Double-Sunrise Flight and Credit Card Hack

July 5, 2026|Rick Juliusson

At 2:00 Thursday afternoon we walk barefoot across the sun-sparkled sands of Le Pirate Island. It’s going to take a healthy tolerance for bland movies and a clever credit card hack to survive this upcoming 34 hours door-to-door odyssey to Chicago (well, doorless beachfront Indonesian cabana to door-full seniors’ residence in Chicago north suburbs). First the journey, then the hack.

One Morning, Two Sunrises

A sad but beautiful 1-hour boat ride takes us back to Labuan Bajo, followed by: jeep taxi to Komodo International Airport; 1-hr flight to Bali; 8-hour flight to Korea; 12-hour flight to Chicago; 1-hour ride in brother-in-law’s mini-van to mother-in-law’s condo (via IKEA to buy a guest bed and sharpen the culture shock / fatigue), arriving at 11am Friday morning. Add in 3 airport lounges and a 13-hour time change, that’s 34 hours since we left paradise. Our bodies think it’s midnight, Sarah's knee thinks it's Dante's Inferno, and my brain is calculating how long it’ll take to assemble an IKEA bed so we can nap.

It’s so long that it completes our circumnavigation of the globe. We flew eastbound across the Atlantic from New York to Asia (Thailand) in January, and now we’ve continued East and crossed the Pacific back to the US.

It’s so long that we see the same sunrise twice. First as we land in Seoul, South Korea early Friday morning. As we later continue to fly eastward across the Pacific Ocean, the Friday morning sun continues westward to gently warm and wake up people to the same Friday morning in India, Middle-East, Africa & Europe, across the Atlantic to Brazil, then creeping across North America - Newfoundland, Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatchewan… Just as it reaches Calgary Alberta, the sun’s morning rays also shine on our plane, still on the way to Chicago. It takes some brain-twiddling to figure out that it’s still the same Friday morning sun I’m seeing a second time, 15 hours later.

It’s so long that it’ll take a full two weeks to sleep properly at night and function fully during the day. Worst and longest-lingering jetlag of my life.

The Credit Card Hack

Y'all often ask how we make all this travel survivable and affordable. Well, one element is having the right travel credit card. We have one from Capital One and another from Chase Sapphire, and the benefits are legion. We get 2x miles on most purchases, 5x on flights, and 10x on hotels and car rentals. They do price-matching if I find cheaper deals online, and insurance/support for cancellations, rentals, etc. I know some of y’all get some of these perks through monotonous monogamy to one airline, but we get to shop around for the cheapest deals and fly the friendly skies of Pegasus, Ryan, TransNusa, Batik, VietJet and even Wizz Air.

And most important, the travel credit cards provide complementary lounge access in most airports. Nowadays we go 3 hours early to airports to enjoy the calm work space, free food, drinks and sometimes entertainment. Thai massage in Bangkok. Live music, cultural presentations and even beds in Seoul. A one-hour cheese-tasting in New York, plus salmon & cream cheese bagels made to carry on to the plane.

If it wasn't for this free access, I'd basically starve on this 34-hour journey. No way this cheap Surrey boy would pay $50 to enter the lounge as a guest, and $15 for a lousy sub sandwich or greasy burger isn't on the plate.

But the lounge food (and drinks, for those who partake) - oh the food! Dinner in Bali then breakfast in Korea are two entirely different experiences. Take a look at the end of this post at what the lounge in Jakarta, Indonesia offered when we accidentally overnighted there (hint: chocolate fondue fountain…)

The Real Hack - Changing Credit Cards

The real trick is to find a card that offers a big fat signing bonus, use those points on your dream trip, then cancel it and get a new card. Not too often to ruin your credit score (ours has actually gone up since we started this fiduciary foxtrot), but often enough to keep flush in points. We just booked tickets from Newfoundland to Columbia-Uruguay-Chile (distance of 11,304 km) just on the sign-up bonus points from Sarah’s new card.

There’s lots of options out there depending on your income, spending and travel habits. Ours cost about $250 each per year, but we receive annual points bonuses worth more than that, so as long as we travel enough to use all the points it’s a no-brainer.

If either Capital One or Chase Sapphire end up being the right fit for you, use those referral links and you’ll get 75,000 or 100,000 bonus points (and yes, we’ll get a bonus too - enough for a flight from Chile to the Easter Islands in February). Everyone wins - even the credit card company, who somehow still make a profit even after all those give-aways. It’s not the cash-based or exchange local economy of my liking, but for a globe-trotting wonderer, hacking credit cards is one of the ways we’re able to sustain this lifestyle (and enjoy the bountiful buffet shown below at Jakarta Airport's Blue Sky Lounge).