I flew business class on this segment not because I applied a systemwide upgrade, but because I got an elusive operational upgrade. Economy was heavily oversold (and extremely light on the flight from DFW to PVG such that I had an entire row of seats to myself in coach), and a ton of people got…
Before my flight to Dallas, I used the Cathay Pacific Lounge at PVG. The lounge entrance is right next to the First Class No. 69 lounge that I’ve reviewed before (the numbers refer to the gates that they’re closest to; not sure what the first class refers since that lounge isn’t limited to first class…
Because I had booked my flights as a roundtrip in/out of Shanghai, I had to get back to Shanghai for my departure (I had initially booked this trip using a US Airways business class award to North Asia with a stops in both Beijing and Shanghai, but ended up canceling the award and booking a…
The hostel that we stayed at also organized trips to the Great Wall, including a trip to hike from Jinshanling to Simatai. I highly recommend this section of the wall, as I had heard horror stories of the wall being ridiculously crowded, but this section wasn’t crowded at all, and we felt like the only…
The Beijing Downtown Backpacker Hostel is a funky hostel located smack dab in the middle of Nanluoguxiang aka where all Chinese teenagers seem to hang out and consume sugary beverages. It’s a cool area if you get off the main street, as the hutongs have lots of cool alleyways to explore. We booked a private…
Given that I had a pretty good experience taking the overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, we decided to take the overnight train from Shanghai to Beijing. In general, I highly recommend the Seat61.com site for information on train travel. We booked seats in a 4-berth soft sleeper car. All together, our tickets were about…
I’m taking a week-long pause in my Southeast Asia 2014 trip report to bring you a week of posts about a trip to China that I took in July 2014. During this trip, I went to Shanghai and Beijing with a friend: Shanghai to eat; Beijing mostly to see the Great Wall of China. In Shanghai, we…
Lots of bloggers have posted about Uber. Not sure why no one posts about Lyft (warning: affiliate link!) because they also have a referral program. Possibly because Lyft doesn’t have as many drivers and isn’t quite as widespread, but with Lyft, you get to avoid messy issues about bad business practices and sexism! The affiliate link that…
While there are a number of reviews of the Singapore Airlines Private Room at Singapore Changi airport, I don’t really recall seeing many reviews of the First Class Lounge (I’ve reviewed the business class lounge in the past). Part of the reason for the dearth of reviews of the first class lounge is likely because…
I’m currently in Ubud in Bali, and whenever I’m in any Southeast Asian country, I’m on the lookout for durian. I absolutely love durian, and I don’t think it smells bad–it just smells like durian to me. After not finding much information on the internetz and following multiple false leads (probably because it’s not durian…
