Recently a friend came to me with an award request along the lines of what I have done for hundreds of clients of the MileValue Award Booking Service.

He wanted to visit Sydney during its summer and Hong Kong on the same trip. He wanted to fly in some of the world's nicest airline products.

Update 5/27/14: A winner has been picked for the $200 Visa Gift Card.

After a few days in New York last month, I took a 16 hour flight in Cathay Pacific First Class from New York-JFK to Hong Kong. It was the second best flight of my life (behind only Emirate First Class); I can't recommend Cathay Pacific First Class highly enough.

That said, the ground services in New York were abysmal.

I haven't been home since February 16 when I boarded a plane from Honolulu for Newark.

This review is a continuation of my fun US Airways redemption that I wrote about back in this post. I reviewed Turkish Business Class: Washington DC to Istanbul already and had a similar (great) experience on my flight from Istanbul to Tokyo also in Turkish Business, so I am skipping to the next segment in Cathay Pacific Business Class.

I was in Tokyo, and I wanted to add a quick side trip onto my main award, and Hong Kong seemed like the logical spot.

Cathay Pacific has initiated four-times-weekly flights from Hong Kong to the Maldives with an A330 aircraft with fully flat business class (but no first class.)

The route opens up an exciting ultra-luxury way for Americans to get to the Maldives with a combination of American Airlines miles and British Airways Avios on Cathay Pacific flights.

What's the optimal use of your miles on these flights?

Cathay Pacific is a Hong Kong-based member of the oneworld alliance, which flies to the US with what many people consider to be the world's best

Last month, I mused about my dream trip combining Cathay Pacific First Class, Singapore Suites Class, and the Lufthansa First Class Terminal.

Yesterday's post about the Coolest Thing to Do with 130k and 280k American Airlines Miles got me to look at the American Airlines' chart again for value. I found what I think are the Five Best Values in premium cabins.

These values combine low miles, low taxes and fees, and the very best products from among American's partners.

A few weeks ago, I shared my thoughts on The Coolest Thing You Can Do with 57.5k United Miles and 10k Avios, which arose from daydreaming about booking myself more award trips.

The last few days I've worked myself into a frenzy planning an incredible-value American Airlines Explorer Award around the world in business class for 130k American Airlines miles and the most opulent Explorer Award possible for 280k miles.

American Airlines Explorer Awards have a distance-based award chart that uses American Airlines miles to fly two or more of American's oneworld partners.

This is a guest post from Chase Tajima. Chase is a tax attorney in Honolulu--Aloha! He writes about Hawaii tax law at TheTaxTable.wordpress.com. Anyone is welcome to submit a guest Anatomy of an Award post, so we can all learn from interesting award bookings.

I started following MileValue because I wanted to find a cost effective way to get from Honolulu to Delhi, India to attend my college roommate's wedding. Roundtrip flights from from Honolulu to Delhi ranged from about $1,600 to $2,000+ in economy.