Happy New Year to all of you! Hope your 2025 was fruitful and adventurous! In 2025, our kids visited 13 countries/territories and we added 4 new countries to our list!
We started the year with a quick trip to Atlantis in the Bahamas over Martin Luther King’s long weekend to spend our Marriott 35K free night certificates; it was a great deal compared to the cash price. Although a beautiful resort and water park, the food prices there were outrageously high (comparable to those in the Maldives and Bora Bora)! My son’s bowl of white rice cost over $18 after the 30% government tax and automatic gratuity, yikes!!! Our rooms at the Coral Tower were old and dirty, nothing luxurious to match the price tag!
In February, we went to the Maldives, Malaysia, and Taiwan on our route back to Jason’s hometown in China. We had a wonderful stay at the Hilton Maldives; it was kid-friendly, with a kids’ club filled with activities and toys to keep the kids busy during the hot afternoons. Not only was the boat transfer free for the kids, they also offered kids 5 and under eat free (except for room service), which saved us a lot of money! Malaysia was a bustling city with good and inexpensive Chinese food! We got to taste their iconic Musang King durian, either you hate it or love it 😛 After Malaysia, Jason headed back to China to meet up with his brother while I took our kids, my mom, and my brother to Taiwan. We made our wishes to release the sky lantern at Shifen and visited night markets every night! Lastly, we headed back to China to enjoy all the delicious food!
Once the kids got out of school for summer vacation, we had a big family trip to Portugal and Spain with our aunt and uncle. Portugal was a lot more touristy than we last visited. Spain was so hot! I wrote the blog posts on that trip so you can read about that trip the details.
Over the 4th of July weekend, we made a quick trip to the Dominican Republic, we stayed at the Iberostar Selection Bávaro with our IHG points where the 4th night was free. The only thing we liked about this all-inclusive resort was their kids’ club. Other than that, their service and food were bad. If you don’t speak Spanish, don’t even bother to stay here!
Before the kids get back to school in September, we took another European trip to Austria and France end of August. Austria was very kid-friendly and surprisingly has good Chinese food! We made a day trip to visit Bratislava, Slovakia to check off another country 🙂 Next, we headed to Paris (took advantage of Air France’s free stopover when redeeming with miles) and had a 3-night stay with Jason’s expiring Marriott 50K free night certificates from the credit card sign-up bonus. Then, we did a road trip to the fairy-tale Loire Valley to visit the chateaus. I am still working on the blog posts on that!
For my birthday in October, Jason and I took a quick weekend trip to Antigua, where we stayed at the adult-only all-inclusive Hermitage Bay redeemed with our Hilton’s free night certificates earned through Hilton’s credit card spend of $15K (we paid our home and auto insurance and big spend on that card yearly). Their food quality was top-notch of all-inclusives! Service was excellent except they forgot about my birthday!
In November, we took a long weekend trip during the Veterans’ Day week to the Cayman Islands where we stayed at the wonderful Kimpton Seafire Resort + Spa. This was one of our best IHG points redemption, only 70K per night but with 4th night free bring it down to 52,500 points per night (which cost $262.50 to buy the points during IHG’s point sale). Cash price is over $1000 per night!!! Even better, I was able to redeem the confirmable suite night certificate (that I got once I stayed 20 nights at IHG last year) and upgraded from an oceanview 2 queen room to an oceanview 1-bedroom suite by calling two weeks prior to our stay to request. To sweeten the deal, we got another upgrade due to our IHG Diamond status (got it for $20 from a promotion at the end of 2024) to an oceanfront panoramic 1-bedroom suite. The suite was unbelievable!!! Kids under 5 eat free at the resort too when dining in one of the restaurants, it saved us some money.
To finish the year, we took our kids to Disneyland Anaheim (as a stop) to celebrate my daughter’s 6th birthday, where she transformed into a princess by the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. The kids loved the rides at both parks. Then, we headed to Bora Bora, French Polynesia to spend 5 nights over the Christmas!!! I was lucky enough to book two rooms at the newly opened Westin Bora Bora Resort with my Marriott points (originally, I saved up those points to stay at the JW Marriott Masai Mara Lodge in Kenya but the hotel was temporarily closed after the flood). The 5th night is free when redeeming Marriott points thus the reason we stayed 5 nights (way too long for a resort in my opinion). Furthermore, my suite night upgrade certificate (got it from hitting Platinum status in 2024 thanks to my work travel) got cleared 5 days prior to our stay so our room was upgraded to a premium Otemanu overwater bungalow with pool. The food there wasn’t as bad as I expected and kids under 5 eat free, aged 5-12 get 50% off so that helped a lot with the cost! 2 days before heading home, I saw 5 business class award seats opened up so I made a last-minute change by calling AA, the kids were pampered; my daughter said it was the most comfortable seat ever!!! I am working on the photos and trip reports so stay tuned!
I am looking forward to new adventures in 2026 and probably less with the kids since my daughter is now in kindergarten; I felt guilty taking her out of school and had to write to her teacher to ask for forgiveness! I’ll try my best to look for deals during school holidays to minimize her absence. Happy New Year and happy travel 🙂
