Back to the trip reporting! Apologies for the long pause, but I hope to do a better job of finishing my trip reports in a somewhat timely manner… One of my friends told me that I should go to Halong Bay, so I tried to do research on the best tour options. Part of the…
Happy 2015! I can’t believe it’s already 2015. I’ll post one of those year-end summary posts when I get around to it (probably around the same time I finish up my Vietnam/Cambodia trip report, as well as all the other ones that have been marinating in my notes). I’ve been home for the holidays, and…
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…
You shouldn’t believe everything that you read on the internet. Crazy, right? There are definitely bloggers who know what they’re talking about, and there are some I trust for the most part, but you should not take what bloggers write as gospel. There are extremely low barriers to entry, so anyone can become a “points/miles…
Another underrated Alaska Airlines award redemption besides premium economy is intra-Asia flights on Cathay Pacific. You can only redeem Alaska miles for routings that are defined in their award chart, which generally means that you can only redeem miles for awards that begin or end in North America (e.g. you can’t redeem for Emirates between…
Lots of people in the past have talked about using 70k Alaska Airlines miles to fly from North America to South Africa in Cathay Pacific First Class (although that’s no longer possible since Cathay no longer has first class between HKG and JNB), and Alaska is also well known for offering redemptions for Emirates First…
Links to stories #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, and #6. It’s been a long time since I last posted a travel story that had to do with race, but three incidents this past weekend inspired me to write this post. Incident #1: Random woman on the street (directed at me): “Ohayou!” Incident #2 (while waiting at…
I write a lot of trip reports. I mostly write trip reports because I personally find them helpful when I’m preparing for trips, and I enjoy reading well-written, well-photographed reports by other people even if I’m not. I’m not going to lie: it also helps for SEO, and some of my most frequently visited posts…
This hotel is one of the few cheap Hilton redemptions after Hilton’s devaluation a couple of years ago. Since it’s a category 2 hotel, it’s only 10k Hilton points per night. In terms of Western hotels in Hanoi attainable using points, there’s also a category 2 Sheraton, a couple of IHG properties, a category 4 Marriott,…
