Legendary trip Part 2: AROUND THE WORLD IN 20 DAYS!

A few years ago I had a dream lingering in the back of my head, something I did not think I would be able to achieve until much later on in my life. That dream was to fly international first class. As many of you know, not only did I fly first class internationally, but I did it on one of the premiere first class products: Cathay Pacific. Accomplishing that goal at a much earlier time then I had anticipated just whet my appetite for flying in luxury. A new goal came to mind; circumnavigate the globe in first class.

Enough room to invite the cute girl next door for dinner.

Rocking my PJ's in my lie flat seat

Why do I value First Class so highly when you can literally get two round-trip economy tickets for the same price?

Besides the luxury and great customer service, it was the first time I felt completely energized for a full day after my 15 hour trip. I will get into more detail about the benefits of first class in a future post. 


With the goal of circumnavigating the globe in a premium cabin, I have been stock piling my points and miles for the opportunity to make this trip happen. My points that I will be using are as follows:

•  ~230k total American Airlines (AA) miles (from 3 Citi AA credit card bonus's plus spend)
• ~40k Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) points from the SPG card.

The SPG transfers to AA with a rate of every 20k SPG = 25k AA. That brings me to a grand total of 280 AA miles

AA has 3 award charts that I won't get into, but I'll be using their least used chart called oneworld Explorer chart. This is a distanced based chart and allows 16 different segments, which is a great way to create "around the world itineraries".

I will be most likely be using zone 8 business class award ticket. So for 190k AA miles I can fly up to 35,000 flown miles in any direction I want.

I know what your thinking "Didn't you say first class?" That was my initial intention, but due to it being very close to departure date, many of the places I want to go to only offer business class. So it would have been a waste to pay for first class around the world and only get business class most of it. Not to worry though, I paid 65k AA miles one way to Seoul, S. Korea from LAX in first class!

As of right now my plans is to go to S. Korea > Taiwan > Sri Lanka. I am debating South Africa then to somewhere in South America before I head back. I kind of want to go to off-the-beaten-path places. Next post, help me decide where to go by voting!