The SPG Amex card has long been a staple in the travel hacking world. People love their SPG points, as well as their Starwood status. SPG points are one of the hardest points currencies to accrue given that you can only earn points either by staying in hotels or earning 1x on the credit card,…
Some say that mileage running is dead, and to that, I say that I don’t really know what I’m talking about since I’ve never done mileage running like people did it back in the day. But I have done a number of very short trips over the past couple of years where one of the…
Travel hacking seems like a particularly parasitic hobby to me. And by that, I mean that we primarily find ways to benefit at the expense of others. Take credit card churning, as an example. The only reason why these credit card companies offer such ludicrously large sign-up bonuses is because it’s overall profitable for them…
Not hit on, but been the victim of a random act of violence? The other day, I was riding a bus in Vienna. I was standing in the bus, and a woman hit me in the arm as she walked by. It was clearly intentional (although not particularly painful). I was more surprised than anything…
And by everyone, I mean most people. Don’t get me wrong–I love my miles, and they’ve enabled me to do lots of awesome things that I’m super grateful for. But for the average person, focusing on frequent flyer miles doesn’t make much sense. In my mind, there are two main reasons why you should collect…
Links to stories #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, and #9. This story is from a while ago now, but I spent a little bit of time in Berlin with a Vietnamese American friend. This story comes from one night at a reasonably nice restaurant. Waiter: “Where are the two of you from?” Us: “America.” Waiter: “Where are…
I know I have been bad at posting. My life has been pretty hectic over the past couple of months, so blogging has been on the backburner. Perhaps I will have a bit more time to devote to posting a couple times per week in the coming months, but please do not expect any sort…
Dragon fruit looks like it should taste awesome. It looks exotic and beautiful and so tantalizing that you think it must be delicious inside. And it has an awesome name. But dragon fruit doesn’t really taste like anything. It’s super bland. It’s not sweet, it’s not sour, it’s not tart, it’s not refreshing–it just kind of……
Instead of answering reader questions, I’m asking questions of readers this week. Personally, I like reading trip reports. This is a large part of the reason about half the posts on my blog are trip reports. I find trip reports helpful from a logistics perspective (e.g. are there ample food options that will appeal to me…
Instead of the usual answering of reader questions, I’m posing a series of potentially (or in today’s case, severely) inane questions to readers instead. I really appreciate airplane pajamas. My favorite airplane pajamas are those from Cathay Pacific made by PYE, and I regularly wear the bottoms as pajamas even when I’m not on planes. I’ve actually…
