Musings from China (Not about China)

I’m currently in China, which has made it very challenging to do some very basic internet things like blog or check gmail (gmail blocking is a relatively recent phenomenon in China), so pardon the sporadic posts.

I think there’s a lot of mysticism around points and miles bloggers and how we accomplish the things that we do. There’s obviously a lot of variation: some people are really heavy in manufactured spending (think $40k+ per month), which combined with some recent credit card offers means that they actually don’t need to pay for anything out of pocket (lots of cash back MS) and instead pay with their time; some travel a lot for work; some make tons of money from their blogs and can pay cash for premium travel; many don’t travel much at all.

For myself, I don’t do anything special. I don’t travel for work, but I have a job that provides a flexible work schedule, and as a single twenty-something with a minimalist non-travel/non-food lifestyle (i.e. I rarely spend money on non-consumable goods; I think I’ve bought one thing from Amazon in the past year, and that was shaving soap), I choose to spend my discretionary income on travel. This means that I often travel in coach and do things like stay in capsule hotels as I don’t naturally generate enough points and miles to pay for everything that way, and I don’t mind “roughing” it. While I have had the fortune to travel pretty extensively in premium cabins, I probably do more flying in the back of the bus than not.

For this current trip to China, I flew AA coach through DFW (I was lucky enough to get a 5-seat row to myself from DFW to PVG as the flight was not very full), routing this way to get more miles and help me requalify for AA Executive Platinum. I stayed at a super crappy hotel in Shanghai, and I’m now at a hostel in Beijing. For many of my meals, I’m eating street food (super delicious in Shanghai, not quite as delicious in Beijing). The flights were a little pricier than I would have liked, but I’m spending about $25 a night for lodging (I’m traveling with a friend, which helps lower the cost), and we probably ate for less than $10 a day in Shanghai.

I’m probably not going to write a 20-part trip report about this trip because it’s not that novel. As far as I know, people don’t want to read a post about a flight in AA economy or read about a crappy hotel. But trips like this are enjoyable in their own right, and they enable the more luxurious trips that I am likely to write about.