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Just bought EQP to requalify for IHG Diamond through end of 2025! Since I usually buy miles for 0.5 cents, the $768 to buy 110,000 EQP was only a $218 premium, and I get Diamond again
Ran into the Mexican car insurance scam with Budget in Merida, Mexico 🇲🇽
Base rate was $18 USD a day, but if you didn't get the CDW costing minimum $85 USD a day, I had to put down a deposit of 330,000 MXN / $16,000 USD which obviously got rejected by all my credit cards.
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I’m years behind on my trip reports, but I have always wanted to start getting into the habit of doing flight and hotel reviews, since I’ve found other bloggers’ reviews and especially their photos to be very helpful when planning my own travel. The problem is when you have like 10 flights and 6 hotels in a trip, and when you get back you’re really behind on everything and too tired… #excuses
Travel planning can be overwhelming. I’ve literally been spending hours and hours every day for several weeks planning my upcoming Vietnam trip. Choosing a Halong Bay tour, with literally hundreds of options, and also many scams, is one of those things that has taken me days. I can understand why some people would rather just pay someone a handsome fee to just get everything done for them in a trustworthy and stress-free manner. That’s why hopefully we as bloggers can help share some of the circles and arrows to help make such things easier. Since Shelli over at Travel With Grant already covered how to get a quick and easy $25 tourist e-Visa as a US citizen, all you need now are some flights, hotels, and some things to do! One of which is a tour of Halong Bay! (P.S. a lot of Halong Bay Tours provide free visas so you could save another $25 per person)
Greetings from Xi’an, China, home of the terra cotta warriors and famous for biang biang noodles! I’m currently here for a week on business, but really, to eat delicious and super cheap ($1!) noodles. 🙂
It’s been over 10 years since I last came to China, and this is my first time in Xi’an. So I am not a China travel expert by any means. I assume you have your 10-year visa and typical travel preparations squared away, so the purpose of this post is just to elaborate on two major tips for any first-time traveler to China: 1) Use Apple Maps, 2) Download a VPN at home before going to China.
Back in May, my husband and I went on our annual trip to our favorite country in the world, Japan. It was an amazing trip as usual, and this time we hit up Tokyo, Fuji, and Hakone. We purchased the Fuji-Hakone Pass, which gives you round-trip transportation from Tokyo and unlimited transportation within the Fuji and Hakone area, plus many discounts or free admissions to local attractions. I’ll review this pass in a future post.
Have you ever played Mariokart? Do you like gokarting and driving fast? This awesome this-would-only-happen-in-Japan activity called Maricar might be for you. Maricar was first recommended to me by my friend Tim, and since then, many of my other friends have done the tour and highly recommended it. However, out of maybe 10 of my friends, only one was not very impressed. It’s not for everyone, so hopefully I can help you decide if you’ll enjoy it.
Co-bloggers E & M go to Japan just about every year or multiple times a year, and would unequivocally say it is our favorite country in the world to visit. We often joke about just moving there, because it’s such an awesome country (M isn’t joking anymore, he lives there now!) Anytime we hear friends or family say they’re thinking about going to Japan, we immediately start gushing about how amazing it is, how awesome/polite/kind the people are, how safe it is, and how you’d never get bored or run out of things to do there, etc etc. It really has something for everyone. With Japan becoming more and more accessible through fare deals and award availability, I am regularly getting questions for what to do, where to eat, etc.
Hello from Barcelona, where I am currently on the 3rd leg of my around-the-world trip [partially with Daniel]! 😀 I was inspired to write this post based on a recent Doctor of Credit post on Google Fi (also known as Project Fi), and thought I’d throw in my two cents based on my experiences (and of course, my referral link too). I work remotely, which gives me the awesome flexibility to travel, as long as I have access to the internet during my shift. Therefore, in-flight wifi and international cellular data is key for my job.
In May 2016, I signed up for Founderscard and detailed my experience here. One of the benefits of Founderscard is Total Rewards Diamond status, which is useful for people who go to Vegas and Atlantic City. I enjoyed the benefits of TR Diamond in my last 2 trips to Vegas since receiving the status, and recently booked my free 4 night stay at the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. I had first heard about this benefit via TPG’s post, and originally people were skeptical about it and thought there would be some gambling requirement, etc. I thought I would write a post today for anyone who is planning to go. For the current benefit, the trip must be booked before Jan 31, 2017, with travel before the end of Feb.
Update: it seems like CLEAR is catching and denying people who have had previous accounts when going to an enrollment center as well. So perhaps I didn’t lose out on too much.
This probably falls under the level of “don’t call the XXXX” but I just wanted to put out a quick warning for others. There was a promotion code going around last week that would give 1 year free of the Family membership to CLEAR, then the renewal would be $50.00 a year after that.
I can’t believe it’s been a month since we’ve had a post around here! For my part, I’m gearing up for my crazy opulent, international first class flight on Cathay Pacific that I booked as an American Airlines award prior to the devaluation. For 67,500 miles (less a 10% rebate), I’m going to fly in…let’s just say ‘style.’ Of course, I’ll have trip reports for that and my return flight on Singapore Airlines (sadly, no suites), which I will be sharing with my friend Jacob.
