the two different like first and third countries. And it really wasn't complicated. Speaker 3 (11:49) I was really nervous. Like we're Speaker 4 (11:52) like Speaker 1 (11:52) on the plane from Hong Kong. So Speaker 4 (11:54) I printed all of our confirmation. So I wanted to have all of our flights there and then all of our flights back to Singapore showing that we were going to two different places. So I had them like all stacked together, all printed in a folder. They checked them in Hong Kong before we boarded the flight. Like they called us up to the desk. And the guy like took pictures of everything, entered it all into the computer. And then we're boarding the plane. I looked at Tim. I was like, what if they tell us we can't come in? Like I was starting to get like real sweaty and nervous about it. Speaker 4 (12:23) But we landed in Shanghai. We went through immigration. It took maybe 20 minutes. I went first. So like I she was like, where's your visa? And she was kind of annoyed with me because there were counters that specifically said 240 visa free. And the guy sent us to one that didn't say that. So I think I like made this lady like do extra paperwork and she was not happy. But Speaker 3 (12:43) you're Speaker 4 (12:43) like, hey, Speaker 3 (12:43) I didn't get in this line. They sent me here. Speaker 4 (12:46) Yeah, like I was like, we're just going where we're told because I don't want to like cause any scenes or anything. Like I'm following the rules. So she kind of was a little annoyed. And she's like, where's your visa? And I was like, we're going to use the 240 visa free policy. And she kind of rolled her eyes. But then she looked at my paperwork. It took her a couple minutes. And then she gave me my like, she's like, Oh, Speaker 3 (13:04) this girl's prepared. She knows what she's doing. I don't need to be upset. She's she's crossed her t's and dotted her i's we're good yeah Speaker 4 (13:12) exactly and there was just like a little sticker in our passport and then she sent me through and this was the first time this also happened with us where we weren't allowed to go up as a family they made us each go individually so the girls had to go by themselves and i don't know if there's an age cut off for that or if that was just what it was i don't know yeah i Speaker 3 (13:31) know i can't imagine being like here three-year-old walk up by yourself and they're like what is happening Speaker 4 (13:38) And so, like, I went first. And then she, like, told me I had to go stand behind the yellow line, like, behind her desk. And so I just stood there. And then Tim sent the three girls individually. And then he went last. So we kind of, like, sandwiched them in between. Nobody got stuck behind the line. And that was it. And then they just, like, sent us straight through. And it was no problems. And even leaving, usually sometimes they make you scan, like, your bags going through the custom section, like, to make sure you don't have anything illegal in your bags. We just had our backpacks and the guys just waved us through. They didn't even make us scan our backpacks. So like entering was no big deal at all. All that stressing was worth nothing. So it all worked out. Everything was easy. But I definitely check the policy before you use it. It can update. It can change. I think originally when it started, it was only a couple of days and now it's up to 10 days. There's 53 countries included. So the U.S. is on there and there's a couple other like the U.K. and Australia. But always, I would definitely check the official government link before you try to do this. Speaker 1 (14:37) Yeah, that would be bad. All right. So how did you get to China or to Singapore, I guess, to begin with? So Speaker 4 (14:46) we positioned to. from Rochester, New York to Newark. United just has the best options for us. And we paid 11,000 miles and $5.60 with the United card member discount and flew to Newark. And Tim's company actually has an office out of New York City. So we flew in on Wednesday night and stayed in the city. And then he went to work on Thursday while the girls and I did some sightseeing. And I booked the VoCo Times Square Broadway, which is an IHG hotel. And so I booked one room with our Chase Sapphire Reserve that select hotels credit for the $250. And so you have to use it as a two night minimum. So I booked that room for two nights. But the other room I only booked for one night on IHG points because our flight was Thursday evening. So we didn't need to sleep there a second night. So on Thursday morning, we just like moved all the bags into the one room that we had for two nights and like the hotel didn't care. They were actually sold out. They were like, it actually works for us. Speaker 3 (15:43) Somebody Speaker 4 (15:43) else right now. Yeah. So while Tim was at work, the girls and I did all kinds of New York City sightseeing. We walked up to the Museum of Natural History. We went through Times Square, the American Girl store, Lego store, and ate pizza like three times in 30 hours. And then Thursday night, we flew from JFK to Singapore. That is the current longest flight in the world until I think London is going to have a flight to Sydney or somewhere in Australia. 2027, I think that starts. So that'll be the new longest flight in the world. But for now, if you want to get the longest flight in the world, JFK to Singapore is it on Singapore Airlines. How long is it? They said it was going to be like 19 and a half hours. But I think we clocked in just around 19 hours. But it was