Background
United occasionally offers sales on award flights for Chase cardmembers. The August 2025 five-day sale was Pacific-themed, featuring discounted tickets to Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, China, and Taiwan. The Philippines caught my eye as a destination I hadn’t visited, so I booked the flight to Manila for 80,000 United miles and around $34.
Getting there
Unfortunately, the discounted tickets that worked for my schedule resulted in a very long routing: SDF-ORD-HNL-GUM-MNL. I received a Complimentary Premier Upgrade (CPU) on the very early SDF-ORD flight, but those flights are so short I usually sleep through them, and this morning was no exception. We landed in ORD with just enough time to squeeze in a quick club breakfast. Boarding the ORD-HNL flight, I have never seen so many people preboard – even on hub-to-hub flights! The flight was fully booked, and because I forgot to select seats until 24 hours before, I ended up in economy minus for the nine-hour hop to Honolulu. After enough 15-hour hops to Australia, nine-hour flights feel like a breeze. A light breakfast was served onboard; I chose the waffles (if I remember correctly, I forgot to take a picture). After a quick nap, we landed in Honolulu 23 minutes early, leaving a little over an hour for a quick United Club dole whip and light lunch. I was in economy again for HNL-GUM. Thankfully, this flight was much lighter, and I secured a row of three seats to lie down. A light lunch was served, though I forgot to take a picture. We arrived in Guam about 20 minutes early the next day. We quickly learned the United Club in GUM is catered heavily toward morning and afternoon flights, which makes sense, but luckily, GUM also has a Priority Pass lounge, which we found two minutes before closing. We had a short layover, so we spent the rest of the time walking around the shops in GUM and got a couple of magnets.
Not getting there?
While shopping, I heard an announcement asking for volunteers to take the next day’s flight for $800. I initially didn’t realize it was for the Manila flight, as the loads looked light, but I later learned that Typhoon Ragasa required the flight to carry extra fuel in case of reroutes. As soon as I got to the gate, I checked with the agents working the flight. Unfortunately, someone else had taken the offer already. While waiting to get my seat changed, I learned they needed two more volunteers. Since I was traveling with two other people, I volunteered myself and one of them to stay behind in Guam. After coordinating with another agent, they sent someone down to grab the other volunteer in my party (the two others with me had already boarded). They pulled the bags, and we got to watch the Manila flight leave without us. Most people would be sad, but the compensation was fantastic: a $2,000 travel credit for each of us ($6,000 total), three hotel rooms, $80 in meal vouchers each ($240 total), hotel transport, and confirmed seats on Philippine Airlines’ 6 a.m. GUM-MNL flight. This was really exciting for me, as I had already paid almost nothing for this trip besides a hotel in Manila, and I got to try a new airline. Everyone from GUMCS was extremely friendly and thankful to us for helping them out. Unfortunately, one of the bags was missed and was already over the Pacific headed to Manila. United’s layover hotel was the Rihga Resort Hotel. After waiting a short time for a taxi, we arrived at the hotel around 9 p.m., allowing just enough time for a quick nap and shower after traveling for about 24 hours. After a bedbug incident at work, I’ve made it a habit to check every bed; unfortunately, my room had a few dead ones under the mattress. Thankfully, reception was very nice and had a new room within 30 seconds, which was clean.
Getting there (2nd times a charm)
The 6 a.m. PAL flight meant a very early wakeup – 3:45 a.m. for the 4 a.m. taxi to GUM. Checking in with Philippine Airlines at GUM was interesting; they only had our GUM-MNL flight information. After providing them with our onward flight information, we received boarding passes. I was in seat 67A – which confused the hell out of me. PAL just has weird numbers, and they go from row 1 all the way to row 74. Thankfully, the Priority Pass lounge was actually open this time, and had a pretty nice buffet for 4:30 a.m. Ever since I went to Russia, I’ve been in love with dumplings, so I was excited when I saw them here. After a few minutes, an agent announced we were boarding about 20 minutes early, and I ended up getting an empty row of three for a quick nap. One thing to note: PAL currently has a far superior hard product on this route compared to United. United’s Guam-based 737s are ancient with no Wi-Fi or IFE, while PAL had both on a fairly clean aircraft. We were served what felt like lunch and it was pretty good. PAL has free 10MB of Wi-Fi which I blew through in about 30 seconds, but no T-Mobile connection or anything like United has. We landed about 30 minutes early and immigration was a breeze – you just have to have a QR code that you need to create an account for. I used my US passport and got a pretty solid stamp. Once clearing immigration, we went looking for the bags, and as expected only found one of two on the carousel. UA uses a different terminal in Manila, requiring a 45-minute bus ride. Once there, we spent about two hours trying to find a UA representative. After much hassle, we finally gained access to the carousel area and retrieved the bag that had arrived the day before.
Day 1: Intramuros
We had booked The Manila Hotel for three nights, including the night we missed, and I had messaged them about our late check-in. They were extremely accommodating. We arrived just as breakfast closed, but the manager brought out pre-packaged meals for all of us and welcomed us to Manila. We took a power nap and headed out for Intramuros, the historic core of Manila. It was about a 20-minute walk from the hotel. The walk was very colorful, with drivers stopping constantly to try and convince us to join them for a city tour. Sadly, children no older than five would sprint across five lanes of traffic to literally cling to our feet and ask for money – but it’s the norm in Southeast Asia which reminded me of Indonesia last summer. Within the Intramuros area were the Manila Cathedral, the Former Palace of the Governor’s General, and Fort Santiago. We were able to go inside of the cathedral and walk around; they even have a gift shop inside. The Palace wasn’t accepting tourists, so we admired its beauty from the outside. We then paid the entrance fee to Fort Santiago, about $1 USD, to walk around inside the fence and even around the moat. There was an indoor museum inside, and after walking around in there for about 10 minutes we heard this weird sound on the roof. Looking outside confirmed we were in Manila: a monsoon was hammering the roof. Thankfully, we all brought umbrellas, as it was pouring with no sign of letting up. Walking to the café in the monsoon, we saw roadside shops and markets with completely flipped tents and products scattered everywhere. The other people I was traveling with wanted to visit a café called Batala Bar. We also briefly stopped in a 7/11, and I was surprised by their drink flavors – samalamig caught my eye which the internet describes as a “various Filipino sweet chilled beverages that usually include jelly-like ingredients.” After trekking in the monsoon we made it just slightly wet – the umbrellas took most of the beating. Batala Bar had plenty of drinks and really good paninis! I was pretty surprised to learn they also had ice cream on the floor below. I got some sort of cheesecake sundae with cheese and vanilla ice cream – and while I was skeptical at first, it ended up being really good. Our walk back in the dark was only sprinkling, nowhere near as bad as earlier. I saw horse carriages, which I hadn’t realized they had, and wondered if the horses got cold in the rain and wind. Our tour of Intramuros was pretty quick and we got back to the hotel by 9 p.m., just in time for happy hour at the lobby bar.
Day 2: Mall of Asia
We woke up around 8 a.m., giving us two hours to tour the giant breakfast buffet. Breakfast was included with our rooms and was amazing. There were Asian, Vegan, Halal and other stations I’m probably forgetting, but there was really a little bit of everything. I could only eat three platefuls before I got full, but the food was excellent and service was perfect. We signed up for the 12 p.m. free shuttle to the Mall of Asia – about a 30-minute drive from the hotel. Pulling up, the mall immediately reminded me of the sheer size of the Mall of America. Although research shows Mall of Asia has a larger footprint, they felt similar, aside from the September Christmas decorations! There were 4 floors of shops and stores, and it even had an ice skating rink. We walked every floor which killed time until I found the Uniqlo store. The prices were incredibly cheap compared to the US; shirts were $4-5 versus $25. After a brief shopping excursion, it was time for our 3 p.m. shuttle back to the hotel. Given the 12-hour time difference, the senior citizens I was traveling with had to take another brief power nap. We went to another pub/cafe about 20 minutes away, but this time the rain was horrible. The umbrellas were useless as the rain blew completely sideways, and I re-soaked my socks stepping in puddles every few seconds. Despite this, the experience was a memorable monsoon I’ll never forget. We hiked back to the hotel in the same monsoon sideways rain to make it in time just for happy hour. I indulged in the hotel food as well, and had a pretty good Hawaiian pizza.
Day 3: Intramuros Part 2
Day 3 was our final day, and we got an early start. We ate breakfast at the same buffet around 7 a.m. and successfully left the hotel around 8:30 a.m. to beat the rain. We made it to a different beautiful part of Intramuros. We found a street with flags hanging and it reminded me of San Juan’s flag street. For some reason, the street vendors were extremely pushy today, especially around the Manila Cathedral. Most backed off when we made it clear we weren’t interested, but some were persistent, following us for blocks, which felt a little strange. We walked back to the hotel and I sat around the pool for a couple hours until it started raining again. Frankly, I was shocked it didn’t start raining until around 4 p.m., as the previous days had been cloudy or rainy all day. Our flight out of Manila wasn’t until 10 p.m., but we managed to get a late checkout. We planned on leaving for MNL airport around 5 p.m. to lounge hop, but we couldn’t get a Grab (Asia’s Uber) driver confirmed for about an hour, which conveniently gave us time for more happy hour drinks.
Heading home
We booked a pretty similar routing to get home, MNL-GUM-HNL-DEN-SDF. The Grab ride to MNL took about 1.5 hours to go 12 km – insane traffic. MNL oddly doesn’t allow digital boarding passes, but the nice United staff was able to print mine once I showed my Guam QR code. MNL had three lounges we tried, the Singapore KrisFlyer Lounge, and two Priority Pass lounges: The Marhaba Lounge and the A Lounge. My favorite was definitely the KrisFlyer lounge, though it was only open until 9 p.m. They had really tasty blueberry cheesecake shooters with cookie crumbles on the bottom – a treat that reminded me of Carnival’s s’mores parfait. The Marhaba lounge was shared with Emirates, and the non-Emirates side was quite small. The A Lounge was fine, but the buffet felt a little small for the amount of people there. They had really good chocolates though. After lounge hopping for a while, it was time to board to GUM. This was hands down the worst international UA station I’ve been to, though this was through no fault of United. The blame lies with the avsec partner’s insane interpretation of TSA rules for screening US-bound passengers. While taking off shoes and pulling out laptops is standard, having to disassemble phone cases was excessive. United’s station manager, who was anxiously watching the process, mentioned that United frequently experiences delays and receives complaints because of this screening. I understand there’s extra screening required, but none of the other international stations I’ve visited have been this bad, even in the Caribbean. We were the last to board due to the holdup at screening, but thankfully United waits for everyone. We flew over to GUM on one of United’s Guam 737s. This is a CPU route, and I was upgraded four days out. Apparently a meal was served, and we hit heavy turbulence from a forming typhoon, but I fell asleep before takeoff and didn’t wake up until we reached the gate. We had a fairly long layover in Guam – about three hours – and had to clear customs. Interestingly, we didn’t have to pick up our bags here, but in Honolulu. We did have to re-clear security, but there was zero line. We actually got to try the United Club this time and it was really nice! It had a lot of Continental remnants, but not in a bad way like the IAH club. The buffet was really nice, and even had waffles, something I haven’t seen in other hubs before. The flight to HNL was also quite full, but a nice agent blocked the middle seat next to me, giving me a little extra room for the eight-hour hop to Honolulu. A meal was served on this Friday morning flight, and I chose the fried rice. I managed to get a quick nap in but was awake most of the flight. We landed in Honolulu 13 minutes early on Thursday. Our layover was quick, involving immigration and rechecking bags, but I managed a quick picture outside before heading to Checkpoint #5, which has CLEAR and TSA Precheck. This checkpoint is convenient for UA flights, as it exits right at the connector to the G gates, which UA mostly uses (except for the island hopper). I had about 20 minutes to spare and made it to the United Club for dole whip again and a light snack. HNL-DEN was a pretty full flight, and I was in a full row. A quick lounge hop in DEN and a nap in row 7 on DEN-SDF brought us back home right on time.
Additional media
I tried something new this trip and brought my Meta glasses filming part of every day. I condensed them down to daily segments, and have them posted on Instagram. Feel free to watch day 1, and day 2, and follow my Instagram – @alex.isnt.home!