Using China’s cashless alternatives like Alipay and WeChat has always been a hassle or impossible for foreigners without Chinese residency or a bank card to use. Given that China is moving to an increasingly cashless society, but without widespread acceptance of foreign credit cards, being unable to use either of these methods made being a tourist fairly inconvenient. You could still pay a normal taxi with cash, or pay small amounts with cash if the merchant took it, or go to higher end places that could take card, but plenty of merchants wouldn’t accept anything other than mobile pay or wouldn’t have the proper change.
Author: michael
JUMP Scooters now operational! (and are also included in the ride pass)
I wrote before about riding JUMP bikes for free, up to 30 minutes a day with the Uber ride pass. JUMP scooters have recently been added to the network, and it seems like they are also included in the free 30 minutes a day with a ride pass. The 30 minutes comes out of the same pool as the bikes. So far, there seems to be no reservation fee on the scooters, just a $0.33 per minute charge (beyond 30 minutes that is), which is similar to how the JUMP bikes were priced for me initially.
A quadruple whammy for free stock trades
After Robinhood took the consumer market by storm in 2013 by offering completely free trades, analysts predicted it would only be a matter of time until the major brokers followed suit. I personally keep a small portion of my assets in Robinhood, though they haven’t been exactly without controversy. Robinhood has been accused of possibly not providing the best order speeds and pricing, as they take revenue from sending their order flow through 3rd party market makers. There was also the botched launch of Robinhood Cash. For what it’s worth, here’s my Robinhood referral 🤣.
JUMPing around, part 2
I wrote earlier about how the Uber ride pass gave access to 30 minutes of free JUMP bikes a day. I’ve been pretty happy with it so far, except for when a bike is too far or gets snatched from me before I’m able to reserve it. I was surprised recently when I started seeing a $3 fee to reserve a bike! That’s not free anymore, even if the first 3 minutes are free.
I decided to hop on one the other day to see what would happen. I finished my ride and waited for the receipt.
Get Asian groceries delivered with Weee!
Online grocery delivery has been around for a while, but Asian groceries have been an underserved market. I was always willing to make the trek out to the local store for fresh ingredients as well as for the dirt cheap prices.
I recently discovered Weee! which does delivery from local Asian grocers, with free shipping above $35. Availability seems to be in most US states. Doing some inventory browsing, they seem to have most of the items I want, even fresh ones, for near Asian grocery store prices. Green onions for $0.29! Uni!! And more! A couple items were missing, but overall I’m pretty happy with the selection and price. I asked a couple of friends to check the selection, and it seems to vary based on location (someone in Indianapolis said there were very few fresh items there).
Google Fi now offers an unlimited plan for as low as $45 a month
I’ve always been a big fan of Google Fi for the convenience, speed, and simple pricing, but always thought it was a bit costly for my needs. However, Google has just put out a new plan that fits my needs perfectly.
It’s a family plan, with 1 person being $70/month, 2 $60/person/month, 3 $50/person/month, and 4+ being $45/person/month. You get unlimited high speed data up to 22/GB per person and throttled speeds after. Furthermore, you get bundled Google One membership for everyone.
JUMPing around for free
I accidentally stumbled across a great deal for people with JUMP bikes / scooters in their city. I had purchased an Uber ride pass for $24.99 a month for other reasons. I live in San Francisco, where JUMP bikes (but not scooters) are plentiful. I’ve been playing with JUMP bikes recently, and after I got the ride pass, noticed that the app was now saying I got 30 minutes a day of rental minutes free! I ride around 6 times a week for an average of 8 minutes each. At a cost of $0.15 per minute, that ends up around $28 of JUMP costs. Plus, I get all the normal Uber ride pass discounts too, so it’s a great deal!
You can change Singapore Airlines mixed cabin awards to the paid class for free
Well, only the difference in taxes actually.
I was recently in need of a flight from Kilimanjaro where I was on safari as well as climbing the mountain, to Brussels, Belgium where I was planning to attend Tomorrowland. Posts on those trips to follow. The cost to flight that route in business class on Star Alliance is 52,000 Singapore miles, which is the lowest easily obtainable currency. I searched for availability and could only find reasonable flights for my date, with the last inter-Europe segment in economy. The routing was JRO-ADD-MXP-BRU, so I figured a short 1 hour leg in economy wouldn’t be too bad.
How I booked an overwater villa at the Conrad Maldives and got more points back than it cost
As part of my friend’s 30th birthday in the Maldives, we booked out Ithaa, the underwater restaurant at the Conrad Maldives. You can read about that in our previous post here.
Before heading to the restaurant, I thought: “it’d be great if someone could earn Hilton points off this lunch!” As a Hilton Diamond member, I volunteered as I would get a 100% bonus on any points earned.
I asked our host about this, and he said I could add my HHonors number to the final invoice afterwards. We proceeded to have a very nice underwater lunch. Afterwards, we were brought to the hotel reception to settle our bill. I asked about adding my HHonors number to the bill, but unfortunately was told that we needed to have been staying at the resort to earn points. But wait! With a restaurant bill of $6100 for a 15 person lunch, I would earn 61,000 base points + 100% bonus, making it 122,000 points total. I quickly checked how much it would cost to book a room for the night, and surprisingly, low level award availability was still available. The Conrad Maldives Rangali is a top category Hilton hotel, which makes the lowest standard award redemption 95,000 points. For some reason recently, the overwater villas have been available for the same price as a standard beach villa (h/t OMAAT.) There were no additional service charges or taxes since the room rate was paid in points. So I asked the reception, what if I booked a room right now? They hesitantly said yes, that would work.
So I booked a points stay for a water villa on the spot and gave the confirmation number to the reception. They had us email 2 of our passports to the hotel. However, it took around 40 minutes for them to find the reservation and make a room available for us. Initially they thought I was in a beachfront villa as they couldn’t see the confirmation. Eventually, they had me email the confirmation to them to get the check in process rolling.
We took a small dhoni over to the other island where the overwater villas were. Unfortunately, the hotel was being unusually strict about guests even just visiting the room, saying that only 1 additional person could visit the room at a time beyond the 2 registered guests even though they knew we’d only be there for a few hours.
So a few of us went to check out the villa, and swim around while the rest of us hung around the island. The villa was quite nice, with a very large bedroom and bathroom, and a back deck leading straight into a shallow part of the ocean that we could swim in. As a Diamond guest, we also received a welcome gift of sparkling wine and chocolates, along with a selection of fruits that came with the room. After they left us alone though, everyone came over to hang out and have a party! 🙂
Overall, it was a nice resort visit, though customer service was somewhat slow. Plus, we got a free overwater villa with lunch and access to the rest of the resort!
Following up on the points, I waited 2 weeks for the stay to credit to my account, but it never did. After filing a missing stay request with Hilton, after 4 days, the stay credited, but only 1000 Diamond bonus points and 2000 points from the Points Unlimited bonus offer. Something wasn’t right here. I speculate that they messed up my check in, which I why it took so long. So I called up Hilton customer service, and they were able to pull up the bill and credit the stay… by adding another stay to my account with another 1000 Diamond bonus and 2000 points bonus! So a total of 6000 bonus points on top of the base points, and 1 extra stay credit for no reason.
Dining at Ithaa, the underwater restaurant at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island
I was recently on a cruise in the Maldives for my friend’s 30th birthday, and as part of that itinerary, she booked out the entirety of Ithaa, the underwater restaurant at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island. The restaurant has capacity of 16 or so, so that’s not as ridiculous as it sounds.
We booked a late lunch for 3pm, but as the Conrad is 1 hour ahead of normal Maldivian time, this was more like 2pm in our time. After two early morning dives, our yacht headed towards the Conrad, where we took a speedboat and got off on the Conrad’s jetty. We were welcomed by a host, who provided us with cool moistened towels, then another member of the staff who offered a welcome fruit drink, before we were ushered towards the restaurant. The host warned that because of the size of our party, it might get a little hot inside, so they had preemptively set up a number of fans.
The first floor of the restaurant was a nice lobby with couches, a table, restrooms, and a small prep kitchen. The main kitchen was at the outdoor restaurant back across the walkway. It was quite nice and comfortable up here, and I frequently came back to hang out to escape the heat during our meal.
We took the staircase down to the dining area, and WOW, what an amazing sight. We were seated promptly and offered a cold towel. I wish they didn’t take away our towel so quickly though!
The menu for lunch was a 4 course tasting menu, with the option to upgrade the main from a sous vide chicken to a Maldivian reef lobster. I took the lobster upgrade. We were given the wine list and wow, everything was super expensive. We ended up with 3 bottles of white, a Riesling, a Chardonnay, and a Chablis for our party of 15.
Overall, all the courses were very tasty and presented very well. Service was very attentive. It was awesome to see fish swimming right over you while eating. The only downside was that as warned, the restaurant started to get extremely hot during the meal, to the point that the butter completely melted! I can’t imagine how hot it would be during noon time! I frequently would go hang out at the upstairs lounge between courses, and people took to sitting directly on top of the air conditioning vents while not eating. Our negotiated price to book out the entire restaurant at $344 a head plus service charge, not including drinks. So while very tasting, as compared to several other fine dining options that I’ve been to, you are definitely paying for the view and less so the food.
After the meal concluded, we were lead back to the reception to pay for the bill, which will tie into my next post.
The pictures of the meal follow: