Well, it’s finally happening.

Long in the bucket list and finally seeing some light, this epic journey will cover 13 countries over 4 continents. We will visit close to 20 major cities and cover more than 30,000 miles. We will do this by plane, train, bus and boat. Can I survive three and half months without my children, my mum, my friends, my couch and my favourite Singaporean hawker food? Tune in and find out.

I’ve always thought about this for so long – and now that I’ve retired after 37 years of work – it’s finally time to make this happen.

We begin our journey with a flight to Bangkok, connecting onwards to Istanbul on Thai Airways. The largest connections from Point A to B on this trip will be on the Star Alliance network . We cashed in all our Krisflyer points for a Round-the-World (RTW) ticket on Singapore Airlines and other airlines on the Star Alliance network. It took us 280,000 Krisflyer points to redeem this. Checking on the Star Alliance website to calculate an equivalent ticket, this would have cost us more than $30,000 a ticket on Business class, but with the redemption, we paid only about $800 in fuel surcharges and airport taxes.

The rules of the RTW ticket are simple – you can only go in one direction (East or West), cannot exceed 39000 miles in total. There are great blogs out there which talk about how one can buy or redeem an RTW ticket. Point Hacks, is one site, and from Singapore, the Mile Lion is another.

As to how I accumulated enough Krisflyer points to cover this RTW ticket and a First Class Suites ticket from Singapore to London (will post about the London/Spain trip separately), this is really through a simple strategy in credit card use. Now, I don’t believe in getting in debt and I make it a point to pay off the credit bills every month when they come in, but when used carefully and with thought, this can go a long way to accumulating enough points for some very nice redemptions.

So where are we going on this mega trip?

We will cover the following countries/cities:

Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Iceland, the United States, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Canada, Japan.

What I’m looking forward to:

Balloon ride at dawn in Cappadocia, Island-hopping in the Cyclades, the old town towns Dubrovnik, Split and Rovinj, days in Vienna, driving through the highest alpine road in Austria – the Heiligenblut Grossglockner road, all of Iceland, 9 days chilling in NYC, Macchu Picchu, the Perurail train through the Andes to Puno, the Salar di Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia, the Atacama desert in Chile, the Alaskan cruise and then driving through the Canadian Rockies, and of course, hanging out in Tokyo or somewhere in Japan to close the trip.

The RTW ticket can only take us so far, we will plug the gaps in connection with our own flight purchases, by bus, or train. We will stay in some hostels but mostly hotels (guess you could say I’m a retiree flashpacker who can’t/won’t do the hostel dorm grind anymore) At my age, I need a private attached bathroom, thank you very much!

I know I will miss Singapore and my comfort zone terribly. I’m already homesick writing this the day before I leave. But I will not be alone. I go with the love of my life. We will take care of each other, help each other, hold hands so we don’t slip and most important, try not to kill each other by the time 106 days are up. This will be the longest trip we have ever taken together, longer than the 5 weeks we spent in Europe post graduation for KH. But that was in 1994. It’s 2024 now, exactly 30 years later and time for us to head out once more.

So wish us well and join us as we circumnavigate the world in 106 days!