Links to stories #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, and #8. In Cape Town, my sister and I ended up taking a minibus to get to a restaurant that was a little off the beaten path. Every white person that we spoke to in Cape Town told us that we shouldn’t take the minibuses because they weren’t…
Instead of answering reader questions, I’m asking questions of readers this week. I often find myself lying compulsively on planes. Mostly, I lie because it’s easier. I find that it makes people more comfortable for me just to say that I’m flying for work, which is a reason that easily fits into people’s schemas of…
Instead of the typical answering reader questions, I’m instead posing a series of questions for readers to share their thoughts on this week. I appreciate good service. But even as I write that, I think it’s ambiguous what I mean by “good service”. Is good service unobserved and unobtrusive? Is it fawning and obsequious? A service…
Whenever I’m trying to understand why things are the way they are, I often find it useful to try to follow the money, so to speak. By following where money goes and to whom, it often becomes clear why people/companies act the way they do. A prime example in the points/miles blogosphere is why there…
I write a lot of trip reports; I read a lot of trip reports. And one of the words that makes me cringe every time I read it is “intuitive”. I blame Lucky for it, as I’m pretty sure his was the first blog where I read someone saying that the seat controls were “intuitive”. I remember reading…
Instead of answering reader questions, I’m going to pose some questions to readers. One of my habits upon entering any airport lounge is to find a place to dump my stuff and then traipse off to take photos for lounge reviews. I often leave my laptop, passport, boarding passes, and bags out in the open,…
Links to stories #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, and #7. Here are some snippets of conversation from one of my recent flights from Hong Kong (well, at least more recent than the current trip report I’m finishing). Just to be clear, I don’t think there’s anything malicious in what she said, and I’m writing about this merely…
I know this is a couple of weeks late, but better late than never, right? 2014 was my heaviest year for travel yet. I flew 189,524 miles in 2014, almost all of which were for leisure (5,739 miles were for work). Most of my miles came from flying to Asia. I started off 2014 in Tokyo,…
On my previous post about how you shouldn’t always trust what you read on blogs, Alan made the following insightful comment: The reality is many travel bloggers dont even travel much and are not very good at traveling. This is true. Surprisingly true. And this is part of why I generally try to make a…
Lots of bloggers have already posted about the details of AA’s increased mileage earning for premium fares. Essentially, everything stays the same, except that people booking first or business class fares earn even more. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? You can’t earn fewer miles than before, so how can you lose? I always get…
