The cheapest business class segment and a better Amex Platinum lounge (Nick’s Million Mile Madness travel journal)

Day 9 of our Million Mile Madness challenge Saw me fly what I believe is probably the cheapest business class segment of any of the three of us and I enjoyed a nicer Plaza Premium lounge thanks to my Amex Platinum card. More detail in my latest update.

Journal entries (newest to oldest)

Saturday, November 16, 2024

Garuda Indonesia Business Class, Kuala Lumpur to Jakarta

Today I flew Garuda Indonesia in what I’m guessing was the cheapest business class segment flown by any of us in this competition. In fact, I doubt that splurging for business class here is going to make any measurable impact on my trip’s overall affordability — and it’s going to add style points beyond the flight itself.

I originally booked Garuda Indonesia economy class from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Jakarta, Indonesia for about $135 one-way. That was fairly cheap for a Garuda flight that wasn’t a domestic Indonesian route — and since most of the cheaper domestic routes would really require two domestic segments on Garuda, it was only negligibly more than one would spend even if finding a pretty cheap domestic flight.

Like many other airlines, Garuda sent an email offering the chance to bid on an upgrade to business class. However, after clicking through, I was surprised by just how low the bidding range was set!

The low end of bidding started at about $53 and the high-end capped out at $59. Given the slim $6 difference between bottom end and the top end, clearly, the smartest strategy would have been to bid at the top end of the spectrum and ensure that it would at least be impossible to be outbid given the low cost to do so.

However, for some reason I don’t even understand, I decided to split the difference and bid in the middle at about $56.

Lucky for me, the gamble worked out and a few days before departure, I received an email saying that I was upgraded to business!

The real reason this ended up being huge is because it meant that I was able to use a dedicated priority immigration lane in Jakarta. You may recall Stephen pepper having quite a bit of trouble transiting there. My experience with smooth as butter. Note that I did apply for the visa on arrival in the morning the day of departure. My passport wouldn’t work at the e-gates, but I had no trouble going through with a regular officer. I simply entered the country and went to the check-in desk. When checking opened, I checked in for my next flight without an issue.

A nicer Plaza Premium lounge

When I made my way to a lounge at Jakarta’s terminal 3, it was the Sapphire Plaza premium Lounge. I initially handed over my Priority Pass And I was directed to a part of the lounge that had assigned a priority pass and Lounge key. It looked to be noticeably less fancy than another section of the lounge. I went back to the check-in desk to inquire.

To my surprise, I learned that the nicer part of the lounge is for business class passengers. There was a separate area for Priority Pass. I asked about the AmEx Platinum Card and the agent told me that Platinum card holders get access to the full business class section of the lounge and he asked if I had a Platinum card. I presented my platinum card and got access to the full Lounge. It was really nice! The seating and atmosphere felt nicer than an average lounge, there were food stations scattered around the lounge, and an ala cart ordering section. I was also told that this is glass passengers and platinum card holders have access to showers, but Priority Pass card holders do not.

Full Lounge:

Priority Pass section:

After the lounge, I flew KLM to Kuala Lumpur in an extra comfortable seat – but more details on that will have to wait until my next update as I’m already on board another flight after a the biggest “uh-oh” moment for me so far. More to come….

Friday, November 15, 2024

Today, I took a very long positioning flight on a low-cost carrier. It wasn’t bad at all!

I flew Air Asia from Seoul, Korea to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This was a 6.5-hour flight on a low-cost carrier, but I did a few things to make the experience at least a little bit better than it otherwise may have been.

The flight itself cost about $82 one-way, which seemed like an absolute steal given the distance covered. As is typical with low-cost-carriers, Air Asia offered what felt like a million add-ons during the booking process. I didn’t need most of the bundles they offer since I didn’t need a checked bag. In fact, I’m in such a habit of speeding through those menus with the “next” button that I clicked through to checkout without having read the details of the various packages. In the moment of transition between pages though, a package I didn’t realize existed caught enough of my eye for me to go back and re-read what it offered.

I had nearly missed a sort of hidden in a box separate from the main bundles that was titled “Fast Past”. That just sounded to me like priority check-in and priority boarding. Those things are nice enough, but I would have entirely ignored something called “Fast Pass” since I’d have figured that it would be $20 just for things I didn’t actually need. Luckily though, I saw something about cabin baggage as the page transitioned and I went back to check the details!

Fast Pass includes the following benefits:

• Cabin baggage weight booster. This was huge and was the main reason I was willing to spend an extra $19. A standard ticket with Air Asia only includes one carry-on bag up to 7kg — and they do weigh your carry-on baggage at check-in. Fast pass adds a booster: you can carry one bag up to 10kg or two bags totaling no more than 14kg. That effectively doubled my carry-on allowance so long as I bought a second bag! If you watched my packing video, you know that I had an extra bag in my bag — a collapsible backpack that I was able to fill with some of the stuff from my backpack, both reducing some of the load on my back (which was really starting to bother me from so many 20,000-step days carrying the extra weight on my back) and increasing my allowance to 14kg. I didn’t have a scale in my hotel room, so I wore my heaviest clothes to the airport (and even wore my jacket and put my heavy charging brick in the pocket just to lighten my bags) and sure enough, I was under 14kg at check-in. I know my bag would have been over 7kg on its own, so this was huge!
• Dedicated check-in counter. Unlike many other low-cost carriers, Air Asia actually sells flat-bed seats on some flights. There is a dedicated check-in lane for the premium flat-bed class and rather than wait in the (long and slow) economy lane, I got to walk right up to the counter with nobody in front of me in the priority lane.
• Priority Boarding (Zone 1). I got to board the plane with the premium flat-bed customers, so that was nice.
• Fast lane immigration services at select airports. Unfortunately, Air Asia doesn’t have any fast lane service in Seoul / Incheon, but in Kuala Lumpur, they offer access to the ______ lanes! That meant I wouldn’t have to wait in a long line on arrival. While I had the time to spare in this case as my layover is kind of long, I was glad not to have to stand around holding my backpack for longer than necessary. Did I mention that my back is really starting to hurt?

All of the above was certainly worth an extra $19 to me! If I look at the above benefits costing me less than five bucks each, it feels like a slamming deal to me. I wouldn’t have paid $20 just for priority boarding and priority check-in, but $5 each starts to sound pretty good — and when bundled with the additional carry-on allowance it was an absolute no-brainer for me. Fast track immigration was icing on the cake. While I initially ignored the Fast Pass box, I’m really glad it caught my eye in that moment before I went ahead and booked without it!

I was also able to select a seat in advance, perhaps because of the fast pass? I picked an interesting seat: 44C. The reason this seat was interesting is because of the layout of the plane. In this rear economy class cabin, the layout for about half the cabin is 3-4-3. However, at row 44, it becomes 2-4-2 and the aisle widens considerably.

I picked 44C, the aisle seat, knowing that I would have nobody to my right side, but there would be a seat diagonally in front to the right. That was big for a few reasons.

First, I’m right-handed. I tend to lean to the right side with my elbow out a little to the right while typing. I find it very uncomfortable to type in an economy class seat with someone sitting to my right.

Second, I knew that in my seat, I could keep my right leg extended out to the side and under the seat diagonally in front of my and it would be “protected”. Nobody was going to trip over it and no drink cart would hit it as everyone sees and has to walk around the seat. In rows behind me, since the entire aisle is widened, it becomes more likely that extending into that space could be problematic as flight attendants walk backwards into what they expect to be a wider space. Greg had also mentioned in his stories a trick that I had learned a long time ago about the hidden button that raises the aisle side arm rest, which enabled me to sprawl out a bit more when I wasn’t typing.

It actually ended up being just fine for the 6.5-hour flight. In fact, I would say that this flight was more comfortable than the Virgin Atlantic flight from New York to London in economy class. It felt like there was a bit more space at my seat — and in fact I think there was because of the way that the aisle tapered — the row in front of me didn’t appear to be completely perpendicular withe the wall — the seat in front of me was therefore a bit farther away from me and the one diagonal right a bit further yet. I didn’t realize in advance that would be the case, so don’t give me any special credit for that — it was just a nice surprise!

Overall, this was a comfortable enough way to fly for the day.

The one main negative I’d note on this flight is that it was freezing cold. I didn’t expect that as my general experience with Asian carriers is that the cabin is usually kept much warmer than I’d like. I mentioned above that I wore my heavy clothes on board, but I thought I would come to regret having thicker pants and I took my thick wool shirt off and put it in the overhead right away.

I fell asleep quickly, but when I woke up, I was freezing. I put that wool shirt back on as soon as I woke up — and in fact later in the flight I closed the top button hoping it would keep me a little warmer yet. In retrospect, Air Asia sells a thicker duvet blanket and rents a thinner more typical airline blanket, so maybe I should have expected that they’d try to drum up business with the thermostat!

When I arrived in Kuala Lumpur, I was glad to have kept my boarding pass. I often don’t know where I’ve tucked that away, but this time I did — and it was good that I did. Since I paid for Fast Pass, the boarding pass had an indication printed on it that I could use thew Fast Pass immigration lane at Kuala Lumpur.

This was essentially the area where crew and diplomatic passports would go. There was literally nobody in line there. I walked directly to an immigration officer and had my passport stamped and was in the country in less than a minute. I appreciated not having to wait in line!

Doubletree Kuala Lumpur

From there, I took the KLIA Express train to head downtown and stay at the DoubleTree Kuala Lumpur. The Doubletree is inside a shopping mall, which is both kind of weird and kind of fun (the check-in desk is to the left in this image).

The room itself was clean and nice. I had a nice welcome amenity of fruit waiting for me and I enjoyed my warm Doubletree cookie at check-in!

You’ll have to keep an eye on Instagram for a full video review. The club lounge here was fantastic. I said in the video that I appreciate a club lounge that knows you’re not just there for “appetizers” — there was a full spread that was clearly intended to be dinner, not a snack. There was a Mongolian chicken dish, fancy chicken sliders, little sandwiches, a chef preparing a local dish on the spot, and plenty of substantial finger foods. The dessert area looked gorgeous. Drinks — including wine and cocktails — were complimentary. This was definitely a good value for Hilton Diamond members!

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Frustrating start to the day: A cancelled ferry, long trip to Hong Kong, and flight delay (but also amazing efficiency)

My morning didn’t get off to the best start.

You may recall that I had yesterday arrived in Guangzhou from Bangkok and then taken a rideshare and a train and another rideshare to end up in Shenzhen, a Chinese city just outside of Hong Kong.

The reason for that indirect routing to Hong Kong was two-fold:

1. I wanted to take the ferry to Hong Kong airport. When I found that there was a verry directly to Hong Kong International Airport SkyPier, it sounded pretty cool. As I understand it, you can go through airport formalities in Shenzhen at the cruise terminal and then land in the secure center of Hong Kong International Airport. I thought that would make for a cool mode of transportation and an interesting experience!
2. I could pick up a Hyatt brand that only exists in China with a hotel next to the cruise port. URCove is a brand Hyatt launched in China that doesn’t exist elsewhere. This would give me a chance to pick up a brand for the purposes of Hyatt Brand Explorer awards that I’ll never get without going to China.

That first point ended up being all for naught.

The initial trouble was that I found conflicting information online as to whether the ferry was running. I booked the UrCove Shekou cruise terminal hotel and emailed them and they got back to me saying that yes, the ferry is running, and they gave me timetables, noting that the port opens at 6:00am and the appropriate ferry time for my flight would be the 08:45am ferry and I should go to buy tickets 1 hours before departure. Despite their suggestion that I could buy my ferry ticket an hour ahead of the departure, I wanted to make sure that I was all set, so I headed out from my hotel a couple of minutes before 6 to walk to the cruise terminal (about 500m from the hotel).

I found that the ferry does indeed exist, but because of a typhoon in Hong Kong, the first couple of ferries of the day had been cancelled. The day’s ferries weren’t expected to begin until after my flight would have departed.

That left me scrambling to find the next best way to Hong Kong. I knew I could take a train from Shenzhen North (kind of far from my hotel) or Futian (still kind of far, but less far), but those would drop me at West Kowloon. I had read that it was possible to cross the border by land at Shenzhen Bay or Futian and then take a bus directly to the airport, but in a hurry this morning and without the aid of Google Maps, I had difficulty figuring out what destination to put into the DiDi (rideshare app) for a driver to get me to the right place. I asked at the desk in the hotel and the desk agent suggested the ferry. I explained it was cancelled and he only mentioned the train from Shenzhen North.

I ended up taking a DiDi to the Futian Railway station because I knew there was a train at 7:45am to Hong Kong West Kowloon (it takes about 15 minutes) and a DiDi could get me there around 7:30am. As it so happens, that wasn’t early enough to get a ticked for the 7:45am, which meant that I had to take an 8:25am train that would get to Hong Kong at 8:40am. That was cutting things a bit tighter than I’d like. By the time I got through customs and immigration, it was about 8:54am and the next Hong Kong Express train wasn’t until 9:13am. I was concerned that wouldn’t get me to the airport in time since I’d only have about an hour and 20 minutes before my flight. I tried to get a taxi to the airport, but they couldn’t take a credit card. I took out the amount of cash I was quoted for a taxi to the airport (the local equivalent of about $50 USD, which I knew was ridiculous but I also was in a hurry to not miss my flight). When I got back, the next driver wanted the equivalent of $90. I didn’t have it and he didn’t want to take what I had, so out of the taxi it was.

There were no more taxis, so I went hunting for the Uber station. Meanwhile, a tout nearby stopped me and offered to take me to the airport for a decent price. I do generally know better than to accept that kind of offer, but I was in a hurry and I was pretty clear that I wasn’t in the mood to mess around. We went off hustling across West Kowloon station to get to the car. He initially wanted the cash, but while I was desperate, I wasn’t stupid. I insisted that I’d pay him when we got in the car. He seemed OK with that, but as we ran circles around the station, he started trying to say something about his metro card and his friend and he seemed annoyed with me that I hadn’t paid him. I wasn’t in the mood for any attitude, and in an ironic twist of good fate for me / bad fate for him, he led me directly past the boarding place for the Hong Kong Express train at 9:11am — two minutes before it was scheduled to depart and we weren’t yet anywhere close to a car. I told him it was taking too long and I was out of time and taking the train. Unfortunately, he wasn’t impressed with me, but the feeling was mutual and we split equally annoyed.

The train to the airport ended up being late, so I arrived at the airport much later than I would typically be comfortable (just before 10am for an 11:05am flight that was scheduled to board at 10:35am). However, knowing the efficiency of Hong Kong, I shouldn’t have been nervous: from the moment I stepped off the train to the moment I was finished with both airport security and passport control, it was exactly 10 minutes. And I couldn’t use the e-gate, so I had to go to an immigration agent — ten total minutes on the dot. Amazing.

I still had quite a hike to get to my gate. I ended up arriving 13 or 14 minutes before boarding began. Whew! I should be thankful for the unhelpful stranger who led me astray: if he hadn’t led me past the airport express at exactly that time, I probably would have missed that flight.

The good news is that I didn’t miss that flight thanks in no small part to the fact that I got up early enough to check on the ferry at 6am. I’m glad I didn’t show up at the ferry port at 7:45am!

And as for the UrCove, it was far nicer than I’d expected!

Learn from a local: How to order in Chinese in Taipei

My next flight today was Hong Kong to Taipei on China Airlines. It was a smooth enough flight once we actually took off and I enjoyed a full row of three seats to myself, which was terrific!

I’ve probably mentioned this in passing before on the podcast, but I’m not sure I’ve ever written about it. Before I worked for Frequent Miler, I spent years teaching English. It all started in 2008 when my wife and I decided that we didn’t like our jobs, so we quit and moved to South America and taught English for the better part of a year. When we finished up there, we ended up stumbling on an online English institute. Having long been bitten hard by the travel bug, we couldn’t resist the temptation of a job that required a laptop and an Internet connection.

That led us to spend a decade teaching English online (my wife still does). We ended up working for a company that expanded and grew at an incredible pace. We got in relatively early in the online teaching boom and worked a lot of hours — often times 60-80 hours a week during the first couple of years.

In addition to trying to say “yes” whenever we could, we made it a point to travel to company headquarters to meet face-to-face with the people in charge of our classes. That enabled us to become not just coworkers but friends with people who were also working hard to make the company successful. We build some good relationships with good people.

One of those people was Sharon. My wife and I started teaching large lecture classes in 2009 that oftentimes had 100+ students in a single lecture session (and at times, we did special events with 10,000 or more). Sharon was the person in charge of those large lecture classes.

When we went to Taiwan for the first time, we immediately hit it off with Sharon. She showed us around, took us to some great restaurants, and she was there the first time I tried stinky tofu. We traveled to Taiwan a couple of times and also saw Sharon at a company event in Shanghai in my early Frequent Miler days, but I haven’t seen her face-to-face in about 6 years.

When I sent Sharon a message last week explaining that I’d be in Taipei this week, but only for a few hours on a workday during work hours, I knew it was a long shot that this would work out. But, without hesitation, Sharon rearranged her schedule to meet up. I asked if she could teach me to order in Chinese and she was a great sport about helping me try! Truth be told, I was probably as surprised as she was that this all came together on such short notice, but I was thrilled to get a chance to meet up with a friend who is also a true local — Sharon was born and raised in Taipei and her parents are from Taipei, too.

We originally had plans to also do something else, but my flight from Hong Kong got stuck on the tarmac due to weather, so I arrived about an hour late at 2pm instead of 12:50pm. I got the airport MRT into the city right from the airport (less than $5) and arrived at Taipei Main Station at just past 3pm, meeting up with Sharon.

My next flight was at 7:25pm, so we had limited time, but we made the most of it, getting Bubble Tea and eating at Din Tai Fung. You’ve gotta see Instagram for the video evidence of my time with Sharon learning how to order in Chinese.

Every time we’ve gone out to eat with Sharon, the food has been delicious. This was no exception — she picked a few good dishes and by the time we left, I was *stuffed*. I couldn’t fit anything more in my stomach.

I said goodbye to Sharon around 5pm and headed back to Taipei Main Station to grab the MRT back to the airport. Once again, things felt a little tight: I got off the train at 6:07pm for a flight boarding at 6:55am and taking off at 7:25pm. But once again, I was literally through security and immigration in exactly 10 minutes. I ended up arriving with enough time to even stop at the Plaza Premium lounge, though I was so stuffed that I couldn’t eat anything (I also turned down the in-flight meal because I just couldn’t think of eating more).

At 7:25pm, I took off and I landed at 11:00pm, officially becoming a Seoul Man. But I don’t have much time to rest my soul in Seoul — this is just a quick overnight turnaround before the race continues.

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

This morning I woke up bright and early in Vietnam and made my way back to the airport to fly Vietnam Airlines from Hanoi to Bangkok. While I’d checked in online, I quickly discovered that you can not use a mobile boarding pass in Hanoi, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t check in online. See more about why in this post:

From there, I flew to Bangkok. I had paid for a fast track service through immigration, so someone was waiting with a sign with my name on it at the end of the jet bridge, but it turned out I didn’t need to do that since there is a way to transfer, even on a separate ticket. Still, she guided me to where I needed to go and knew where the Kenya Airways desk should be if it ever opened up (it didn’t, but it didn’t really matter).

Since I had way more time than expected, I spent time checking out two lounges — the Oman Air First & Business Class lounge and the Coral Best Business Class Lounge. I gave a brief review here:

From there, I flew the Kenya Airways fifth freedom route from Bangkok to Guangzhou, China. Since this flight only operates three times a week, there are bound to be a lot of people taking it since it is both the most efficient and cheapest way to knock off Kenya Airways if you’re chasing a million SAS miles. As it turns out, there are a lot of people chasing those SAS miles — in fact, we found at least a dozen of them on this flight alone today! And I do say “we” because, wouldn’t ya know it, Greg and I ended up on the same flight yet again! I’ve now run into Greg at JFK and been on the same flight as him from New York to London, London to Copenhagen, Riyadh to Doha, and Bangkok to Guangzhou.

I should mention for anyone flying this route for the challenge that although we were able to check in online and get a digital boarding pass, Kenya airways required going to the desk at the gate to verify documents. They required proof of onward travel to allow people to board.

After flying to Guangzhou, I took a DiDi (the local equivalent of Uber) to get to the Guangzhou South Railway station where I caught a train heading South. Keep an eye on Instagram to see where the train took me and to make your guesses as to where I’m headed next….

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Arrival in Saudia Arabia and waiting for my next flight

I arrived in Saudia Arabia on Monday night around 9pm on a Saudia flight from Istanbul. I was departing Saudia Arabia on an entirely separate ticket (on Qatar Airways) about 7.5 hours later at 4:35am. I’ve read questions on the Internet about whether or not it is possible to transit like that in Saudia Arabia without a visa. However, I wasn’t going to chance either A) having a problem at immigration or (more likely) B) an airline agent refusing to allow me to board without a visa. In other situations, maybe I’d have the time to duke that one out, but with this trip being so tightly choreographed, I couldn’t chance it: I just went ahead an applied for the visa.

That process was easy. The Saudi website had said that I’d receive an email when my application was processed / approved, but I never did receive an email — I simply logged back into the application site a few days later and saw that it was approved and I could download/print the visa. I had to show the visa at the Saudia desk in Istanbul to be issued my boarding pass, but I didn’t need to show it at immigration in Saudia Arabia (presumably that’s on file and they see it when they scan my passport).

Arrival was smooth and simple. Notably, Greg almost missed a flight because he flew into Jeddah and there was a long line for immigration. I could have flown to Riyadh or Jeddah, but I chose Riyadh specifically because everything I’d read online indicated that the arrivals process is smoother and faster in Riyadh.

I had to wait 3-4 hours in the departures area for the Qatar desk to open, but it was easy to find a place to sit and wait. The airport in Riyadh is very clean and modern. I got on the free Wi-Fi and got some work done.

Qatar Airways business class: Riyadh to Doha to Hanoi, Vietnam for 40K miles

Here’s a look at my day on Qatar Airways and in the Qatar Airways business class lounge:

Greg said in an Instagram story today that Qatar really does luxury right. I couldn’t agree more. I kept saying to myself, “now this is a great way to travel”. Everything from the seat to the food to the service to the incredible lounge, it’s just got most business class experiences beaten by leaps and bounds.

Early in the planning process for this challenge, I knew I’d have a chance to leverage one of my favorite award chart sweet spots: 40,000 American Airlines miles for business class between the Middle East and Asia. Filling in a long-haul gap with a “cheap” business class award seemed like a great way to add some style to a trip mostly full of economy class flights. The only question, really, was which route.

As noted above, I became enthusiastic about using this sweet spot early in the planning phase of this trip. I had originally set out with a mind to using an ANA round-the-world business class award to fill in long-haul gaps in comfort and style, but I quickly realized that there were just too many moving pieces between finding all of the qualifying flights and getting the right fare classes. Trying to squeeze it around a big ANA award just seemed like too much trouble (and too much potential for downfall — if I missed one of the ANA legs, I would likely lose everything else on that award).

The American Airlines sweet spot, by comparison, offered incredible flexibility. I could fly on Saudia to numerous places in the middle East and could find availability from there to almost any of the airports in Asia that might work for this challenge.

The question became what to prioritize:

1. Flying QSuites. Qatar doesn’t have Qsuites on every plane (far from it, actually!). Despite having flown Qatar business class numerous times, I’ve only ever flown in Qsuites on a short leg from Doha to Dubai! I considered making this a top priority.
2. Maximizing time in the air in business class. Early on, Jakarta (ironically, this is where Greg flew!) stood out as a good Qatar destination in order to have a really long Qatar business class flight / get to one of the farthest points with a high level of comfort/style.
3. Getting to an expensive gateway. Some carriers in Asia had more plentiful cheap flights than others. Should I prioritize affordability by getting to an airport that might otherwise be expensive to reach?

I went through iterations of all three. Another variable that might have complicated decisions for some is access to the Qatar first class lounge in Doha. We’ve written before that Qatar operates many two-cabin flights within the Middle East. The forward cabin of a two-cabin plane is always (or just about always?) priced as a business class award for award booking/pricing purposes. However, Qatar markets the forward cabin as “first class” in many cases. Because Qatar allows those either departing or arriving in first class, even regional 2-cabin first class, to use the Al Safwa First Class lounge, it can make a business class award with a little first class segment a smidge more valuable. Qatar’s first class lounge is really nice (I was there during 3 Cards 3 Continents).

Ultimately though, I settled on prioritizing a specific destination in order to use this leg to both pick up some style / comfort and increase affordability (or rather decrease the total cost of the Asian legs of the trip).

I therefore ended up with a Qatar flight on the shorter end of the spectrum in my leg from Doha to Hanoi, which was just a little over 6 hours of actual flight time. But in the end, it made the most sense my helping me keep some cents: I kept finding that SkyTeam flights to get to Vietnam were more expensive than I wanted them to be from the various places where I’d be looking to fly to or through Vietnam. I therefore decided that I wanted to fly Qatar to Vietnam on this non-qualifying flight in order to position for a cheap Vietnam Airlines flight.

That’s why I flew Riyadh to Doha to Hanoi, Vietnam for 40,000 American Airlines miles and about $75.

Keep in mind that for the purposes of the competition, we’re valuing those 40,000 AA miles at 1.3c per mile. That means this flight will count as $520 + taxes for a total just under $600 for the purposes of calculating my affordability score. That’s a great deal for Qatar business class, but consider that the real cost to me was lower: I donated money to Conservation International a few years ago when there was the SimplyMiles 240x deal. Essentially, I bought my stash of AA miles for 0.41c per mile. In other words, I bought the American Airlines miles that I used for this leg of the trip for just $164. At the time when I donated, I went big-ish precisely for situations like this one: I knew that there would be a day when I’d be thrilled to have bought miles so cheaply so that I could get some incredibly outsized redemption. My ship came in with this redemption!

I got to Hanoi late last night and it took me a bit to get to my hotel, but I got there. I won’t be here for long though — in the morning, it’s onward and upward as things get much more fast-paced for me for a couple of days….

Monday, November 11, 2024

The best Hampton by Hilton breakfast I’ve ever had

Having been to Istanbul last December (and also during our 3 Cards 3 Continents challenge), I well remembered the distance from the main international airport (IST) to the “downtown” area. It’s about 45 minutes via taxi (give or take depending on where exactly you’re headed). With my flight arriving at 10:45pm and both the knowledge of how tired I would be and that we had a live stream scheduled for 2am local time, I didn’t really want to travel all the way into town. I considered the Yotel transit hotel within the airport, but there was a Hampton by Hilton just a few miles away that was available for a decent price, so I booked it. I had been targeted for 30% back at Hilton via Capital One Shopping, which has made my Hilton stays an even better value!

Arrival at the airport was smooth enough — Americans no longer need a visa, so I didn’t have to stop at the Visa on Arrival desk. I had a little drama over the driver to the hotel. Uber has signs within the airport terminal saying “Welcome to Istanbul. Get your taxi via Uber” (not those exact words, but something like that). The short story is that I think Uber still isn’t allowed to pick up at the airport. A driver did pick me up, but I got a little hassle from another driver and my driver apparently got some hassle also. I wish Uber didn’t have that signage if they aren’t allowed to pick up at the airport!

I was also a bit uncomfortable with the fact that the driver had another passenger in the front seat when I got in the car. Everything turned out to be fine, but I probably should have just gone to the taxi stand.

Check-in at the hotel was uneventful. However, I was very surprised when I got the room and there was a welcome amenity! At a Hampton! It was a full plate of fruit. I was impressed!

Little did I know that breakfast would blow that out of the water.

Truth be told, I haven’t stayed at many Hamptons and most of them have been within the United States. And in fairness, most US hotel brands are much nicer abroad than within the US. So I guess I should have been less surprised than I was, but I associate Hampton with packaged muffins and make-your-own waffles. That’s fine with me, but I didn’t see this coming. Here’s the Instagram reel:

Or, if you prefer photos:

And that’s not all of it. At some point, someone in a full chef outfit came out of the kitchen with fresh simit and pastries right out of the oven and walked table to table offering it to guests before stocking the buffet!

When I arrived, the restaurant — yes, this Hampton has a restaurant — was closed, but they told me that they had room service 24 hours a day. I was kind of hungry, but I assumed that room service at the Hampton by Hilton in what felt kind of like the middle of nowhere near the airport just didn’t sound like it would be appealing. I fear I made a terrible mistake not ordering something!

Anyway, this is clearly a case of a hotel owner and Hilton completely misflagging a property. This should at least be a Hilton Garden Inn. With a little funky decor, I bet they could get away with it being one of the more “indie” type brands. The lobby was huge and had really nice seating areas.

I filled up big time at breakfast. I originally intended to head out to the Grand Bazaar, which I have missed on previous trips to Istanbul. However, traffic wasn’t good this morning. A taxi was going to take a solid hour from the Hampton to the Grand Bazaar and then driving time was running almost the same on the way back to the airport. Public transit options were even longer. I wanted to go, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it badly enough to sit in a taxi for two hours today. I didn’t think I could stay awake that long in a taxi — it just didn’t seem worth it. I ended up going back to sleep for a bit after breakfast and then heading to Istanbul airport.

IGA Lounge (Priority Pass) at Istanbul airport

At Istanbul airport, I went to the IGA Lounge, which is accessible via Priority Pass. It’s a really big Priority pass lounge with an impressive spread of food and a station preparing fresh pitas and other dishes. Keep an eye on Instagram for a brief video to come.

I’ll note that I found the lounge entrance a little tricky to find. In fact, I completely passed the lounge the first time. That worked out to be a very lucky mistake as it meant that I found Max Brenner, Chocolate by the Bald Man. I love their thick Italian hot chocolate and I very much look forward to getting it at the Shops at Bryant Park when we head to New York City during the holidays each year, so it was an awesome treat to get one today!

Turning back around, I found the entrance to the IGA Louge directly above the Yotel transit hotel — it’s pretty hard to miss the Yotel signage.

Next airline up: Saudia to Riyadh

After some time working on this update in the lounge, I had to head to my gate to pick up my next airline: Saudia to Riyadh. I was pleasantly surprised at check-in when the agent told me that I had an aisle seat but that he could give me an exit row aisle seat if I preferred. Yes, of course I preferred!

This was a far more comfortable flight than my Virgin Atlantic flight to London! I had plenty of legroom and the seat felt wide for economy class, too.

Food doesn’t look good, but I love the spices of Middle Eastern food. This was a chicken dish and I found it very flavorful despite the appearance.

Overall, it was a smooth flight. I made it to Riyadh and got some sleep during the flight.

But I’m not long for Riyadh. I arrived on a one-way ticket from Saudia, but I am departing on a separate ticket entirely. More to come….

Sunday, November 10, 2024

Stay at the Hilton Garden Inn Bucharest Airport

My flight to Bucharest (a Wizz Air positioning flight) landed at 01:35am and taxiied for what felt like it must have been a complete tour of the Bucharest airport. By the time I got to the hotel, it was well after 2am. After talking to my family and getting a little work done, I got to sleep late. Thankfully, the friendly front desk agents, Cristi and Marius, had graciously extended me a late checkout.

That conversation is worth a mention: Marius asked me if I was going to check out at noon or if I needed a late checkout. I said that a late checkout would be wonderful and he asked me what time. I said, “Is 2pm OK?”. He said, “Two PM is OK for me, but is it OK for you?”. I came back and said, “Well, if I could get 4pm that would be wonderful.”. He typed something and then handed me my key and said he’d set the checkout for 5pm. Amazing.

I was excited about the late checkout not necessarily because I planned to sleep late but more so because I planned to wash my merino wool shirt and underwear in the room and I wasn’t sure if they would dry by the time I was planning to leave the hotel. The late checkout meant that my “laundry” would have plenty of time to dry!

As it turned out, I completely overslept my alarm. About half an hour after I woke up, I noticed that the hotel phone next to the bed was off the hook and upside down. In that moment, I suddenly had a vague recollection of slamming the phone repeatedly and then trying to pull it out of the wall because it wouldn’t stop ringing. In hiindsight, that probably didn’t help because the sound was probably my phone alarm. Needless to say, I overslept that alarm. Clearly, after very little sleep sitting up from Friday to Saturday and then being up until early morning local time, my body needed some rest.

That meant that I didn’t get out the door as early as I wanted today, but it fit the theme since today was all about rest & relaxation.

My day at Therme Bucharest

Last week, a reader pointed out to me that Bucharest has what they bill as “the largest wellness center in all of Europe”. Therme Bucharest is massive.

I’m going to describe what this place is, but let me lead with the fact that although I think you’d agree that I’m being accurate if you went to Therme Bucharest, you probably won’t picture it quite right. Therme Bucharest is kind of like Great Wolf Lodge meets luxe spa meets Tokyo Disney. I know, that all sounds highly contradictory. Here’s why I say each:

• Great Wolf Lodge: The family area (called “The Palm”) has waterslides that would put Great Wolf Lodge to shame. And on a weekend day, it certainly packs people in that area with a density that you’d find at a Great Wolf Lodge. However…
• Lux spa: Despite the fact that the place draws literally thousands of guests simultaneously on a weekend day, it is surprisingly clean. Given the traffic this place gets, I wouldn’t expect the excellent condition it’s in. And there must have been at least 5 or 6 different saunas with different vibes and they weren’t overcrowded when I went. There are of course spa treatments available (though good luck getting an appointment on a weekend since you can’t book in advance). The place just had a more “upscale” vibe outside of the waterslide area despite prices being pretty reasonable everywhere.
• Tokyo Disney: I first make this comparison because of prices. Like Tokyo Disney, this place isn’t wildly overpriced. That’s not to say that prices are lower than what you can probably find elsewhere in Romania, but stuff isn’t priced at “theme park” levels in my opinion (in a similar way to what I found at Tokyo Disney). The other comparisons to Disney (in general) are because it can be very crowded on a weekend day and because everything runs by a bracelet and pretty efficiently (you use a bracelet to access the various areas for which you are entitled with your ticket and to “pay” at restaurants or bars, settling up your bill in full at the end (which can be done at a kiosk). I found this to be nicely efficient.

I really enjoyed Therme Bucharest. Reviews online seem mixed — people either love it or seem put off. I think that is probably largely influenced by the influx of people on a weekend day. I knew this going in, so I wasn’t surprised by the crowd and didn’t mind waiting when I had to. I’d definitely go back on a weekday instead of a weekend, but I wouldn’t take back my visit today — I had a great time and particularly loved the saunas.

Each of the different spas had a different look, feel, and temperature. The rest of the Frequent Miler team knows that I love heat and humidity – I describe it saying that I feel like the air is hugging me and I like that well enough. It should come as no surprise then that I loved the Alhambra sauna, which was intensely hot. I hadn’t ever paid much attention to saunas until I went to Finland during 3 Cards 3 Continents and I had one in my room there. I fell in love with the Finnish sauna and have said that I’d love to have one at home someday. I found it sooo relaxing today! After a couple of days of being cramped in an airplane seat and sleeping in uncomfortable positions, it felt so good to relax and unwind!

Therme Bucharest has so much to it: mineral baths, steam baths, saunas, swimming pools, a set of waterslides that puts Great Wolf Lodge to shame, infrared light beds, hot tubs, swim-up bars, restaurants, spa treatments, and the biggest locker room I’ve ever seen (my locker was number 5764 and I think it there really were six thousand lockers).

Access is on a 3-tier basis. You can pay just to access the sort of “family” area (“The Palm” where they have the water slides or you can get the “family” area and the “Galaxy” area with some hot tubs, steam bath, hydrotherapy tables (this is something you pay separately to use), huge indoor and outdoor pools and lots of seating or you pay to have the works: both of the aforementioned areas and the “Elysium” area with saunas, infrared beds, spa treatments, and a better restaurant. You can buy a 3hr pass, a 4.5hr pass, or a full day pass.

I paid for the full day pass for the works and it was about $41. I wouldn’t recommend a 3hr pass as I just don’t think that’s enough time to experience everything. I think the choice is between a 4.5hr pass and a full day. The difference in price on the level that gave access to everything was $34 vs $41.

Note that you do need a swimsuit and flip flops. You can not wear this stuff in, you need to bring it in your backpack/bag. Again, I read that in advance — but if you don’t, they’re going to make you buy their flip flops because they want the footwear to be “clean”. Don’t wear your swimsuit or your flipflops — bring them to change into. Or, if you don’t want to bring them with you, you can buy a swimsuit and flip-flops. I brought a towel from my hotel room, but you can also rent a towel and robe if you wish. I think the robe is nice to have (and in the restaurant in the Elysium area, you need a robe — I think they’ll provide one for restaurant use if you didn’t rent one, but it’s a different color and needs to be returned after you eat.

They have luggage storage, so if you’re coming on a layover or before or after a flight, you can use the spa and they’ll hold luggage.

Overall, I found prices to be very reasonable and Therme Bucharest to make for a great “calm before the storm”. This was just the reset I needed after flying to Europe in economy class and hitting the ground running yesterday. Now I’m ready for the next leg of the adventure, where the pace will soon pick up — but not before a chance to see something I’ve missed on a couple of previous trips . . .

Saturday, November 9, 2024

It’s been a full day! After starting the morning in London, Greg and I found that we were not only on the same flight to London, but also on the same SAS flight to Copenhagen! Maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise given that it was a very cheap qualifying flight (I think I saw it at one point for about $87, though I paid about $130) and it departed at the right interval after our flight to London landed (about 4 hours after we were scheduled to land). I can confirm that a “Go Light” ticket booked via their website booked into L-class and earned 100 miles.

However, we had a further surprise in store as we came to find out that we had some more company on the flight — Stephen, who flew into London the night before us, was also on the SAS flight to Copenhagen. Not only that, but we ran into a few fellow travelers who are also out running around to try to collect the million SAS miles!

We started out the morning in the Plaza Premium lounge at LHR Terminal 2, which presented a much needed chance for me to recharge (with no in-seat power on the Virgin Atlantic flight, my phone, computer, and battery pack were all nearly dead!). As for the flight itself, I got a taste of “Reyes business class” — an empty middle seat made it easy to spread out!

Then, upon arrival in Copenhagen, I decided to tag along with Greg and Stephen. My initial plan had been to take mass transit into the city and do some wandering anyway, so I tagged along with them and we wandered Christiania and saw a Thomas Dambo troll! The funny thing is that I’ve been following Canadian blog Travel with TMc since meeting Tara at Travel Summit in earlier this year and I reached out to her for any tips she had on Copenhagen (she was there a few months ago). She unequivocally suggested finding a troll or two, but her rationale hit home: she said my kids would love it. I had actually set out on this trip planning to make separate videos for my kids explaining places and things I was seeing, and “my kids” had left a note in my backpack that I found when I got to JFK to depart for London:

They absolutely would love seeing a giant troll. And I can confirm that they did indeed love it — they each had huge smiles on their faces when they sent me a reaction video. I’m glad we got to see Christiania and Green George.

Then, after some pastries, it was time for Greg and Stephen to head back to the airport. I was tempted by the convenience of a taxi, but I ended up finding the DOT Ticket app easy to use to both find the price and buy a ticket. I simply allowed the app to know my location and entered where I wanted to go.

Once in the center city area, Greg had given me a dinner recommendation for a ramen joint. I was immediately skeptical. I was in Japan over the summer and I’ve also enjoyed great ramen in plenty of other cities – was that really going to be how I’d spend my time dining in Copenhagen?

However, the source of his recommendation was strong: the owners of one of his favorite restaurants at home had raved about this ramen place. I’ve seen pictures and heard stories of the food at their restaurant, so when Greg told me that they had traveled all the way to Copenhagen and had eaten at this ramen place more than one time on their trip since it was so good, I knew it had to be legit.

And legit it was.

Let me bookend with the start and finish:

• The restaurant opens at 5pm. I arrived at 4:36pm and a line was already forming.
• By 4:50pm, the line was starting to really stretch down the block. There were already more people waiting than there are seats. Waiting in the cold, mind you. For a restaurant that has no restrooms. The fact that people wanted to wait uncomfortably to squeeze in and eat there was a good sign.
• I texted my family after I finished and said: I wish I had a second stomach because I am NOT ready to be finished tasting this!

I had a Nduja Ramen that was among the most flavorful I’ve ever had. The way it was finished with an anchovy lemon sauce made me a little nervous on paper, but it turned out to be absolutely amazing. The acidity of the lemon cut the spiciness of the Nduja sausage in such a delightful way that I’m going to cut a lemon at home the next time we have hot sausage and try just pouring some lemon juice on it!

I ordered a buckwheat tea that was recommended with the dish I got and it paired magnificently well. I don’t think I’d drink the tea on its own, but the bitterness of the tea balanced against the sweet and spicy flavors of the dish in the most harmonious way. It was a perfect match.

I should add that the menu is limited. They just do a few types of ramen. The kitchen is right in front of you and with nineties rock music blaring in the background, the second in command was constantly yelling out, “Chef, blah blah blah” where the blah blah blah was explaining what he was preparing or what he needed or whatever. If you’ve ever been in the kitchen of a high-end restaurant, it’ll be familiar. I’d absolutely go back. Note that seating is very limited.

After dinner, I explored a market with amazing looking meats and desserts. I ended up getting a Danish Rum Cake that was delish.

After wandering downtown for a bit (I loved the vibe, with tons of people out walking and riding bicycles despite the chilly temperature!), I looked up public transit back to the airport. I specifically navigated to the parking garage where we’d used lockers for our bags. That led me to end up taking a bus that dropped me off in a residential neighborhood that was a 9-minute walk from the airport. That was kind of cool.

By the time I got back to the airport, I had put in more than 18,000 steps for the day. By the time I took the estimated 19-minute walk to my gate, I’d been well over 20,000. That was a respectable day considering that I had probably only slept for about 2.5hrs on the Virgin Atlantic flight and maybe 2 more on SAS to Copenhagen.

Still, I was pretty tired when I got back to the airport. Copenhagen airport pretty much shuts down at night. The Priority Pass lounges close at 8pm and so do most of the shops and restaurants. That left me with a pretty quiet terminal from which to upload the pictures in this post.

Around 10pm, I boarded a flight to my next stop. It’s going to be a late night, but I’m pretty excited about tomorrow . . .

Friday, November 8, 2024

My first flight of Frequent Miler’s Million Mile Madness is in the air and I wanted to spit out a quick post sharing how I spent less money on it than I otherwise would have — and likely less than Greg or Stephen will spend on crossing the Atlantic.

How I saved money (and used a credit card benefit) to book Virgin Atlantic

First of all, I booked this flight just a few days after we announced this competition.

When we first announced Million Mile Madness, Virgin Atlantic flights from New York JFK to London were available for $194 almost every day for the first couple of weeks of November. However, as the days passed, I began seeing less and less availability. While I originally wanted to leave after November 9th (we had family tickets to see a play), I realized that it would likely be hard to leave after the 9th and be home in time for a coming parent/teacher conference day at school. I had to jump while I could get a flight that left early enough to get me home when I needed to be there.

I ended up deciding on this specific departure (6:30pm on Friday, November 8th) for $194 after great internal debate over paying $244 for the exact 8am departure / daytime flight that Stephen took! The daytime flight would likely be less painful, but by the time I decided to book, that flight had already increased to $364. I was stuck with the overnight flight.

However, wanting to pay as little as possible, I pulled out one of the tricks of the trade.

Virgin Atlantic partners with Delta and many of their flights can be booked either through Virgin Atlantic or through Delta. In this case, the price was the same whether I booked through Virgin Atlantic or Delta. It was a little less clear as to what the fare class would be if I booked through Delta and whether it would qualify. I’ll dig into that after I see whether this flight credits as expected.

I recently wrote about how I opened a new American Express Business Platinum card under the targeted 250,000-point offer. I’ve since earned the 250,000-point welcome bonus, but I haven’t yet used all of the “coupon book” benefits. One of those benefits is up to $200 per year in airline incidental credits. I had a plan for how to put those credits to use for this flight!

First, I chose Delta as my Platinum card chosen airline as soon as I thought about doing this since I know that you usually need to wait until the next business day after selecting your airline before making a qualifying charge.

While flight tickets don’t qualify as an official way to trigger Amex Airline incidental credits, our guide to what still works to trigger credits has shown that many readers have reported that using a gift card to pay part of the cost of the flight and a Platinum card to pay the balance will often trigger an airline fee credit if the part charged to the card isn’t far more than $200. In this case, I redeemed $50 worth of rewards in the Pepper Rewards app to generate a $50 Delta Gift Card. I used that gift card and my Platinum card to pay the other $143.30. As expected, the Delta charge for this Virgin Atlantic flight booked via Delta got reimbursed.

Again, in this case, I was booking a Virgin Atlantic-operated flight through the Delta website. Since the charge came from Delta, it triggered an airline incidental credit even though it wasn’t a Delta flight (of course, since I booked through Delta, it had a Delta flight number also). And even though flights aren’t among the listed things that get reimbursed, this experience further illustrates that sometimes you have to look beyond the terms and for actual data points.

I’ll add the answer to the question that some may have: no, you can’t use your Platinum card to access the Delta SkyClub when on a Virgin Atlantic flight. I went to the SkyClub to try even though I’d read that the flight needs to be Delta-operated (except if you’re flying WestJet, in which case a Delta-marketed by WestJet-operated flight could still get you in!).

Still, Since I just opened this card and earned the 250,000-point welcome bonus, it felt like a win to trigger $143.30 in incidental credits without having to fly Delta :-). Keep in mind that for the purposes of the SAS promotion, the operating carrier is the one that counts.

A slight wrinkle could still ensue. While the $194 fare booked through Virgin Atlantic was a T fare class, which earns miles with SAS, booking via Delta put me in E class. A Delta-operated flight in an E fare class does not earn SAS miles. However, I looked up my itinerary on VirginAtlantic.com, and sure enough it shows that I’m in E class — and the good news (I think!) is that Virgin Atlantic E-class does earn miles with SAS EuroBonus (50% of mileage flown). We’ll see how that actually shakes out.

I have reason to believe that the ticketing carrier assigns the fare class for the purposes of this promotion, but I can’t yet explain why I think that to be true. Hopefully, this flight will credit to SAS in a few days and we’ll know….

In the meantime, I’m up in the air and about to work on Week in Review before (hopefully) getting a couple of hours of sleep sitting straight up. The good news is that I have an inflatable neck pillow. The bad news is that even when I inflated it, the seat in front of me didn’t move any further away. I’m hoping I get some sleep though….or else tomorrow is going to be a really long day…..

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

I can’t believe that I’m taking off for this trip in just over 48 hours!

Things have really been coming down to the wire. I’d been nervously awaiting a couple of e-Visas — not nervous about being approved, but about being approved in time. The last of those came through sometime between last night and this morning, which eases my nervousness significantly as not getting one of those would have potentially forced me to change some (nonrefundable) plans.

One final flight dilemma is that I have a pretty tight connection in Bangkok on separate tickets. I’ll be flying into Bangkok on one airline and out on the Kenya Airways fifth freedom flight to Guangzhou, China with only about two and a half hours in between flights. I don’t know whether Kenya Airways has a transit desk at Bangkok airport, so I’m assuming I’ll have to go through immigration and then perhaps stop at the check-in counter and go through security again — all of which could take a while. I see that one can buy fast track security on Klook.com (a site like Viator that is perhaps more popular in Asia). Should I pay ~$70 to fast-track through immigration? Or is 2.5 hours enough time in Bangkok on separate tickets?

That dilemma aside, my flights are all booked (so long as all goes according to plan). That’s not to say that all of my transportation is sorted, but I’m chugging along and I know I’ll figure out the rest somewhere down the line. I am now working on getting some backup flights sorted just in case something goes wrong along the way in places where I don’t have a lot of room for error. I’m glad to have access to programs like American Airlines and United Mileage Plus with their fully-refundable awards.

Hotels are mostly and tentatively booked. I’ve got some flexibility and I’m second-guessing some choices and chasing some availability. Overall, I feel pretty good about lodging:

• Overall, I’ve kept the lodging budget very reasonable. No lodging nights have a net cost of more than $200 and I have a couple of nights under $100.
• I’m doing some pretty good stacking of opportunities. I registered for both Hilton for Business to earn 7,500 bonus Hilton points on my first Hilton for Business stay and I registered for the current Hilton promotion to earn 2,500 points per stay.
• I was intentional about some lodging choices in ways that I think will enhance comfort and/or convenience.
• I have one hotel that I’m particularly excited about for a number of reasons (location, vibe, value). Perhaps most importantly, it is a brand that I bet neither Stephen or Greg will hit on this trip — and I’m not even sure that either has ever stayed at one.

I’m not quite “done” with hotels and logistics, but neither am I particularly anxious about them. Those things will probably come together well enough.

What I am highly anxious about at this point is one big detail: packing.

While a lot of my flights would include a free checked bag, not all of my layovers would allow time to collect checked baggage and make the next flight. And I have a couple of budget carriers involved where my free allowance will be limited to a bag that fits under the seat in front of me. That means I am only going to bring a small backpack on this trip. Over the past year, I transitioned from a larger Tumi Alpha Bravo backpack to a more medium-sized Tumi. That wasn’t really a desired choice — I was cashing out some rewards in a situation where I had limited reward choices. I had enough for the Tumi bag I got, but not the Tumi bag I wanted. So here I am with less space than I’d like.

From a technology standpoint, I absolutely need my laptop. I’ll also bring two phones — I just got a new Pixel 9 Pro this week and I’m going to bring my Pixel 7 Pro (that I’m trading in for the 9 Pro!) as a backup since it doesn’t need to be turned in for 30 days for the trade-in. Other technology items I’ll bring:

• Charging cable case. This holds my 200W wall brick, which can charge two devices at 100W each at the same time or can charge my laptop at the full 100W and still quick charge my phone and also charge my smartwatch. It also has a long cable I can use for extra reach or in situations where the wall brick would be too heavy and fall out (this is a link to the charger, which is our affiliate link) The brick itself also has some wall adapters, but I’ll bring one extra wall adapter “just in case”.
• One 26,000 mAh battery pack. This charges my phone several times over and at high speed. It can also charge my laptop in a pinch, though the laptop battery will eat it up pretty quickly. This is the one I use (our affiliate link).
• An Insta360 camera. I bought this using Business Platinum card Dell credits recently.
• Google Pixel Buds Pro. I still haven’t tried out the live translate feature, but I hope to on this trip!
• Bose QuietComfort noise-cancelling headphones (over the ear). I bought these in a deal we wrote about a few years ago and I love them for when I want to tune out the world around me.

That stuff is all standard fare for my laptop bag.

However, complicating matters considerably is the fact that this trip includes a lot of very different places / climates. I’m anticipating a range of 60-70 degrees between daily highs and lows. I need to pack for very different situations.

I’ve become a big fan of merino wool over the past few challenges. It’s thin and light, so it won’t take up much space or add much weight to my backpack. It doesn’t really pick up odors (GREAT for re-packing). And it dries very quickly — I can easily hand-wash clothes in the bathroom sink (using shampoo! after all, it is essentially made of hair/fur) and it will hang dry overnight.

I’ve experimented with a few brands, but I really like Wool & Prince for quality. I bought some much cheaper merino wool shirts on Amazon that I liked well enough at first, but one fell apart pretty quickly and the other feels itchy. My Wool & Prince shirts have a noticeably higher quality feel (frankly, for the price, they should). For this trip, I’m bringing:

• 1 Wool & Prince polo shirt (I debuted this one during 3 Cards 3 Continents, so maybe it’s my lucky shirt?)
• 1 Wool & Prince V-neck tee
• 1 Wool & Prince button down dress shirt (both for warmth in cooler climates and for style when doing something on the fancy side)
• 1 pair of very lightweight pants (I got these in Japan this summer and they feel like they are made from a parachute if it was too thin to be a parachute)
• 1 pair of zip-off pants — they can be worn as pants or the legs can zip off to become shorts. I’m bringing these for their versatility.
• Holey socks. Yes, I’m bringing socks with holes to start the trip. Like many other guys, I tend to wear socks well beyond when they should be retired, so I have several pairs that have been due to have been discarded for some time now. My plan here is to take socks that I was going to throw away and wear them for the first several days of the trip and just throw them out as I go so that I don’t have to worry about them stinking up my backpack. Then I’ll buy some new socks during the trip. I don’t yet know what I’ll do with those socks when they stink, but that’s future me’s problem.
• Sunglasses. I’ve been buying prescription sunglasses along with my regular classes from Kits.com for the past couple of years and I love them.
• Toiletry bag with mostly just essentials: toothbrush/toothpaste, shaving stuff.
• Folding jacket. I’ve had one from UNIQLO for more than a decade that folds really small but is also really warm, but the zipper finally fell apart recently. I just bought a replacement and was glad to see that it’s now water-repellant as this will double as a raincoat but hopefully keep my warm enough for more wintry weather.
• Scarf. I’ve got a reasonably thin but still warm scarf picked out.
• Bathing suit. I’m of two minds on this as I’m not sure I’ll have the time to swim and dry the thing, but I’m bringing one nonetheless.
• Drawstring bag. I like to bring this inside my backpack for situations where I need to carry around less stuff and/or in case I pick up a bunch more stuff that I need to carry home!
• My Frequent Miler Million Mile Madness hat!

Is this all going to fit??!?? I seriously don’t know, but I am simultaneously unsure what can go if not……but talking about it made me feel better I guess? Keep an eye on Frequent Miler’s Instagram page today as I plan to post my packing video showing everything going into my backpack…and whether this all fits!

Now to see how quickly I can move everything over to my new Pixel 9 Pro phone . . .

Wednesday October 30, 2024

This challenge is, hands down, the most difficult one we’ve done to date. I’m sure it won’t look that way, but trust me: making this trip work has been far more difficult than I’d have ever imagined.

On the surface, this seems like a cool puzzle game: find the cheapest flights, connect the dots efficiently, and you’re done.

Ha!

On the contrary, I feel like I’ve been locked in a Saw-movie themed escape room for days, but also surrounded by walls covered with spirals and numbers a la Russel Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. While I initially thought that SAS was a little nutty in offering this promotion, I now realize that the only people who are likely to complete the challenge are those who can spend 3+ weeks traveling and who can devote many hours to researching qualifying flights. Somebody in the marketing department was several chess moves ahead of me in realizing how easy this would sound but how difficult it would be to execute.

I’ve documented a bit about the difficulty of finding flights that qualify based on operating carrier and fare class (and how difficult it can sometimes be to find a qualifying fare class). If you don’t know how to use ITA Matrix / how to recognize a fare basis code by finding the (sometimes buried) link to fare conditions and then sifting through unformatted text looking for it to appear anywhere in the long fare conditions document, you’re probably in for a world of pain.

I’ve not yet documented the challenge of scheduling. I rarely think much about schedules when booking trips because I’m not generally trying to thread the needle from one flight to the next. However, when you’re planning a multi-day multi-carrier trip where one of your primary goals is to get it done quickly, schedules suddenly matter a lot. That flight you saw departing at 8am every day? Just wait until you get a dozen flights laid out and you realize that the 8am departure goes every day except the one when you’re scheduled to arrive at that airport, so you’ll have to wait until a 9pm departure and arrive at the next city a day later than planned, breaking the rest of the itinerary entirely. Wait until that happens after you’ve already booked the preceding 12 flights and can’t change any of it. Ask me how I know about that. If you’re not meticulous, you’re in for a world of pain.

Speaking of being unable to change, never have I booked a trip with so much riding on each step of the booking process. As a primarily award traveler, I’ve become spoiled by the flexibility I usually enjoy — typically when I’m booking a trip, there’s no mistake that can’t be undone since most award tickets can be changed or cancelled cheaply enough (or even for free). Things are far different this time around since we are mostly booking nonrefundable cash fares — one mistaken date or time could throw off everything, particularly if the next several steps depend on it. I’ve got a spreadsheet with more than 20 tabs of different iterations of the trip. Despite being what I thought was meticulously careful about everything, I’ve still discovered mistakes a bunch of times (at one point, I thought I had it all figured out and I was ready to start booking everything only to count my carriers and realize that I had somehow completely forgotten to include one in the plan). If you book the wrong date or hour or miss a carrier or miss a flight, you’re in for a world of pain in figuring out how to backtrack.

And then there’s the timing / pace. I told Greg yesterday that I’m confident that I’m going to beat him on speed (perhaps not on time spent in the air, but at least on the number of days to complete the challenge). That’s not because I don’t think Greg is capable of planning an itinerary that is faster than mine. I know it is physically possible to plan even tighter connections in some places, but beyond the risk of super tight separate-ticket connections, at some point this becomes an exercise in pain tolerance. How many straight days of doing nothing but flying in an economy class seat can you handle in a row? Can you fly every single day for nearly two weeks? Enjoy 1am departures followed by an afternoon connection? If you answered yes, this game might be for you. My point though is that I know it is possible to complete the challenge faster than I will (and I think Stephen will probably beat me on speed), I don’t think Greg has a higher tolerance for a brutal pace of travel. At the same time, I know that this challenge would be easy if given 3 weeks to complete it. I can’t see Greg the Frequent Miler taking the easy way out, so I expect he will still finish in an impressive amount of time. I won’t beat him by more than a day or two — and maybe he’ll make me eat my words entirely. No matter what happens, I can pretty much guarantee that we’re all going to be wiped out when this thing ends between the pace of travel, the jet lag, etc.

And yet, all that said, we were all smiling and laughing about our shared experience with all of the above in our team meeting yesterday.

I had a college track & field coach who had been a Division I decathlete. When asked about training for the decathlon, his face lit up as he described how you have to be wired to enjoy the pain. I don’t doubt that he had that gene. I’ll always remember the day we were doing a workout that included twenty four 400m repeats on the track at one-mile pace with a minute of rest between each. We got about fifteen or sixteen 400’s into the workout (about 4 miles) and I started vomiting. When the timer went off to mark the end of that minute of rest, he looked at me and said, “Ok, you’re done throwing up. Now get back on the track”. That was probably the day when I realized that I didn’t have that spark for that particular pain. But after very little sleep for the past week and difficulty focusing on anything other than Million Mile Madness thanks to being obsessed with this challenge, I have to say that this is my kind of pain.

All of that meandering out of the way, here are some actual updates:

• As you can see in comments and may have heard on the podcast, I pretty quickly threw out the idea of the ANA round the world. Anish in the comments did an amazing job laying out almost an entire itinerary that included an ANA round the world, but I needed to tweak some other things and eventually realized that the round the world was just adding unnecessary complication to what is already pretty complicated.
• The above is not to say that I’m not using miles to add some pizazz and comfort to the trip.
• I’ve got flights for more than 75% of the trip booked at this point. Readers have been instrumentally helpful in the comments. If you’re thinking about trying to do this thing, I recommend spending some time in the comments.
• There’s one flight that I’m nervous isn’t going to credit properly, and it’s not going to be an easy save. I might be locked into 15 carriers without being able to miss any of them. I’m nervous!
• My connections are mostly pretty tight. I’ll have less time for sightseeing / doing stuff than planned, but I’m still up for recommendations for specific places where I’m likely to have time. I have a few hours in most of the carrier hubs, so if you have a hub-specific suggestion that isn’t far from the airport, let me know!
• I also have one stop up my sleeve that I’m betting won’t be on Greg or Stephen’s itinerary….and I’m pretty excited about it. Can’t share more detail yet, but I do have a little bit of style incoming during the back half of the trip.
• Since Hilton has generously provided 5 “Be My Guest” certificates to the reader who helps the winner of the challenge the most, I’m aiming to stay at Hilton properties whenever possible/practical as a way of saying thanks for giving the winner something awesome.

Here are some specific areas where I currently need help:

• I’m looking for a great restaurant recommendation in Bangkok. Realistically, I’ll probably only have about 3.5-4 hours between the time I walk out of the airport and the time I should be walking back in, but I would love to get a delicious Thai meal in that time. I love Thai curries (Panang curry and Massaman curry are my favorites, but I also love Thai Yellow/Green/Red curries). Can you point me to a great curry spot that won’t take too long to reach? Keep in mind that public transit from the airport to city center takes about an hour each way. A taxi might reach the city center in half that time, but that all depends on traffic. Closer to the airport is better, but I’m open to your recommendations!
• Do you have a can’t-miss recommendation for Bucharest? I’ll have a good chunk of a day here and I’ve never been to Bucharest. I haven’t done any research about what to do here yet. Glad to get a great recommendation for an activity / thing to see / activity to do.
• Is there a place to see dolphins in the sea within a short flight from Kuala Lumpur? I didn’t have “three trips to Kuala Lumpur” on my 2024 Bingo card. I currently have about 24 hours in Kuala Lumpur and since I did a little sightseeing there with Greg and Tim a couple of months ago, I’m leaning towards using that day to rest/recharge/get work done. However, during the team meeting yesterday, Carrie said she’d award extra style points if someone swims with dolphins. She of course meant wild dolphins in the sea — I’m not looking for a caged dolphin encounter type of experience, but something more like when I booked a snorkeling trip in Oman to see sea turtles during 3 cards 3 continents and ended up face-to-face with whale sharks! Or maybe I don’t need dolphins at all — but I know that Kuala Lumpur has a host of low-cost-carrier flights to nearby places for peanuts where I might be able to see the sea or do something cool. Again, I’m leaning towards just relaxing for the day in Kuala Lumpur, but I theoretically have enough time that I could fly somewhere else to spend the night if it’s a flight time of around an hour and there’s an early flight back to KUL early in the morning the next day. Thoughts? Psst — Langkawi won’t work. The first flight back to Kuala Lumpur in the morning is too late.

I will need more help with other things soon, but the above are next on my agenda to figure out. Now back to booking!

Friday October 18, 2024

I’ve got an idea in mind that I like, but I’m very much open to trashing this if a better plan materializes…

What I’d really like to do is combine Affordability and Style. Does that sound like an impossible combination? Here’s how: I’d like to try to find the 10 or 15 dirt-cheapest flights that meet the terms of the challenge (i.e. the cheapest flights that earn miles with SAS). I do not at all expect those flights to line up together — in fact, I expect that the cheapest flights, in at least some cases, will be very short. That’s great, because what I want to do is to try to piece together an ANA round-the-world itinerary that gets me to the places I need to go to pick up the cheap SkyTeam flights.

In other words, imagine that I fly United from San Francisco to Seoul and then hit some SkyTeam flights: Maybe I fly a sub-$100 fare to Beijing on Korean Airlines, then maybe a cheap China Eastern Airlines flight to Vietnam and a cheap domestic flight on Vietnam Airlines (all SkyTeam carriers) before I resume my ANA round-the-world with a Thai Airways business class award to Bangkok and on to Dubai where I can pick up Saudia to fly to . . . etc.

I’m just making that up, but I imagine it could be possible to put together a reasonable-enough round the world ticket that fills in the gaps to get to a bunch of cheap SkyTeam flights. This is a starting point for planning the trip, but not a must — if flying long-haul economy is the best way to connect the dots effectively, I’ll make do with Priority Pass and Plaza Premium lounges and cool excursions to get my “Style” points.

I also really love the idea of including interesting Fifth Freedom flights (which are flights that connect two airports outside of an airline’s home country). Australian Frequent Flyer has a list of Fifth Freedom routes that claims to be kept up-to-date (I haven’t thoroughly checked). I also subscribe to the full version of Flight Connections, which can help to make those easily identifiable.

If you’re interested in doing some searching, don’t forget that Google Flights can be a powerful tool in doing things like searching flights to an entire country or even continent. For example, see this screen shot from a search from Seoul, Korea to Asia, filtered to SkyTeam carriers and a cost of no more than $100:

Constraints

• Home airport: New York City (EWR/JFK/LGA) or Boston (BOS) or Washington-Dulles (IAD). I a roughly similar distance to the New York City or Boston airports and positioning to Washington-Dulles is really easy for me. I could, of course, position anywhere else in the US with my miles as need be.
• Departure Date Constraints:
  • Best: November 10th or later
  • Earliest: November 4th
  • Notes: I have tickets to a local theater production on November 9th. I could (and recognize that I may have to) miss this. If I can’t pull off the trip leaving November 10th or later, then I can leave as early as the 4th.
• Return Date: I must be home no later than November 23, but I’d like to not be gone for more than 2 weeks (and my preference is to push as close to 10 days as possible, though I recognize that logistics may dictate a few additional days).
• Restrictions: Relatively few. I don’t mind long days and I function well enough off of limited sleep. Bring it on. I’d rather avoid Greg’s 12-minute layovers if possible, but otherwise I’m fairly open.

Potentially Useful

• I do have a 10-year multi-entry visa for China. Those visas had been suspended during the pandemic, but were re-activated last year and I still have a couple years left on one I got a couple of years before the pandemic. I figured that this point might be relevant to know since we’ll have to fly both China Eastern and Xiamen Airlines and since there are some cheap flights into airports in China that may not offer transit visas.
• I don’t mind getting other visas as necessary, but keep the timeline in mind. We’re looking at closing submissions about a week or week and a half before travel commences. That might make turnaround time difficult on visas for some countries.
• Airline fee credits: I have a brand new Business Platinum and a few other Platinum cards with a total of $900 in airline incidental credits as well as a Hilton Aspire $50 credit to use. The Business Platinum credits would be easy enough to use for a flight booked through Delta. The $50 Aspire card credit should theoretically work when booking airfare directly with any airline or via Amex Travel.
• Amex Offers? We’ve recently seen offers for Virgin Atlantic and Air France. I’m not sure that either would be triggered by a complicated multi-carrier booking, but if I see one of these offers pop up, I might have to play with the search engine to see what I can do.

Qualifying Airlines

Here are the 16 airlines available for the promotion. Since I need to fly 15 of them, I can only leave 1 off the list:

• Qualifying airlines based in North America
  • Aeromexico
  • Delta
• Qualifying airlines based in Europe (primary hubs shown in parentheses)
  • Air Europa (Madrid MAD)
  • Air France (Paris CDG)
  • KLM (Amsterdam AMS): KLM also has several 5th Freedom Flights entirely in Asia: KUL to Jakarta (CGK); SIN to Denpasar DPS; Taipei (TPE) to Manilla (MNL)
  • SAS (Copenhagen CPH, Stockholm ARN, Oslo OSL)
  • TAROM (Bucharest OTP)
  • Virgin Atlantic (London LHR, Manchester MAN)
• Qualifying airlines based in Asia (primary hubs shown in parentheses)
  • China Airlines (Taipei TPE)
  • China Eastern (Shanghai PVG)
  • Garuda Indonesia (Jakarta CGK)
  • Korean Air (Seoul ICN, GMP)
  • Vietnam Airlines (Ho Chi Min City SGN, Hanoi HAN)
  • Xiamen Airlines (Xiamen XMN, Fuzhou FOC)
• Qualifying airlines based elsewhere (primary hubs shown in parentheses)
  • Kenya Airways Nairobi (NBO): Note that Kenya Airways has a 5th freedom flight in Asia: Bangkok BKK to Guangzhou CAN
  • Saudia Airlines (Riyad RUH, Jeddah JED)

Help! (and maybe win!)

I need your help! I don’t expect that one person will build the entire “perfect” itinerary, but I’ll take all the help I can get. Whether you construct the perfect way to hit all the European carriers in a single day or you tip me off to the cheapest route from Europe to Asia, I’ll take all the help I can get! Don’t feel like one person has to do it all.

The best way to contribute is by posting to the comments below. That way others can see what you’ve written and build from there. If you really want to email me, though, you can write to the Frequent Miler Mailbag here and make sure the subject heading directs the email to me. For example you could write the subject as “Nick: Million Mile Madness suggestions” (I suggest front-loading the name because I want to make sure I see that it’s for me even when looking at my email on a phone, where a long subject line is likely to get cut off).

Whoever I deem to be most helpful overall will be one of three selected winners. And if I win the challenge, you’ll get the grand prize (details TBD).

Let’s go!