Frequent Miler on the Air - 40K to Far Away Debrief

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

Greg and Nick discuss favorite moments, lessons learned, and other final thoughts on the 40K to Far Away challenge.

Hi, welcome to Frequent Miler on the air. This is our first episode since we're back from our 40k to far away challenge. This is Greg, and I'm here with Nick. Hey, great to have you guys here with us today. and basically ask each other questions because we didn't know what we were each going to do or what Steven was going to do. And so it was great fun for us to see, just as everyone else reading along saw what was going on as it unfolded. Let me start though. So one of the coolest things that I thought came out of the whole

challenge while that was unexpected was Nick ending up in a place I'd never heard of, Newey. Am I saying it right? I think it's Newey. Newey. Newey. Yeah. Newey. Oh, okay.. New A. And becoming a member of the Yacht Club. Is that right? So when I saw that, I was just like, drop Mike. He's done. So you want to tell us about how did you even find new way and, and you know,

what, what, what got you to that point? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I started out looking at where I could get, and I knew I could get to Australia pretty easily from Hawaii because of

course I was going to start in Hawaii with the Turkish miles and smiles sweet spot. So I started to look at where he get from there. And I was originally looking at using Turkish miles again. So that meant I could only use one Star Alliance partner. And if I was going to be in Australia, the only partner that I would realistically have access to would be Air New Zealand. So I started looking at the places that Air New Zealand flies. And so just looking at the list on Wikipedia, I came across this place that I'd never heard of.

And I clicked on it. And it said it only had 1,600 people and two flights in a week and two flights out a week. And I said, well, I mean, what is getting away from it all more than a place where you can only get there twice a week and then you're stuck there for days and you can't leave. So that seemed to me like getting far away, at least, you know, in a metaphorical sense, if, if not a physical sense. So, and that sense too, surely. So, so that's how I stumbled on it. And then I just started Googling and reading a little bit and looking at the tourism site and I stumbled on the yacht club and I, I read about it and I read that you could join it locally much cheaper than you could join it online. And I said, Oh, how neat would that be if I could get there and spend,

you know, my last 12 or $14 or whatever, uh, joining the yacht club. So I thought that seemed like a great idea and concept anyway. And, uh, and kind of fun because where else in the world can you join a yacht club for like 14 bucks? So now I have the membership card that I'm carrying in my wallet that I'm a yacht club member, at least for this year and next year. Although you can be too, you can join online. So it's a little more expensive. I think it's like 45 bucks or something if you join online, but still you get some reciprocal memberships there. You can get in some other places potentially. So when are you going to try that? When are you going to go to the New York Yacht Club?

We're in Chicago now. There must be a Chicago Yacht Club. Are you going to go over there and knock on the door and say, here's my card? Let me in. I think we're probably a little far from the marina right now. So maybe I won't make it this weekend, but I'm gonna have to try out the New York Yacht Club

because truth be told, they told me that you could get into the New York Yacht Club with it. And I don't know if he was just like joking with me because later on I realized that the New Way Yacht Club, NYC, it says NYC on it. So then I thought, well, maybe it was a joke, but at the time he didn't seem like he was joking.

He didn't indicate he was joking. And then I think there was a comment from a reader saying that they had found a yacht club somewhere that gave them, like in Indianapolis or something, they gave them the ability to use the New York Yacht Club. And I think I read online the New York Yacht Club only has like 3,000 members. So I don't know how easy it is to get in on a regular basis, but I figure I'll give it a shot. I mean, the next time I'm in Manhattan, I'm going to try it. I'm going to pull it out of my pocket and see, but I know you can get into the Royal Yacht Club in Auckland with it, they said, and some other places. So I mean, I'm not a yachtie myself, but at the same time, I might give it a shot and try, see if I can get on a

boat at some point. I feel like you missed a big opportunity because had you done this whole thing first, had you gotten the yacht club membership first maybe you could have gone around the world and just like slept on the sofas in these yacht clubs or something i don't know i have no idea actually what it means to go into a yacht club other than i assume there's a lot of snooty people maybe with pipes and and and and probably food that they charge way too much for. I mean, that's probably true. But actually, I guess it really sprouted from now that I think about it and think back,

was that I didn't necessarily think that would be my endpoint at the time when I first found it. And so I wanted to see where else I could get to. And so I started to see, oh, can you take a boat somewhere? Because American Samoa is probably the closest island area to it. And it looks on the map like it's not that far. So I thought, oh, maybe I can get a boat. But when I did some reading into it, you can't get on the shipping boats. I guess they don't run shipping boats along that corridor, don't take passengers. They said that every now and then you might be able to get a spot on a yacht. And sure enough, in the Yacht Club, there were some posters up with people who were looking to get on boats within the coming weeks to try to go somewhere on a boat. So that

didn't work out for the challenge. And I'm kind of glad it didn't because I get seasick easily, something I know Greg has experience with. So I'm kind of glad it didn't work out, but fun nonetheless, right? So that was an adventure for me. But speaking of adventures, you had some adventures too. I mean, were you nervous at some point with this whole train bus thing? Like, were you worried you were going to miss a flight? I mean, how did that all pan out? Can you explain that to readers a little bit? Sure.

So what Nick's talking about is I took the train from Johannesburg to Cape Town. And this train, in a way, was the inspiration for my whole trip. So I read about it in The Man in Seat 61, I think it is, a while ago. And I knew. So when the challenge started, I went back to reread it. And it was like how I remembered it. It was like only 50 bucks for a sleeper car and it goes all the way across south africa which is not a small country right so uh

i was just like i've got it i've got to make this part of this challenge this is perfect it goes a long way it's it's far away to begin with and And, you know, just checked all the all the all the all the boxes for me. So so anyway, so I booked it from Johannesburg to Cape Town and. Everything was really nice. The the train itself, like the interior was, this isn't saying a lot, but it was way nicer than my Amtrak experience as far as how nice it is physically, the space. Although I liked my Amtrak. When I did Amtrak Sleeper Car, I very much liked that. This does not have bathrooms inside the bedrooms the way that Amtrak does. But, you know, they had plenty of shared bathrooms, so it wasn't an issue. And it was great. This kind of surprised

me. I expected or hoped to make friends with whoever my roommate was or roommates. I could have been stuck with up to three people. So I was glad I only had one. What I didn't expect was to make friends with about half the people that were in sleeper cars. So it was this very collegial atmosphere of people just sort of walking next door to just chat. And so it was really, really unexpectedly nice atmosphere in that way and train ride in that way. But it did stop often and for long periods of time. And I wasn't expecting that. I had read that the train's often late, but it left Johannesburg exactly on time. So I was optimistic. But one guy who had ridden this train before had told me,

we'll wake up in the morning in the hills a few hours out from Cape Town, and it'll be beautiful in the hills there. I wake up in the morning. We're still at a train station in the desert. There are no hills anywhere. I knew something was off at that point. And then eventually the train manager he introduced himself as came around and talked about how the station further up had lost power. and they couldn't go through there. And so they were talking about a bus alternative. Eventually they came and put a diesel engine, like they brought a

car with a diesel engine on it to pull the train so we didn't need the electrical power. So supposedly everything was good. But then they tested the brakes and the brakes weren't working. So so so then it was so then it was a question for us. They said once we get to the next station, we'll have buses. You can take a bus and get to Cape Town in, you know, X number of hours. And the way it works out, we were supposed to be in Cape Town, 3.30 PM. They were saying, if you take the bus, by now it was like about 2.30 PM. So they said, if you take the bus, you could probably get there by

8 PM, let's say they said. But if you take the train, it could be 2 a.m. And so I didn't have a flight out from Cape Town till late the next day. So I wasn't worried at any point about catching my next flight. But I was worried about, I was looking forward to doing things in Cape Town, right? So it was a hard decision, because as I said, being on the train was great. I enjoyed every minute of that. So it was a really hard decision to say, I'm gonna get off and take the bus.

There was a minute when it came time to take the bus, this is something I didn't put in my movie. So there were supposed to be two buses, one an express bus that went all the way to Cape town. The other one, it, one that would stop at each station, uh, that people needed to go to. Um, one of those two buses had broken down on the way. So there was only one bus. Um, they told us it would only have one stop on the way to Cape town. They lied. But so anyway, I got on that one bus. It stopped quite a few times. And at one point, the part of the roof fell off.

We're riding along and hear this big bang, but the bus driver kept going until people in the back of the bus started yelling. And, and so they, they slow down and they're like, what? And then they pull over. And, um, and if,

if you watch the little movie I made, um, it's on YouTube. If you search for frequent miler, um, there's a video showing the driver and a security guard were like carrying this big piece of the bus back. And then they tried to shove it like into the baggage uh compartment under the bus it wouldn't fit

then they tried to get it on the bus like through where the passenger no oh through the passenger door that didn't even come close to her i don't even know what they were thinking there so then finally um they must have called someone because an emergency medical aid, not even a van, like an SUV, pulled up in front of the bus and picked up this piece of bus, put it on top of their SUV thingy, and started strapping it down with this big roll of tape. So they're just taping it down to the SUV thingy. Duct tape fixes everything, right? to the suv thing fixes everything right you're right right duct tape fixes everything um meanwhile um so this is like emergency medical people strapping part of a bus to their car and meanwhile someone in the back of the bus there's all this screaming in the back of the bus we're like what's going on someone was puking their guts out in the

back of the bus um and the bus driver and security guard are trying to help that person while the medical person is strapping the piece of the bus to their car so it was all like too preposterous to you know believe but it was it was real um but then you know then we eventually did we we rolled into cape town about 8 30 p.m so even though there were a lot of stops it wasn't that far off from oh actually no that's not true it was 9 30 p.m so uh yeah it was quite a bit off from what they had told us actually now that i think about it but um but still uh i heard later from one of the families that stayed on the train and they said that the last 100 miles or so the brakes locked up and so they were smoking and that when they came into

the station it was not only smoking but on fire. And so they had that to deal with and to make it worse. So, so the, uh, on the train, they were given free food, uh, to make up for how late they were. Apparently they all got, uh, food poisoning. So I felt so bad for them. Uh, they got in about 2 30 AM. Um, and with food poisoning, you know, I was very lucky. I made the right choice, obviously, with the bus, despite the bus falling apart. Clearly, that's, you know, that's pretty consistent with my experience driving in South Africa, too. I remember just coming across places where traffic was backed up for what seemed like forever and no indication why.

Apparently something was broken down somewhere and everybody was just stuck and out of their cars and hanging out. And I remember I asked somebody what's going on and the guy looked at me and he said, ah, this is Africa. And I was like, oh, OK, I will just wait, I guess. So, yeah, you get delayed and you don't know what's going to happen. So you got to plan a little bit of buffer time in advance for the transportation, I suppose, there. Speaking of planning, by the way, one of the things that really amazed me was the way you planned out couch surfing and incorporated that in the trip and the journey. And my wife and I had some experience with couch surfing about 10 years ago. We couch surfed and stayed with some people. We hosted some people. But it's been a long time

since we did it. And actually, we were talking about it when you were doing it. And my wife asked me, she said, what kind of a message did he send? Because I felt like we sent like 30,000 messages and often didn't get a response at all. And this was, I told her, well, we were in Europe, so perhaps there were more people messaging, but we often had trouble getting a response from a host. So did you have that experience? How easy was it for you to find people to connect with and, and how did you connect with them and approach that? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I absolutely found that in Madrid. I sent so many messages out. If people responded at all, I mean, some people were very nice saying I'm not in town that weekend. But most people just didn't respond at all. And so, but Dakar, Senegal,

I had several people accept my request and it's probably because they get very few there, whereas in Europe, it's such a popular place. Everybody wants to go and it's popular with students who don't have any money. So they're probably bombarding them with requests, right? So here I am someone with zero references, saying, hey, can I stay for, oh, just one night, that was an issue too. So there were a number of hosts that said, don't even bother me unless you're staying for

two or more nights. I think they're doing it to try to make friends. And, you know, they're not seeing it happening if you're just going to be showing up and sleeping and leaving right so so anyway that was a challenge and so um i went i went into madrid not having an idea where i was going to sleep that night um no one had accepted my request i thought i had posted a request on their last minute Madrid boards before I left. But when I got to Madrid, and I looked to see if there were any responses to it, my request wasn't there. So the couch surfing technology is like, not great. I mean, because the other problems I had with their technology is they have a sort of a built-in email system where you can message people. And it's supposed to let you know through real email that a message has come in for you. But sometimes that message through email would take about a week from when they post it or I'd never get it.

And so that was a real problem but anyway um i i find so finally when i got into madrid i posted to the boards and uh this incredibly nice uh man jose uh pretty quickly uh said he said i already have someone in my spare bedroom but i have a couch couch and you're welcome to stay there. So that was great. And he turned out to be a great guy. He was so generous. It was really it really made both in Madrid and Dakar and Johannesburg where I didn't stay, but I met someone through couch surfing. It made my trip. I mean, it really did. I mean, the train ride and the eventual staying with my friend in Cape Town, those were planned ahead and those were good

things. But the fact that I was able to make personal connections in all the places I stopped entirely thanks to couch surfing. So just real quick, the way I met the chef for Johannesburg was I had, my flight was arriving Johannesburg 3.30 in the morning. My train, I had to check in at the train station at 11.30 a.m. So that's eight hours gap if I could magically get, if the plane arrived on time, I can magically get off the plane and into Johannesburg in zero. So realistically, I thought I had about six hours. That was my realist. And, um, so what I really wanted to do more than anything was like, do a game drive. Yeah. I wanted to like, I thought if I could get a safari into this thing, I win. I'm done. I win.

So my first way of checking whether it was possible was to contact someone who does private tours. I figured if they're willing to sell me a private tour that does this in that amount of time, then I can probably figure out how to do a game drive in that amount of time. They were not willing to sell me. I even pushed back a few times. They were just like, no, it's not possible. It's not enough time. So not taking their word for it, I then turned to Couchsurfing has some forums for locals. And I thought, I'll ask locals.

It's a great place to find people who want to help. And so I posted the question there. I got a lot of varied answers about whether or not it's possible um but the one guy in particular not only was kind of funny in his response but he said uh this particular game uh or game park that i was asking about um he said it's unclear what time in the morning they open because their website says one thing this other thing says this other so i called them and found out it's this time and i was just so impressed with that he did that for some random stranger on the internet so i messaged him directly and that's when i found out later that he's a chef and he was like how would you like it if instead of the game drive but you know i i prepare this um uh breakfast uh sunrise breakfast atop this hill

and north cliff tower um and yeah sign me up yeah yeah and the proof is in the pudding as they say it turned out really well right it really did uh he turned out to be great guy uh i truly really do count him as a friend now like i'm looking forward to seeing him again i don't know when that'll happen but i really hope it does and um uh he turned out he was a great guide he showed me he drove my rental car around the city to show me around and that's how we ended up at the um the market the sunday market which just happened to be having a six-year birthday that day so they had free like birthday cake out and and so while we're eating the birthday cake he tells them about what i'm doing right about my the 40k challenge and then next thing i know the

owner of the market comes over and she's showing me around And so you see some of that in the movie I did about Johannesburg, about her saying what her role is. And, and her, she introduced me to the different artisans and everything, including the guy who made this. You won't be able to see it on there, but maybe you can. Frequent Myler. You can see frequent, frequent Myler bracelet.

He just made that with string in about 10 minutes or less it was it was amazing um so yeah all that planning all that so you've done couchsurfing why didn't you do any couchsurfing for this challenge then yeah that's a good question um a couple of reasons one of them being the fact that like i said in the past we'd had a a lot of difficulty getting responses the times when we've had good experiences have been great. Maybe not quite as good as some of the ones that Greg had on this trip. But we've had some really good experiences where I feel like we got a very authentic feel for a place that we wouldn't have gotten on our own. It's really nice when you have somebody local to show you around that can show you places you wouldn't just wouldn't find in a tourist book uh so i definitely had good experiences but we also had a lot of trouble getting connected with people at times and uh and then i think also on the home front uh maybe i got some pushback about is that going to be safe and you're going to be alone blah blah blah which you know of course uh those are all concerns when you're traveling by yourself because i you know

i don't know about greg but i haven't traveled like this by myself in like forever. I've never really traveled abroad, I don't think alone. So that was something to consider too. Though, like I said, our experiences with couch surfing have been great and the references system is pretty good. So the other trouble for me was figuring out the number of hours I was going to be in each place, because like you said, I wasn't going to be there quite as long. And I didn't necessarily think that I'd get somebody at 3.30 in the morning willing to make a sunrise breakfast, but clearly I was wrong. Clearly I was wrong. So I should have tried harder because that would have been useful. And instead, I went to places like TripAdvisor for advice from people. And I found the community to

be less helpful and welcoming than what you might find via couch surfing, I think. And I think it's a really important learning piece from this challenge that I've heard before. I've heard people say that if you want to travel like a local, then you need to go where the locals are, so to speak, and look for where the locals find information. And do you look for a restaurant on TripAdvisor in your neighborhood? Probably not. So not to knock TripAdvisor, but there are lots of other resources. There's Reddit, there's CouchSurfing, there's, you know, different sorts of local platforms. And so I think that incorporating that would have been smarter. So I'll definitely say it's a regret of mine that

I didn't lean on CouchSurfing, especially after I saw how well it worked out for Greg. So I definitely would think about incorporating that in the future. Yeah. All right. Now let me ask you the, the, about the elephant in the room, right?

So I think most people thought you had the, the contest locked up when they saw you in new way. But then we find out that you went over budget and not just by a little bit, by hundreds of dollars over budget. So, I mean, I think everybody, everybody who was rooting for you was disappointed, but I know nobody was as disappointed

as you were yourself. So let me ask you something that a reader asked this. When you knew that your plan to stay on a budget wasn't going to work, why didn't you change your plans to – said in your sort of follow-up post you you got as far as uh brisbane um and still had um what 15 000 points roughly you could have gone pretty darn far with just that uh so just why not yeah yeah it's a great question um because i waited uh to to buy the gift cards the visa gift cards i assumed would be there and so i i assumed that I would have that option. And I looked at booking other things. And I booked other stuff that was all flexible,

the capsule hotel and things like that, intending to see how it all worked out with getting the gift cards and whatnot. And then I waited until about three weeks before the trip to buy the gift cards. And I logged on and of course they weren't in stock. And I was like, oh my goodness, where are they? And so then I started looking day after day and hoping that maybe these are going to magically come back in stock because

that was my plan to stay under budget. And when they didn't, then I knew I was in trouble. So I knew I was over on the flights. And so at that point, it was, I felt like too late to make that big of a change in the itinerary and to cancel it all. Not only because I had booked the trip myself, but of course, then I had also already booked my family to come and meet me. So they were all planning to meet me in Auckland. So I'd already had multiple award seats booked, both to Auckland and for the way back home. So I really dug myself a big hole. It's really what it comes down to. I should have jumped on that deal right away. That was obviously a huge mistake, not buying those Visa gift cards right away. Because had I, I would have been very tight up against the budget if I cut out just a couple of those things.

Once I realized I was going to be over the budget, I figured that it wasn't worth cutting out the, for example, the capsule hotel in Tokyo, or it wasn't worth cutting out the capsule hotel in Christchurch because I felt like those were worthwhile experiences to learn what they were like, to be able to write about them. And at that point, like I said, I knew I had screwed it up already. And that was unfortunate. I was, believe me, I was disappointed in myself for having waited so long. I totally, I don't know why I dragged my feet on buying those gift cards if I thought that was going to be a key component of the strategy. And I obviously did. So yeah, that was a mistake. And in hindsight, I can certainly see where the readers were coming from on that in terms of, yes, I could have gotten farther with even if I just cashed that

out as $160, I could have gotten pretty far with that within Australia. Because I had looked at flying to Perth. Truthfully, when I first started the strategy, what I wanted to do was get to Perth, just because that was the geographical farthest point, and then say, okay, and I'm not done and move on from there. But getting to Perth was expensive. It was difficult in terms of finding, well, it wasn't necessarily expensive to get to Perth, but then getting from Perth back across Australia was expensive. So I wasn't able to put that together. I wasn't able to put that together with an award ticket to Newey. So I definitely regret that in hindsight.

I wish I could go back and change that. But like I said, once I had gotten to that point, I figured it wasn't worth cutting it off because I wasn't going to get myself back under budget. The points were already spent and the plans were already set. So definitely a lesson learned for me in that one. And I certainly was disappointed in it and understand readers' disappointment too. And then I wrote the post explaining that I got to Brisbane on the 23.5 and $400, which certainly doesn't quite fit the spirit of the competition in some regards. But on the flip side, I thought it certainly also did show that you get really far on a limited budget, which is what the whole goal of the competition

was in the first place, was to show that you could get really far on a limited number of points and a limited amount of money. I also felt like I pigeonholed myself a little bit in the beginning with the flight to Hawaii, because I mean, I felt like I had to book that once I found it, right? So I had to start there. But a mistake I made was thinking that I had to go west from there. Because in hindsight, I think what I I, well, there are lots of options. But one thing that I wish I had considered, and I don't think it ever crossed my mind to do this was to fly all the way back, and then go somewhere else. Like at the time, I could have used Etihad to fly Royal air Maroc for 22,000 points in economy class,

anywhere they flew nowadays, they charge by segment. But at the time I could have gone all the way to Hawaii and back and then flown somewhere in Africa or the middle East for another 22,000 and still been well under budget. So there's certainly a lot of ways that I, I think about now that I could have done it. And once I had the flight to new way booked,

it just, it felt like I was sucked into that, that piece of the itinerary and couldn't get myself out of it. And, and then once the budget was broken, that was a, that was a mistake there. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, I'm so sorry that happened because yeah, you had so many winning components. Now, the other thing, though, so you had a near, the very beginning of the actual trip, you had a near failure catching your connecting flight in Chicago, right? So you had to run in Chicago. Right. So, so you,

you had to run for it. Literally got off the plane. I got onto the jet bridge with 13 minutes before the boarding door was closing on the flight to Hawaii. I had to sprint through the airport. So, and, and so,

you know, when I read that, I thought, you know, okay, good. He, he got,

he got, um, his one disaster, like out of the way, but know, okay, good. He got his one disaster, like, out of the way. But then it seems like almost everything that happened after that, there was, like, one problem after another after another. Do you want to, like, is that normal for you? I hope not. No, no, I don't think so.

I feel like a lucky guy. But, no, I don't think so. I feel like a lucky guy, but no, the luck didn't come together on the trip. Well, you know what? I say that. And I feel like to some extent, obviously a big piece of this was entertainment, right? I mean, we wanted it to be fun and interesting. And so I felt like people were probably more interested in my missteps than they were in the successes in some regard. So that probably got highlighted. And in hindsight, perhaps it got highlighted too much in comparison to the parts that were good because I did also have a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed it. This was a blast. But yeah, it was one thing after another. So I got into Hawaii late then. The flight got delayed. And so I got there later than planned. And yeah, it was one thing after another. So I got into Hawaii late, then the flight got delayed. And so I got there later than planned. And then the bus was delayed. And then my connecting bus was delayed. And so I didn't get to the hike in time had my flight landed on time, and I got the bus that I intended to get, I would have gotten there with like three hours before sunset. And instead, I got there with like 30 minutes before sunset. So, uh, so I,

I hiked up as quickly as I could. I also discovered that hiking with a backpack, it's like 25 pounds is not as easy as it looks. I, I know people do it. I know that there's hikers out there. They're looking at me and saying, you wuss, you should be able to do this. But I'm telling you, I was having trouble, especially on the way back down. Like, cause it was, it started to get wet, started to rain a little bit, the rocks were getting wet. And so I was slipping. And then of course the backpack is like, you know, pulling me in different directions. And somebody, a couple of people actually that were hiking made comments that I think were not meant to be friendly comments about, well, if you weren't carrying that huge backpack, which, you know, I mean, I, I understand it probably looked ridiculous to an

outsider cause I, it was pretty full. But so I didn't quite make it as high as I had hoped on that. But it did still get a great view. It was beautiful. And I stayed up there for a bit and got to enjoy the view of the rain in the distance. I just hadn't hoped that it would move towards me quite so fast. And then Honolulu, of course, ended up that evening not quite the way I expected either since I intended to just stay up and work in the lobby of the Hyatt place. And man, I just couldn't keep my eyes peeled that night. I think I didn't properly anticipate how tired I would be after a full day of travel, which I perhaps should have known. But I was exhausted, having trouble staying awake. And so I figured,

okay, well, I'll take the bus and just get back to the airport. And of course that didn't work out. If you were following along, I fell asleep on the bus and, and woke up, you know, with some questionable bus mates. Although I say that it felt questionable, but at the same time, nobody robbed me. So I felt like, I felt like I got out of there. Okay. Because I fell asleep with my bag on my right, like on the aisle side of me. And nobody took it or dug into it. So thank goodness for that. But then I got to the transit center and it was a little questionable. I went into the bathroom and somebody ran in kind of yelling and then they went into a stall and it sounded like they were throwing up or something or other crying. I didn't know exactly what was happening. I came outside. It was a

little questionable. So I took the Uber there that I might not have taken again if I were under budget. But since I wasn't, I figured the extra eight bucks probably was a better choice than hanging around. So there were a couple of missteps. But then there were some awesome parts, too. I really enjoyed Narita-san Park in Tokyo. That was a lot of fun. It was quiet.

I think one of the things I enjoyed the most about the trip actually was how quiet it was. So very, very much in contrast to Greg's trip. Greg had a very like socially outgoing trip, which typically I think would be more my style, what I would expect more my style. I had a very quiet trip. I talked to almost nobody for the first few days because my seatmate on the airplane to Japan, I don't think spoke English. It didn't seem that way.

I tried to strike up conversation once or twice. And then in Japan, I went to the park, which was very quiet. The capsule hotel was silent. So I had a very, very quiet couple of days there, but I kind of enjoyed that. It was kind of nice stepping back and enjoying the peace and solitude a little bit. So different what i expected but fun good yeah so what about you was there something that surprised you about the trip that that stood out as like i didn't expect this to happen this way of course obviously the train and the bus you didn't expect those things but was there something else that was kind of like a bigger theme from the trip that that surprised you or stuck out um boy i'm trying to i i mean not i it's sort of a surprise how well things went i mean you know especially

since i went into madrid not knowing where i was going to sleep so i was very worried about that um so you know and and a lot of things just turned out way better than expected. So that whole day turned out better than expected, thanks to Jose. And in Dakar, my host provided a traditional meal for four of us to share. I wasn't expecting that at all. And so that was amazing, you know, to have an experience like that when I didn't think I would get much local contact there in Dakar. And then, of course, the whole experience in Johannesburg with the chef exceeded expectations. And I had a great time in Cape Town, which was not surprising at all, but it was pleasant. So, yeah, so, you know, overall, I mean, first day was harder than I expected.

So everything I did the first day, except for my brief stop at the Library of Congress, was all as like preparation for the start of the trip in a way, right? Like I had to get to New York. I had to get to JFK. But first I had to take two United flights somehow. And, and what I really wanted was a way to fly from DC to somewhere like roughly in the direction of New York and then end up in New York, you know, those two flights. But, um, first of all, uh, I don't know if, if I can't remember if they, they, they had to be United flights. I mean, that's all that flies within the US and and that that United has 5K awards for is only on their own flights and within the US that is.

And I don't think they even fly to JFK. So, you know, I could have maybe gotten lucky and gotten to Newark and then taken a bus from there. But there were just no 5K flights. I looked at every single possible one, as you can imagine, and tried over time. And what happened was when I first looked at all this, when I first figured out how to find 5K flights, I found, I don't know, I want to say three different ones leaving the DC area. And one, well, one was a 6k flight. But it went to, it went to Raleigh, Durham, which is the biggest of the airports that I could have gotten to for 6k or less. And so I really wanted to do that one because I thought there was much less chance of that flight getting canceled than flights into little airports. Right. And there are also a bunch of flights a day to there. Again, unlike the two other airports where I found just one flight a day. So, but then I still had to get all the other pieces of the trip in place.

Like knowing that I was flying to, from Dakar to Johannesburg and from Cape Town to Seychelles. I hadn't worked all that out yet. So I couldn't book that first leg, right? Because the way it works, you have to book it all together. So I didn't book it. I didn't book it. I didn't book that first leg, right? Because the way it works, you have to book it all together. So I didn't book it. I didn't book it. I didn't book it. When I went to, when I was finally ready, I know what all the pieces are. The flights to Raleigh-Durham at 6K were gone.

And so that left me two choices that were still there. But one, if I did the round trip it would have been a like the the flight to dc was the afternoon i mean the flight from dc was the afternoon one the morning one goes to dc so lewisburg was really my only option at all the only way i could do two 5k flights on that day so you know so so anyway so i did those two flights it was okay i mean it wasn't so bad because they were short flights got to hang out in those prior to pest lounges which are very nice um in washington dallas um the the part that it really sucked though was taking the megabus from dc to new york i don't know why i found it much harder or much less pleasant doing five hours on that mega bus than, you know, many more hours on airplanes and coach.

I don't know why. That's interesting. It actually leads me into a question, but it's something I thought of while you were talking about that. One thing that Greg mentioned was you kind of had to book it all at once. And that was another mistake that I made. I didn't book it all at once because I booked the flight to Hawaii right from the get-go. And my original, original plan when I discovered the flights to Niue was I booked the flights to Niue from Brisbane because I had seen some cheap tickets between Honolulu and Brisbane on Jetstar. But I wanted to kind of track the prices and see if I could get it a little bit better. So

I watched the prices as they went up and up and up and up and up, whoops, and never went back down. And so that was a big problem because I initially intended to fly from Honolulu to Australia, whether it was be Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane, because I figured I could get a cheap flight within Australia. But unfortunately, those just kept going up. And so I didn't book them all together. And then that kind of pigeonholed me into trying to figure out another way to get to Australia since I had the front and back end booked. So definitely, if you're trying to book a trip like this, you want to book the whole thing at once. But now that said, when Greg mentioned, when you just said that the bus was more unpleasant than the flights, that was something I wanted to ask as you were talking about it.

What was your impression of flying these long hauls in economy? Because I assume that you've probably been using miles to mostly fly in business and first class for years. So I assume you haven't flown nearly this many miles in economy class in a really long time or flights that were this long in economy class for a really long time.

So how did you find the experience? Was it as bad as you feared or did you fear it? Was it better than you expected? What did you think? That's absolutely true. I haven't flown much long distance economy in a long time. And it was way better than I had feared. I mean, I think partly because I was bracing myself for the worst, maybe. But my one flight, JFK to Madrid, was the only low-cost carrier. That was Norwegian. It was like a brand new 787. It was like a beautiful airplane.

It had Wi-fi now it didn't have so this was a common thing on all the on almost all the flights i took they advertised having wi-fi but that didn't mean they had internet they have wi-fi yeah so they they all have like wi-fi so that you can get entertainment on your device, but not actually get on the Internet. That was like Ethiopian had that, too. But but that was fine. It was totally fine. And the yeah, I mean, all of them were fine. Iberia was fine.

And then Ethiopian. I was actually expecting nicer planes. I had seen some online that looked really nice and new, but I got really old, beat up, you know, junkers. The worst one, like my seat. I had this problem where I wasn't able to pick seats online. So I had a call and and they put me right in front of the emergency row, which meant I couldn't even lean back. This is an overnight flight. So that was unfortunate, but I still was okay. I mean, it still wasn't the end of the world.

Yeah. Yeah. My experience matched that. Yeah. I was also surprised. And I don't know why I was surprised because I spent years flying in economy class. My wife and I traveled for a long time before we discovered miles and points and did lots and lots of long flights in economy class. And that was all we knew.

And so it was fine for a long time. So I don't know why I was as nervous about that or why I was as surprised as I was. But I was definitely surprised at how decent it was. I was comfortable. I was okay. I got food on many of the flights in economy class on the full service carriers, which is something that stuck out to me about the challenge.

I've mentioned a few times, and I think this really sticks out with Steven Pepper's trip, that I feel like if you're an economy class traveler, that a cashback strategy or a cashback heavy strategy makes sense because there are so many cheap flights these days. However, that said, one of the advantages of flying full cost carriers on economy awards was that you often had meals included and seat selection and that sort of thing, full size carry ons without a problem. So there are some advantages, I think, if you're flying,

especially if you're flying to places that are perhaps a little bit off the beaten path on award tickets in economy class, I think it can be really valuable. My flight from Auckland, New Zealand to Niue actually was an award seat and my family, they were on paid tickets because there were no award seats by the time they decided they wanted to fly. So they were on paid tickets. So they paid for their seats and I used miles for mine and I got a meal and they didn't. So that stood out as a benefit of flying with full cost or full service carriers. But yeah, I was really surprised. Of course, part of it is luck because on AirAsia, on my long overnight flight, I got a full row to myself. So I had three seats. I got to lay down like it was a flatbed. So that worked out really well. But my first flight on AirAsia, like you said, was like a brand new plane. Everything like it had that new plane smell, kind of like nice leather seats, power at every seat, etc. Stuff that you don't always find on, on, uh, you know, some of the, the major carriers. So yeah, I was, I was pleasantly surprised. I would fly a number of those routes again in economy class. I think, um, I don't know if my family all felt the same

way cause they flew economy class to, to get to the challenge. But then of course we flew comfortably on the way home. Uh, now two things, two separate things that, that certainly makes me want to ask you about your home. But the Seychelles, how did you pick that? Was that someplace that you always knew you wanted to go? Was that some line at the beginning of the challenge? How'd you end up in the Seychelles? Uh, yeah, no, it really came down to, um, me looking at the map, know the the the region map for for uh united defines central and southern africa all as one region which is really interesting because in asia they have it broken down to like all these little things so you have japan as its own region and you have china and a couple other things are one region and anyway so there's all these regions so you can't go

super far i mean china's really big so i guess you could but you know all these regions so you can't go super far i mean china's really big so i guess you could but you know what i mean like you can't go like a whole continent the way you can with uh africa so um i was really looking at you know i knew i was going to be the furthest west sort of northwest in africa and dakar um and uh cape town i was going to be all the way in the south. So what can I do? That's sort of the most northeast is what I was looking at. And I'd actually originally looked at Mauritius. And one of the reasons I'd looked at Mauritius was one of your posts.

See, you had that post where you're talking about Perth being the geographic furthest from DC, I think. And, but you had a list of a few other cities and Mauritius was like third or fourth. I can't remember. And I was like, Oh wait, that's in my list of like, that are in that, that are in this region that I'm, that I'm flying around. So, so I was looking at Mauritius, but, but when it came down to it and I would have been happy with Mauritius, but when it came down to it, and I would have been happy with Mauritius. That would have been great too. When it came down to it though, the Seychelles were both further from Cape Town. So I got more distance for the same price, but also the flight that left Cape Town was later in the evening. So I'd have more time in Cape town. And that turned out to be a really good move, especially given, um, not having the, uh, evening before to do anything. So, um, yeah, so,

so that, that was, uh, and that turned out great. The socials were great. I only had the one, I had about a little over 24 hours there, which is not enough time to spend there, but, but it was glorious after everything else to, to, you know, check into a real hotel and, and, um, just enjoy the, uh, the beach and, and, uh, uh, ocean and everything. Um, let me ask you something. Um, what, what's, what, are there any plans that you dreamed up that you really wish you had somehow figured out a way to do? Like, what's the top thing that there, there's probably a lot of answers to that. I know there are a lot of answers. What's the top thing that pops in your mind when I ask you that?

Standard budget. That would have been high up there on the list of things I would have liked to have done. I think it was in hindsight when I thought more about it. I wish that I had gone to some... I don't know if wish is the right word, but I think there's a part of me that wishes anyway that I'd gone to some places that I may not have otherwise visited. Because in the end, the places that I went to, Tokyo, Australia, New Zealand, apart from Niue anyway, were places that I would ordinarily probably have on my radar and on my map. And I felt like with the challenge, it was an opportunity to maybe hit up some more places that I wouldn't have considered. So I guess if you're asking me for regrets or other

ideas that I wish I could have made happen, that would have been it. And in that regard, I had been looking to try to piece together Tokyo to another part of Southeast Asia, and then a separate ticket from there to get to Australia. And I really wish I had been able to make that work. And I really think that maybe it would have been possible with just different dates. Part of this was being locked into a set of dates because I showed in a number of posts that there are lots of days when you can fly from Honolulu to Sydney for $118. And I didn't know that before we set the dates for the challenge. And so when we set the dates for the challenge, we had it set and I started planning and I looked and I was like, wow, the week before was one of the possibilities we floated.

And I could have flown to Sydney for $118 the week before, but we just picked the wrong dates. So that also came into play in that I could have flown to more places if I had been able to be flexible with dates, which is something that's not a revelation when it comes to award travel and travel in general. More flexibility means you have more options. So I think that I wish I could have gotten someplace else in Southeast Asia. I've never been to Cambodia. I've always been interested in getting there. There's a number of different smaller countries there. So I wish I had been able to do that. Or then I wish i had been able to get another continent in because uh you know i i i getting as many continents as you can on such a small budget i think is something that was kind of an interesting challenge that i don't think any of us necessarily took up in the sense of

trying to see how many continents we get to we were all trying to get far and build up a trip but i think in hindsight it would have been fun to see how many I could have physically gotten to. Because at some point, Greg said, well, can you get all the way around the world on 40,000 points? And we don't think you can, right? We don't think you can. Well, not with miles,

but maybe with cash. Yeah. And I would definitely do some things with miles. So traversing all of North American Hawaii, you found, you know, that's gotta be the cheapest way to do it was with the Turkish miles, but also like the, um, is it 10 K or 12 K, uh, Virgin Atlantic from Hong Kong to London. I mean, that's a freaking long way for almost, you know, almost nothing. That's amazing deal. It sounds like all three of us were hoping to build that into our itinerary. I tried so hard to, I, you know, I still wanted to do the Africa thing. I tried so hard to get to start by going the other way, going toong kong fly to london and then somehow get to africa and then then do the whole thing and it just busted my budget every which way i looked at it so right yeah

um so i regret that a little a couple a couple of little plans that i'd hope to do that I didn't get in. One is there were super cheap flights to what I'm calling Northern Africa, but really the Northern part of the Central and Southern Africa region, right? So Dakar is one of them, but there were super cheap flights from numerous cities in France and Italy to there. And so my, before I booked the, what I ended up booking to get to Africa was using British Airways points to fly Iberia 10K, just using the distance award chart,

10K miles. But that, because I'm transferring ultimate rewards, that cost me about 150 bucks, plus there's $40 in taxes. So it was about $190 the way I saw it. There were flights for $150, just flat out cash. So I could have used Ultimate Rewards, booked those flights for fewer points than it took me. So I wanted to do that. But even more, what I wanted to do, there was a $15 flight to Mallorca from Madrid. So my idea was like, fly into Madrid, take that flight to Mallorca,

and then take a overnight ferry to back to the mainland to either Italy or France. And like sleep on the deck, like they, they allow that like sleeping on the deck. So that would be so cool to add, add an overnight ferry kind of experience like that. And then fly this cheap flight back. And, and the thing is technically it worked like as in like, yeah,

if my flight arrived in Madrid exactly on on time then i had you know 45 minutes to get to the next to the flight to mallorca which might have been a different terminal which knowing madrid airport now there's no way uh but if it was the same terminal maybe um and then and then it was bad on the more on the other side too so get to majorca and there's not much time to do stuff before you get on the ferry and then in the morning having to catch a flight to get um to get to to africa uh would have been a problem but um boy i really wanted to do that it just just sounded awesome. Yeah, it does sound awesome. That's, you know, I think that that's an interesting piece of it too,

that there was no requirement for us to try to build in additional modes of transport. But wasn't it fun thinking about some of the different modes of transport you get? I was pretty disappointed when I wasn't able to enter Bangkok because I really wanted to get a tuk-tuk in. And I rented a bicycle and I tried to get on a ferry. But Steven Pepper really went above and beyond when it comes to modes of transport. He found like every kind of mode of transport, even through a segue in there. So, but that was, that was, I think something kind of fun and interesting that just came along with the excitement about traveling and trying these

different things, right. That you could throw in these different modes of transport that really didn't necessarily have something directly to do with miles and points, but it kind of felt like you should do that, right? It did. And in addition to modes of transport, I was trying to find exciting things to do that would make the trip seem bigger. And I think I did, right, but I'll tell you one of the ideas. So, um, I had found a blogger who blogs about being an American in Africa. I mean, I'd found her because, um, again, I was looking for that game drive type thing and she had written about one. Um, and, and so I contacted her and was just

asking about the same question I asked her on couch surfing. Do you think I could do this in this much time? I told her about the contest and, and she came back with, um, uh, Hey, I've got an idea or maybe it was her boyfriend's idea. I forget. But she said, there's this building in Johannesburg that it used to be like this very dangerous, like poverty, you know, you just didn't want to be there. But it's gotten all cleaned up and it's become like a destination where it's like a thing to do to climb all the way up this really tall tower. It's like a round tower and I guess you climb up. But the other thing you could do on it is you can bungee jump all the way from the top down through, I think it's- And you didn't do that? So the only reason I didn't do it besides it sounds terrifying but um is it cost something

like 60 bucks I just couldn't afford it so I think I mean that would have been right a really sweet addition to the whole thing I think you know and I think I was just going to ask you before you before you got into that story I was going to ask you what were some things that you found that looked really awesome but you were like oh that just won't fit in the budget? Because I know we probably all ran into some of those things that we were like, oh, wow, that would be awesome to do, but can't do it on this one because of the budget. So were there any other things like that that you ran into that come to mind? Where you were like, wow, that looks like it'd be something really interesting to do, something nice to write about, something people would enjoy, but just...

Yeah, I don't know. That's the main thing that comes to mind right now yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean i well there were a number of different things along the the the way that sounded really exciting and interesting and in the end i got to new way and there were some cool things to do in new way that uh again at that point i was already over the budget but had i gotten there under budget i still wouldn't have been able to do uh but would have been cool. I snorkeled with dolphins and so there'll be a video coming of that. And that was pretty awesome. You can also snorkel with whales there quite often. And that seems neat too. Then in Nelson, New Zealand, where I rented the bicycle, really the thing to do if you go to Nelson is to go to this Abel Tasman National Park that looks gorgeous, but it

was too far away to be able to do it within the eight hours of my layover without a car. I would have had to have rented a car and a car would have been too expensive. So I couldn't do that. There were also cruises, boats, but those were out of the budget too. But the pictures look gorgeous and there's at least a large part of me that wishes I could have done that because I don't know if I'll get back to Nelson again or when I'll get back to Nelson. And, uh, and the pictures of that park look really, really beautiful. So that would have been something that I definitely would have tossed on there. And then in, um, in Brisbane, there are a couple of islands that I wasn't familiar with

that are quite well known, I guess, in Brisbane, there's North Stradbroke Island and Morriton Island, which are both off the coast. Both look really, really interesting also, but I couldn't find a way to get to those places cheaply enough. So that was another issue. If I got there, then there was stuff to walk around and see and do, but getting from the airport to either of those places was just going to be too expensive. So I couldn't make those happen. So I had to keep it somewhat closer to the airport and I intended to originally walk to Eat Street, but happen. So I had to keep it somewhat closer to the airport. And I intended to originally walk to Eat Street, but then I thought I had it all wrapped up to go for free and found out, unfortunately, that I couldn't download the app and do that after all. So that was a

disappointment for me there. But yeah, those were a couple of things that came to mind for me anyway. I'd love to hear about the things Steven Pepper too ran across that didn't fit in the budget because he had so much of it left still when he got back to the United States. So he had a lot of ways to go yet. Yeah. One of the things that impresses me or maybe surprises me about his trip

is I think he slept in airports three times, I think he slept in airports three times i think he said um yet he ended like um under budget and and he could have easily like not done some of the things at the end that that were discretionary um yeah anyway i wouldn't have made that choice like i would have paid the money to stay in a hostel or something. But I guess it seems like he doesn't mind. No, he seemed totally comfortable with it. Much more comfortable than I would have been.

It felt like it was a weekend and my wife messaged me and she said, has Steven Pepper stayed in a bed yet? And I was like, I don't know. He's committed because I knew I was going to need a bed at some point. So I had to find one somewhere. It was going to be a hostel or something. And they were hostile on the way. And there was definitely part of me that night in Honolulu that was regretting not having spent the $15 it was, I think, on a hostel. I actually walked past the hostels that I had at King

at cheap places to stay in Honolulu. And I walked past them at like two in the morning and I thought to myself, my goodness, maybe I should have booked one of those after all, because having a bed was really nice. That first night in a bed was great. So for you, the first night in a bed was, so you spent the first night on the airplane, right? So it was then the second night. The second night, yeah. So we both ended up finding a more comfortable place to sleep relatively early in. But yeah, Stephen was committed to doing what it took to use his modes of transport also to his advantage as places to sleep. Because I think it was almost a week before he got that hostile bed, right?

I mean, it had to have been like it seemed that way it seemed that way i was just like watching like following along i can't even like believe what he's what he's suffering through for this for this challenge but good for him uh now those trolls those giant trolls that is super cool so that's that's something that I definitely want to do. And apparently we could do near here. He said somewhere near Chicago. And I thought this was such a little thing, but I thought it was really cool. It was actually a lot like your idea of what you were trying to do with the Uber-like car service,

but where he got the spin scooter in D.C. using a promo code. So he was able to ride across to wherever he needed to be for free. So I don't know. I thought that was a cool little story there. And I had tried periodically to look for things like that like look for groupons or whatever um to help me along i never found anything that was helpful yeah i i didn't either and and those uh those like lime scooters and things like that it certainly would have been an option i've used those before in other places where you know maybe

you could have used that to to advantage to your advantage one way or another. And I think had I planned to stop somewhere else within the United States, I definitely would have incorporated that, the idea of the Bird or Lime or, I don't know, those different scooter programs that we don't have where I live but exist in a lot of different cities. Certainly would be useful. And then new rider promotions for things like Uber, Uber-like services, certainly something that just didn't work out well for me on this trip, but probably would for most people if you're able to plan it in advance. And I think in my case, what didn't work out with that ride service I mentioned, DiDiDi, I don't know how they pronounce it, probably would have worked with a local SIM card. It was just, I think, using the Google Fi SIM card that made that not work for me. But yeah, I mean, I think that this competition opened up some pretty interesting discoveries.

So I think we found some pretty neat stuff. Hopefully you guys enjoyed some of the stuff that we came across. I know I enjoyed seeing how these guys used some of the different sweet spots, the excursionist perk, couch surfing, and the way that Steven was able to maximize money were all, I think, really interesting pieces of the challenge. I think we approached the problem from pretty different perspectives, too. So I think that that made it kind of neat. It did. worked out amazingly well and we're getting unbelievably positive uh responses from most of our our readers either both in blog comments on facebook just about everywhere and so it sounds like people really liked it people are already saying things like we can't wait till the next

challenge and they're offering up suggestions for what that'll be um yeah i'm excited about it too you know i'm actually looking forward to some downtime without travel but um but at the same time i'm also like yeah what will the next challenge be and and it'll this was great i i can't wait to do another one yeah yeah no i'm very excited about doing another one a lot of people have mentioned them and like next year's challenge and i'm thinking next year's challenge i mean challenge i don, next year's challenge. I mean, challenge. I don't know, because I definitely am excited about doing it again. So we'll certainly be looking at doing that.

Like Greg said, I'm looking forward to some downtime. I flew back to the United States two nights ago, and then I still stayed in a hotel last night also. So I haven't been back in my bed since September. So I'm definitely looking forward to going back home and doing a little bit of downtime too. But I'm really excited about this idea because I think there are more challenges. I think readers have suggested so many different ideas. We've talked about ideas. I'm sure that we have ideas we haven't talked with each other about yet. So I'm pretty excited about coming up

with some more creative challenges because I think this was exciting for us for you guys and and it also uh it was enlightening we came came up with some pretty good finds along the way so I'm excited to see what happens with the next one yeah we we came up with so many great finds the the 7.5k to y is just the tip of the iceberg there's so many good things um you know what though we're we're way over time that we usually take here. Let's let everyone know where to find us online, and we'll call it a night. So if you're just joining in, you'll want to find us at thefrequentmiler.com. That's T-H-E, frequentmiler.com. You can also find us on Twitter at FrequentMiler.

Find me at Nick at FM. You can check out our FrequentMiler Insiders Facebook group. It's a great resource for connecting with other travelers. And then, of course, if you're watching this and you'd prefer to give it a listen and listen to it on the commute, the morning commute, that sort of thing, you'll find links to the podcast formats. It's available out there, both Apple and Android and web. So you'll find links to all the different podcast formats in our week in review posts, which we'll post tomorrow. That'll be Saturday, October 19th, 2019 for this particular episode. And you can find us of course, on YouTube, also on our frequent miler YouTube channel. So lots of ways to connect with us and to connect with the community. So

thank you guys very much for being out there for listening and watching and reading and leave us comments, questions, feedback. We always love to hear from you guys. We'll see you guys on the blog soon. Bye everyone. Take care. Bye-bye.