Killing Time in Kuantan

This is part four of a five part round the world trip.

• Cruising to the Old World
• Istanbul not Constantinople
• Better in Bangkok
• Killing Time in Kuantan
• Sunny in Sydney

My original plan, before the Iran war, had me arriving in Southeast Asia much later than I did after everything changed. In that original plan, Southeast Asia was intended to be a decision point. Either I would get a last minute cruise offer for the Carnival Luminosa sailing from Australia to America through the South Pacific, or I'd need to find another way home, probably flying through Japan.

At this point, the cruise was looking pretty unlikely but it hadn't yet been ruled out. What I really needed was an affordable, relaxing place to stay while I waited and figured out next steps.

I'd been eyeing the Kuantan Hyatt Regency for a couple years, ever since an earlier trip to Kuala Lumpur. It's a category 1 resort (5000 points/night), right on the beach, with fantastic suites, a killer breakfast and a Globalist lounge. I'd already been thinking about using it in my original itinerary if the cruise fell through, so after Bangkok, it was the natural place to go.

What started as a 7-night stay ended up getting extended several times, turning into a more than three week stay.

Kuantan is probably not on many points and milers lists. Although I heard talk a direct Bangkok route maybe coming, the airport only had two flights in, one from Singapore on Scoot Airlines and another 30-40 minute flight from Kuala Lumpur on Malaysian Airlines. 

Many days, the entire route was available on Malaysian without a stopover for 15k Atmos miles plus $50 in taxes and fees... just not the day I wanted to fly. However, the cash rate was only $263 and I would have earned around 2,600 miles from paying it. I also ran into some problems with which days had saver space for each leg and whether the Alaskan site would always let me combine them together.

The way to look at this is that the award redemption leaves me 17.6k miles poorer and $213 richer, so I'm really trading 17.6k miles for $213 making it a 1.21 cpp redemption. That's a pretty terrible redemption, particularly for Atmos miles which are a little harder to replenish since only Bilt transferred to them. So I just paid cash.

The first flight left around 6am and left me with a 10 hour layover in KUL/KLIA. This was pretty miserable. I'd planned to stop in the Malaysian Airlines Golden Lounge, but they restrict admissions to just 3 hours before boarding. I've seen that plenty of times at the departing airport, but never in the middle of a connection.

Malaysian has a few rather odd rules like this. They also required me to check my carry-on due to their extremely low carry-on limits, 14kg total. Anyways, it was a grueling wait for the next flight.

Kuantan is a tiny airport, just handling a couple flights a day. There's only a single gate and very little security. You board and deplane out on the tarmac. 

Uber is far less popular in Southeast Asia, so from the airport, I caught a Grab to the hotel. It works the same way, though sometimes there is some variation in how tolls are handled. 

By my standards, this place was nearly perfect and probably the best value Hyatt I've ever had the pleasure of visiting.

Although there were some peak and off-peak nights mixed in, my stay averaged 5,000 points per night and lasted 22 days. I used two suite night upgrade certificates to guarantee a suite for 14 nights and they gave it to me for another 3-4. 

The suite they gave me was pretty amazing and one of the nicer rooms I've ever had. I'm not sure what the square footage was, probably over 1,000, fantastic bath, two balconies, two tables, a guest bath. 

The only downside is it was in one of the only buildings back away from the ocean. I think this is where they had all their convention facilities and so the thinking was probably that it made sense to have the suites in that building since the are probably often used alongside convention activities.

I spent the last few days in a regular room which was also fine, much smaller but ocean front and in the same building as the club lounge.

Food at the Regency was fantastic. They had a huge breakfast buffet with very large sections for Malaysian, Chinese, Indian and English cuisine. Lots of fresh fruit and juices, freshly baked bread. It was included for all Globalists but the rates were such that anyone booking a cash rate could get breakfast included for less than without.

The lounge was less spectacular but still very nice. Every night, they had 3-4 main dishes plus desserts and a few things for kids like pizza. They also had a small alcohol selection and a mix of sodas and juice. During the day, they would have a few snacks around lunch as well.

The hotel sits on a mile or so of pristine beach. It has a series of pools and restaurants running all along the beach. In addition, you can rent a variety of beach equipment from wake boards to little catamarans.

There's a more public area on the northern stretch with a few boutique places, restaurants, small shops and a mosque.

This shows the stretch of the beach mostly to the south of the resort. I think all of this land was owned by the resort and it was mostly just jungle beyond the beach.

While there, I saw lots of wildlife. A colony of macaques lived at the north end of the beach and I saw dusky leaf monkeys in the trees 20 feet from my last building. There were also lots of lizards and cats. Several white-bellied sea eagles seemed to be nesting in the hills above the resort.

I say "town" but this was more just the developed strip of the beach to the north of the resort. Kuantan itself is around 15-20 minutes away by car and is a decent sized city. 

This area of the beach was very lively at night, especially around the weekends. One evening I saw a group of fire dancers performing or maybe practicing. 

After it became obvious I wasn't get a cruise offer, I switched into a mode where I decided to patiently wait for flights to open up home. Unfortunately, award availability was terrible, a tenth of what I was used to seeing last minute and several options just didn't exist.

I'd thought I would be able to fly through Japan and spend a few days in Tokyo but the hotel prices were astronomical.

So I just kept extending my stay again and again. If you're going to get stuck somewhere, I recommend it be paradise.

Eventually, I found a route home through Sydney and Honolulu and a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney. Sadly, there didn't seem to be a way to get the Kuantan to KL flight bundled in the award ticket online. I might have been able to get them together had I called Alaskan and tried booking over the phone, but when I realized the flight was only $78 in business I just booked it myself.

Since my flight from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney was in the morning, I needed to get to Kuala Lumpur the night before. This worked out perfectly since I had late checkout and there's an evening flight.

However, I didn't want to spend 12 hours in the airport overnight and so I booked the fantastic Sama Sama hotel which is connected to the airport by a covered walkway.

This hotel was waaaay more expensive than surrounding hotels, some of which looked a little risky. However, Sama Sama was perfect, very luxurious and a little quirky. The room had lots of free snacks including some lychee soda. At checkin, there was a small trio of singers in the lounge singing Abba songs. 

I would stay here again in a heart beat. It wasn't quite as nice as the Bangkok Airport Regency but it had more character and felt more convenient.

When I first started playing this game, I hated all the portal hotel credits, like the $150 delta stays credit I used to book this. As I've gotten more experience and travel more frequently, I find these credits are often ideal for little one night stays like this. The economics of the annual fees and credits often ends up like being half price in a cash only market.

In May of 2026, Hyatt implemented a number of negative changes to the program's award chart introducing two new pricing bands per category and raising prices across the board. 

Kuantan was hit twice by these changes. It changed from category 1 to 2 and base prices went up across the board. The normal price of the hotel doubled from 5,000 points per night to 10,000 and the maximum price increased 230% from 6,500 points per night to 15,000. Brutal.

Is Kuantan still a deal at 10k points per night? Maybe? Probably? Really it depends on the cash rates. Sometimes Malaysia can be very affordable.

But gone are the days when you can stay there for 22 days on 110k points.

Overall, I'm really glad I visited Kuantan and happy I got stuck there. I enjoyed the wildlife and the beach and the food was fantastic.

More than that, I think it changed my travel style. Compared to this trip, my past trips had been far more frenetic: four nights here, three nights there, always moving every few days, gotta see it all. I'd originally planned this trip to be similar, but the Iran War kinda messed it up in a way that had me extending stays. This trip, and this stay in particular, made me realize I really like slow travel more.

This has been part four of a five part round the world trip.

• Cruising to the Old World
• Istanbul not Constantinople
• Better in Bangkok
• Killing Time in Kuantan
• Sunny in Sydney

Check out the final leg in Sydney.