Update: We went to Bali and Phuket. Click those links for more details on how she found out, a little more about the trip etc.

I have a confession to make: It’s really hard to impress my wife with the gift of travel. No, it’s not because she is demanding and only wants first class travel or 5 star luxury hotels (trust me Holiday Inns are just fine for her) but rather with all the traveling we do, traveling together is almost too commonplace in our lives. Seriously, at any given time we have 3-5 trips booked in advance and we have traveled every month this year with the exception of January and February. In all those cases, we always discuss together where we want to go or if I see a limited time offer, either with miles/points or a great cash price, we will quickly figure out when we want to go to take advantage of that limited time deal.

Our one year anniversary is coming up later this month and I really wanted to do something special for it. I wanted it to top all the other traveling we have done in the past year, which is quite a tall task to do when you look at where we have traveled since October 2013:

• Moorea & Bora Bora
• Maui
• Alaskan Cruise
• Paris
• Puerto Rico and other small weekend getaways

The one similarity with all those trips above is Andrea knew when the trip was coming, where we were going and what we were doing there.  I know almost no matter what country or destination I chose for our one year anniversary, it was going to be hard to top that list above (seriously how do you top a honeymoon in Bora Bora and a second one in Maui?!?!?)

So what did I do? I booked our one year anniversary trip for later this month and Andrea has no idea where we are going. I wanted to avoid the idea of “travel fatigue” and keep the excitement fresh so I booked a 10 day trip to 2 countries and Andrea is in the dark on our activities, hotels, time in each country, etc. I’m pretty sure she never even heard of one of the places we are going.

To be fair (and to keep the excitement building for the trip), I have given her a few clues along the way. Here are the clues and facts I have given her thus far. Some of them are purposely too vague.

• There is a total of 21 flying hours (yes 21 hours in a plane) plus a 3 hour layover to reach our first destination from New York.
• We are flying 10,168 miles to reach our first destination.
• She knows the layover is in Seoul because I couldn’t resist showing her a picture of her seat for the flight from NY to Seoul which is a first class suite on Asiana (see below).
• With that hint, she asked if this trip was somewhere in Asia which I confirmed for her that it is.
• I was able to hire a private driver and tour guide for 10 hours for about $68 USD. Things in this country are cheap.
• The second destination, which is in another country, is only 1,640 miles away but requires a connection in the capital of this country.
• There may or may not be elephants involved.

Can you guess where we are going? I won’t confirm or deny your answers in the comments for obvious reasons but let’s see who can figure out where we are going!

She will only find out the first destination when we get to the airport and gets her boarding pass for that flight. I think with her not knowing the details of anything going on, she will be even more excited for this trip then normal.  Hopefully, this is how you can still surprise your spouse with the gift of travel when you are a travel hacker 🙂