Frequent Miler on the Air - Best and Worst of Party of 5 (A judge-eye view) | Ep207 | 6-17-23

Episode Date: June 17, 2023

What did the judge think of each team's decisions? In this week's episode, Greg and Nick quick-fire recap the Party of 5 trip and Greg shares his view as to what each team did best and which things didn't go according to plan. https://frequentmiler.com/party-of-5-frequentmiler-challenge-daily-update/ For full Party of 5 coverage, see: https://frequentmiler.com/tag/party-of-5/ 00:00 Intro 01:35 Challenge Format https://frequentmiler.com/party-of-5-frequent-milers-2023-team-challenge/ 04:38 Team Tokyo's summary 14:56 Team San Francisco summary 28:18 Judge-eye view 28:51 Best location / worst location for each team 30:36 Best overall location 31:08 Best lodging / worst lodging for each team 33:45 Best lodging overall 33:58 Best flight / worst flight for each team 35:23 Best flight overall 35:45 Best local transportation / worst local transport for each team 39:41 Best local transport overall 29:52 Best overall food / worst overall food for each team 41:58 Best overall food 43:00 Best / worst activity for each team 44:38 Best overall activity 46:31 Best overall award redemption Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, best and worst of Party of Five, a judge eye view. So we are just back from our Party of five adventure. And actually, I'm not even really back. I'm in Miami or near Miami, where I met up with my wife and haven't even gotten home yet. And Nick is about to rush off to one thing or another. So we have to do a shorter show than usual. We will return to our usual show format next week, but this week we have no mailbag,

no question of the week, no crazy thing, and no mattress running the numbers. So if that's what you come here to hear, maybe, you know, maybe listen to a little bit of this and come back next week. Yeah, I mean, we have,

I have been home now for, I don't know, 20, 18, 14 hours, 13 hours, 12. I don't even know how many hours, but not enough to have slept enough yet to feel like I'm home. So, yeah, but we're back and it's been an exciting couple of weeks. I was just going through pictures and my goodness, we had a heck of a trip. So we'll talk all about that today and some lessons learned, so to speak, and some judge eye so to speak and

some uh you know some judge i've used to see what the judge has thought so far so we're going to talk about all that but first i guess what we ought to do is review the challenge format right so what is this challenge we're talking about if you haven't been following along the last couple of weeks what's going on yeah so just real quickly so our entire team uh the entire frequent miler team all five of us uh traveled together and and we do a challenge each year usually where we're competing against each other individually um this year what we decided to do is break into two teams um so we had carrie and steven on one team and they were team Asia. And I'll explain what that means in a sec. And then we had Nick and Tim as a team San Francisco, which was the

other team. I am, I was the judge or referee or whatever you want to call it. And the idea was that each team had to build the most spectacular trip using points, miles, other tricks of the trade, and I would judge from start to bottom. Team Asia, or really Team Tokyo is what we've been calling them, Carrie and Stephen. Their travel started in Tokyo because we flew the entire team in Japan Airlines business class to Tokyo first. But that was outside of the contest, really. And they had about six days to plan an epic trip and return us to Tokyo. And then Team San Francisco took over when we got back from Tokyo because we had, again, pre-arranged an epic flight on ANA First Class to get from Tokyo to San Francisco. And so Team San Francisco took over from there to build an epic trip to anywhere they wanted.

And they didn't even have the requirement to get back to San Francisco because that wouldn't have made a lot of sense for us because we're all returning to different places at the end. So we arranged separate transport at the end of their part of the trip to get each person home. And I just want to clarify, you said we prearranged the travel. And what Greg means when he says that is that we had we booked the travel to Tokyo and from from San Francisco to Tokyo and Tokyo to San Francisco before we created the format of the challenge. So it's not that we had some special arrangement with ANA where, you know, like we bought out the cabin or something. It was just we booked those when we saw availability for five people and then design the rest of the challenge around that. It did work out pretty cool if you were watching on Instagram because the five of us did have the

ANA first class cabin all to ourselves. But that was kind of separate from the challenge. That was just transportation within the challenge, I guess. That's right. That's right. And we were able to take advantage of some great sweet spot awards. So using relatively very, very few miles to book those amazing flights. What we're going to do now is give an overview of what we actually did, and we're going to try to do it really quickly. So first, Nick is going to talk us through what Team Tokyo, what the Team Tokyo adventure was. And excuse us for trying to rush through this. All right. So Team Tokyo, first we flew San Francisco

to Tokyo's NRT Narita Airport on Japan Airlines business class. And again, that was part of what was booked before the challenge. Then Team Tokyo took us from Tokyo's Narita Airport to Manila Airport in economy class on Japan Airlines. I think they booked that through British Airways Avios or Cathay Pacific Asian Miles. I can't remember which.

Then once we got to Manila, we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Manila, which is right next to the airport. Unfortunately, it wasn't right next to the terminal we flew into. So it was a little bit of a hassle getting over to the terminal where that was. But if you're flying to or from Terminal 1, super convenient location for the Holiday Inn Express. From there, we went to a place called Puerto Galera. Now, that's on a different island. I think the island is Mindoro Island. In order to get there, we had to take a van from the airport that next morning when we woke up.

So we got to Manila late that first night, slept at the Holiday Inn Express, got up in the morning. We took a van, I think almost two hours to the ferry port, then a ferry that I remember correctly was about an hour to Mindoro Island. And then when we got to the island, we took a jeepney. And if you've never heard of a jeepney, I'm not just trying to be cute about the way I refer to a jeep. It's actually a vehicle, a jeepney, which is sort of like a long open jeep. Like imagine a jeep limousine that doesn't have sides. And that's the sort of well, sort of like it gives you an idea. Anyway, you can find pictures on our Instagram. So so we took a jeepney then to get to an Airbnb.

And the Airbnb was something like nothing I'd ever seen for sure. It was like a maze. This was like an eight or 10 bedroom place with, I don't know, enough beds for probably 20 or 30 people. If you're traveling with couples or whatever. So we each had enough for basically like two bedrooms of our own if we wanted to. It was this huge, huge place, swimming pool, gorgeous views from there. And decorated in the most unique way you can possibly imagine. The owner had traveled all around the world and brought back parts and pieces of tiles and molds and stuff

from all over the world to build this hodgepodge place. I say hodgepodge, and if you have a negative connotation with hodgepodge, then let me change that. This really beautiful, interesting work of art that he created for an Airbnb. So that was cool. And that included, well, it included a chef, we had a chef for some private meals. And so we had a chef that cooked breakfast and dinner while we were there. And they did laundry for us, which was very much appreciated. And then from there, we visited some waterfalls. So we took a trip out to jump into a waterfall,

and we all got dunked under by the waterfall and got to jump off of a cliff there too. And then we also did some snorkeling and that was cool. It was with a boat where you held on to a rope and they dragged you along a coral reef. So all of us that weren't named Greg saw sea turtles and some various tropical fish and lots of really healthy coral. So that was cool. Then from Manila, we flew to Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific business class. When we got to Hong Kong,

though, we didn't stay there for long. We took a bus to get to Macau, which is sort of the Las Vegas of China, another separate autonomous region like Hong Kong, but next to it. And in Macau, we stayed at the Four Seasons. So when we pulled into the Four Seasons, that was certainly a surprise. I didn't expect Team Tokyo to bring us to a Four Seasons. So that was cool. We stayed at the Four Seasons. That was a fine hotels and resorts booking. So we had a free breakfast and also $100 credit for each room. So the next day at breakfast, we ate century eggs, which are a unique treat. If you're if you're traveling to Asia, I'll put it that way. They were delicious. Right. Yes, you should absolutely try them.

So so we ate the century eggs. And then after the century eggs, we got out to go see pandas because they had a free sort of outdoor zoo where you could see pandas. And that was pretty cool because obviously there are only so many of those you can see in the world. So so we get to see that in Macau. Unfortunately, we got Macau'd from there, which was a term we used a lot. If you continue to watch us on Instagram, and if you didn't know what we were referring to, we were referring to this day in Macau where, unfortunately, we got kind of lost. We went to see the pandas, and then we were trying to walk to another place

to do another activity that Kerry and Stephen had planned, and it was raining, and we got caught by construction in this area we couldn't seem to get out of. We couldn't seem to find a taxi. Oh, my goodness. It was such a hassle. So we crossed these roads back and forth forever trying to hail a taxi, which apparently you can't do in Macau. So eventually we got an apartment building security person to call a taxi and get us back to the Four Seasons. Surprisingly, even calling the Four Seasons didn't help. They weren't able to send a car after us. So we really got stuck and missed a bunch of the stuff that they had planned. And so we felt horrible for Stephen and Carrie that day because I know they had some really cool stuff in mind.

But later that night, we did get to see the Fountain Show, both from the windows of our rooms and then down close up, the Fountain Show in front of the Wynn Palace, which is the same kind of idea as the Bellagio fountain show. Although I think all of us that have seen both agreed that the Macau version was actually a little bit of an improvement, I would say over the Las Vegas version. So saw the fountain show. That was pretty cool. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt Macau the second night and I should back up and say we ate lunch at the Four Seasons with our we had in room dining with our

credits there because we had the creditsroom dining with our credits there because we had the credits that came with the fine hotels and resorts booking. We went over and checked in at the Grand Hyatt Macau next. That was awesome. Really enjoyed a great stay there where we had three suites, I think if I remember correctly, at the Grand Hyatt Macau. So we had club lounge access. We had the suites. So that was nice. We get to enjoy some drinks and food in the lounge that night, easy free dinner. And then the next day, we flew back to Tokyo in Japan Airlines business class. We stayed at the Tokyo Hyatt Regency Tokyo Bay, not to be confused with the Hyatt Regency Tokyo, but it was the Hyatt Regency Tokyo Bay, which is in a different location. Also very cool, enjoyed some nice

suites there. So they made sure our team,, Tokyo made sure that we had suites or a large Airbnb, very comfortable accommodations at each stop along the way. And I know that was something important in the initial, uh, design of the challenge. And they really took that to heart and did a good job with that. Uh, then the next morning at breakfast, uh, I got to enjoy a wonderful little competition. Uh, Carrie and I had a face-off to see who could eat yucky food the fastest. And so Carrie had some okra that had sesame sauce on it that really didn't look appealing. The kind of sticky, drippy nature of the sauce on it was just not attractive looking. It looked like something out of Aliens. Yeah, no, it did. Her looks like something out of Aliens. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it did. Her okra got slimed for sure. And she had to manage to eat that competing against me. And so I don't like eggs. And I'm not a marshmallow fan really at all either. And Greg found that they had the perfect storm on the breakfast buffet where you could order an omelet that had marshmallows in it. What? Who came up with that idea? I have no idea.

I cannot believe when I saw that. That was hilarious. I've never seen that anywhere. Marshmallows in the omelets? Had to try it. Had to get Nick to try it anyway. Yeah. So the competition became, can I eat that omelet before Carrie eats all of her okra? And so we had a face-off competition. Her alien slime. Right, right. And to be a fly on the wall or to be in the minds of the other people around us, probably,

while the five of us are getting all excited as Carrie tries to swallow her okra and I'm trying to cut through my omelet and choke it down. I must have looked really ridiculous. I was getting all excited about it. But we sure did. And I have to tip the hat to Carrie because she finished the okra before I got through with the omelet. So she beat me with that.

And then later on that day, we went to Team Lab Planets Tokyo, which if you're not familiar, and I certainly wasn't, you should look it up. It was the most, I think the most impactful sort of, not impactful, maybe that's not the right word. The most amazing art sort of experience that I have ever seen before. Very immersive art experience with lots of LED lights and cool, interesting, unique designs. So it was very put you very much in the heart of the exhibits. And I felt like it was the type of thing that I could have gone and

spent all day there. You know, we were there for probably a couple of hours, and it didn't even feel like enough. So I would go back again, gladly. And if you haven't seen our pictures and things of all of the stuff that I've been talking about, you can go to our Instagram page, the Frequent Miler Instagram page. And there's a highlight reel, I think, just for the team Tokyo and a highlight reel just for Team San Francisco, where you can go through and look through the Instagram stories. And a lot of these things are things you really have to see to completely get. And Team Lab Planets is certainly one of those things. So that was a really, really cool experience that we got to enjoy. It was something Tim had mentioned a long time ago in conversation and Carrie and Stephen remembered and sought it out and found it.

So that was really cool, too. So that was Team Tokyo's trip, right? Yeah, that was that was epic just by itself. I mean, going when you go over all that stuff, I'm like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe we did all of that in less than a week. Right. stuff. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe we did all of that in less than a week. And then from then on, so what we flew from Tokyo in ANA first class to San Francisco, that was not what, you know, team SFO or team Tokyo had arranged, but I had pre-booked that when the award was amazingly available. We had the entire first class cabin to ourselves. And, um, so that was so much fun. I mean, if you can find the, again, the highlight reels on, uh, on Instagram, you've

got to check that out. Uh, we, we did things like we all sat together because the suites were so big. We were able to have sort of a, a team, uh, you know, sat around and had like a whiskey tasting and had dinner together, all kinds of stuff. So fantastic experience there. Then we, when we arrived in Tokyo and San Francisco, we took an Uber to the amazing, beautiful, luxurious Holiday Inn. Some of those adjectives don't apply. Be comfortable and adequate, Holiday Inn. Comfortable-ish and adequate. Now, they did, with our diamond status, gave us a gift bag.

So in addition to getting the welcome amenity, which we chose breakfast, Tim and I each checked into separate rooms and we were just given a gift bag and it had included a little bag of cookies and a bottle of water and a little carton, sort of like a milk carton of wine. Because nothing says luxury in class like the carton of like like wine from concentrate okay so and i should also note they upgraded us to the room that was big enough to to include a roll away in it and uh and i'm it was apparently only a small percentage of the rooms there can do that and i'm glad they did because when the guy came in with the roll away he looked at us like where do i put this i can't believe you fit one in there in those rooms that that was that's amazing yeah so one room had three people the other room had two i was in the one with two so

i didn't have to see how it was possible to fit that it was a squeeze anyway so um then uh nick Anyway, so then Tim led us on a coastal walk around the coast of San Francisco, which was fantastic. I love that. It's so beautiful there. It's, we flew luxurious southwest to get to LAX. And from Los Angeles, we flew a lawn business class all the way to Santiago. So that's a long flight, but their business class is really nice in a sort of different way from how we've come to expect business. A lot of the modern business class products are very private. Some even have suites with doors or some have these reverse herringbone systems where they have a shell around so that it's very private. This is the exact opposite. It's a very big, open, airy cabin. The seats are arranged two by two by two, which normally I wouldn't love.

But when traveling with four other people, it was like we were all together. Big, open, bright, airy cabin. Lots of space in the seats. Plenty of leg room. Very nice service and good food. So overall, I think we all really like that flight a lot. Yeah, I should jump in and say that it's La Tom. Like it used to be La Tom.

So it's two airlines combined, La Tom and Tom, and now you got La Tom. So it was La Tom business. That's right. I misspoke. Okay. And let's right. I misspoke. Okay. And let's see. Then when we arrived in Santiago, Chile, we took an Uber to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, whereupon we discovered that even though I had loaded my backpack into the trunk of that Uber, it had not made it to the Ritz Carlton

where we were staying. It had been swiped out of the back when apparently no one was looking. So we had a fun adventure, Nick and I. It was a big bummer. Yeah, it was rough. My Apple ear pods were in the backpack and they work a lot like air tags in that I can track them from my phone.

And so we spent about five hours after filling out a police report, um, following my air tags, uh, from one police precinct to another where, uh, every time they left the police precinct area, the police we had found were no longer able to help us. And so anyway, long story short, no luck retrieving my backpack or any of its contents. So that was a bummer. Luckily, I had my passport and wallet in my pocket. So still able to get around and with a little help from friends had a way to charge my phone. And I still had my main suitcase. So I had clothes to change into

and everything like that. So we were able to keep going despite that setback. And unfortunately, the team San Francisco had some amazing plans. Can you quickly say what they planned that day? That day, we had somebody waiting

at the Ritz when we arrived at the Ritz. We were intending to just drop our bags off and go because we had a whitewater rafting trip booked in the Maipo Valley, which if you look up pictures, you'll see an amazing valley out in the Andes Mountains, a bit of a drive out from Santiago. So we would have gotten out of the city and into the Andes Mountains for a whitewater

rafting adventure and then a lunch at a typical Andean restaurant. And then from there, there's some hot springs out in the Maipo Valley, some natural hot springs that you can get to. And they are really in a pretty isolated area. And I have to remember it's wintertime there. So the sun goes down a lot earlier. So we could have been there around sunset, watch the sunset over the Andes Mountains, and then there are no lights at the hot springs. So you get a beautiful view of the stars, as I understand as the sunset. So it really looked like it was going to be a really awesome experience out there to get sort of the Andean mountain experience.

So that was our plan for the day. And then we would have been back in Santiago for the evening. But but instead, we had to switch gears. So we did we ditch that because, of course, obviously, we spent some time looking for Greg's bag and going to the police precincts and trying to see what we could do, because that was a stressful couple of hours anyway. So we ditched that and instead we hung out for a while while we did that. And then what did we do next, Greg? Yeah. So then we went go-kart racing, which turned out to be incredibly fun. That was particularly a thing that Steven was interested in doing. And when we got Macau'd in Macau,

he wasn't able to do that, but he was able to do that in Santiago. And we all had a ton of fun. Stephen proved his mettle there by beating all of our times. So good job, Stephen, with that. And good job, Team San Francisco, for setting that up and sort of recovering the day a little bit. The next day, let's see, I'm trying to find my notes here. Oh, well, so the Ritz-Carlton proved to be a fantastic hotel, beautiful, luxurious. They had a great breakfast in the morning that was included thanks to having booked through

fine hotels and resorts rate one room and stars rate on the other room. And then we were also later on that next day also able to have lunch there with the credits that we got. So we got a lot of value from that Ritz booking right there. And later that day, we flew La Tom Economy to Buenos Aires, Argentina. And so what I want to mention just real quickly, there will be posts that detail all this, but this was on the same award flight that brought us to Santiago. So we had used Alaska miles to fly this one-way route on La Tombe and Alaska allows a stopover on one-way awards., the time in Santiago was a free stopover. Uh, it didn't turn out to be free for me, but it was free for everybody else.

I know it was a very expensive stopover in Santiago for Greg. When you add up everything in that backpack, it was quite a pricey little stopover, but, uh, but he was a good sport about it and continued on with the trip. So we continued on then to Buenos Aires. And when we got there, we had something lined up. We arrived in Buenos Aires and took an Uber to a street corner where we stood outside a apartment building or something for a little while. Didn't know what was going on. Because I should have mentioned that everything we experienced was a surprise to three of us, basically. So there was the two that planned each part. and then the other three were surprised step by step. And so we had no idea why we were standing on that street corner.

But soon enough, we were brought inside and up the many stairs to a private dinner event that Team San Francisco had organized where basically a couple prepared a fantastic kind of local dinner and had great conversation and had a ton of fun there. Okay, so then we checked into the Marriott's Park Tower Luxury Collection Hotel, which again was very nice. It was surprising to me. I wasn't expecting a lot out of that, but I was able to use a soon expiring 50K free night certificate for Marriott to stay there. And it was actually very luxurious. Not the Ritz, but in the league, I'd say.

And the next day, the team took us to the streets of Buenos Aires where we were looking at street art like graffiti. That's art. And showing off some art by a artist named Luxor. Yeah, Luxor is how he pronounced it. Luxor. Yeah. And Carrie was uh in love with that art she was like oh my god this is so great this is exactly the type of art i like it's you

know whole thing anyway and um but then they took us to another spot where there was a big blank wall waiting for us and luxor himself was there to guide us through how to make that street art and we had just so much fun actually doing i mean carrie was of course just totally over the moon excited but you know what the rest of us had a ton of fun despite like i'd say the the rest of us have participated have about like a negative one on the uh art ability scale and that's with greg pulling it up for me because uh yeah that average just pulled up a little bit right right right greg's artistic ability pulls up the average even though even though i'm at minus two and somehow uh i don't know how that worked maybe two negatives uh anyway um so actually, they all turned out beautiful, even though Cary's was obviously the most beautiful.

What a great experience that was. But we weren't done with Team San Francisco's trip. We flew from Buenos Aires to the Iguazu Falls area, which Iguazu Falls is the largest set of waterfalls in the world. And they span really three countries, but two that are kind of most accessible, which is Argentina and Brazil. So we flew into the Argentina side, drove over to the Brazil side where we checked into the Wyndham Hotel, which... The Wyndham Golden Suites,... The Wyndham Golden Suites, Greg. Wyndham Golden Suites. Which, if you have a negative opinion of the Wyndham chain, that's about what you should expect.

This property won't change it. This won't change it, yeah. It was an eclectic hotel where the lobby area actually seemed somewhat luxurious. But the rooms were somewhat not. Yeah, I'm just not going to get into that. But the next morning, let's be clear, it wasn't dirty. It wasn't dirty. It just wasn't.

It wasn't. It was clean. It was very clean. Yeah. Yeah. That's the best you could say about the rooms. They were clean. They were clean. They were clean.

The next morning was, the next day it was epic. It started off with a helicopter ride over the falls, which most of us had not been in a helicopter before. That was fantastic. We then went for a boat ride under the falls. So that, again, was fantastic and got to sort of hop over rapids in the boat, too, on the way to the falls, which itself might have been the most fun part of that. It was really terrific. the falls that were actually, I think the most spectacular part of the experience in many ways, because you felt like you're sort of in the falls and you're just as wet as if you're in the falls, uh, because of how much mist comes off of those things. Yeah. Yeah. Soaked. Absolutely. So I was going back to your pictures today and I was like, Oh my goodness, we were so wet. Yeah. So, all right. So that's, that's a quick rundown of the trip. The next day we, we, um,

got some of us got to quickly see the Argentinian side of the falls, which was great too. Uh, but then we all went our separate ways to some extent and finally ended up back where we are now. Um, so that's an overview of the trip. Now we need, we need the judge eye view. Like we need to, we need to find out what the judge, because ultimately Greg has been the judge of all of this. The idea designing the trip was to design something that would appeal to the judge. So let's go to the judges and let's find out

what was the best and worst for each team and the best and worst overall. So let's start with location. So for Team Tokyo, they took us to, again, Manila, Puerto Galera, and Macau, and Tokyo. So best, worst. Let's start with best. What was the best location?

Puerto Galera was the best location. The island in the Philippines had a lot going on, had beauty, had fun activities. Very good. All right. What about the worst? The worst had to be Macau. Not necessarily because of the location, but we just didn't get to see any of the interesting parts of it. So it really didn't work out. The weather was horrible. And if it was a nice weather day,

it would have been so much better because we could have walked from the location where we stayed. We could have walked to the old sort of colonial Portuguese part of Macau. And so that would have been awesome. It would have been a totally different experience if it was sunny, but unfortunately it didn't work out. Okay, what about Team San Francisco? Best location? Iguazu Falls, by far. I'd say location-wise, that was amazing. Very good. Worst location?

Worst location? I'm sorry. Yeah. Team San Francisco. Yeah. Worst location. This is tough for me because all the locations were good,

but I just have to... One was worse for one of us than the rest of us. It was worse for me. Well, and sort of worse for all of us because we didn't get to do the epic uh activity that day so santiago gets the worst there yeah yeah sorry santiago because we did do a walking tour in santiago i don't think we mentioned that we did do a walk oh we forgot to mention that yeah that was actually a very good tour um we actually had a very nice time in santiago except for that horrible thing that right right hard hard for

that not to take worst when that happens. So, all right, good. So what about, so should we do each of these categories or should we pick a best here? Pick the best location here? Oh, best overall location. Best overall location. Yeah, I'll give that to Iguazu Falls. Awesome.

Best overall. Very good. And a big thanks, shout out to Tim, because that was really his pick. And I was hesitant on Iguazu Falls. Awesome. That's overall. Very good. And a big thanks. Shout out to Tim, because that was really his pick. And I was hesitant on Iguazu Falls initially. And then kind of, we changed plans a little bit,

talked about some other stuff. And then after I did some more research, I pushed back and I was like, no, you know what? We do need to go to Iguazu Falls. I think he had already given up on it at that point. And then I was like,

no, no, no, you were right all along. Iguazu Falls did. So awesome. Great. Shout out, hat tip to Tim for that all right lodging so team tokyo's best lodging yeah i'm gonna give it to the airbnb we stayed at in the philippines was spectacular wasn't

luxurious but it was spectacular and uh yeah i'll just leave it at that go check out our post all about that particular airbnb it's worth it worth a look the moment we walked in i sent a text message to my wife and i said oh my goodness we lost so totally all right worst lodging for a team uh team tokyo worst lodging um now that they they did really well on almost all of it uh the uh ihg express when we when we arrived holiday i'm sorry holiday and express when we arrived in Manila, was actually not bad, but compared to the other lodging we stayed at, was not special. And they're sort of getting dinged here as well because they booked it specifically because it's attached to the airport, but it wasn't attached to the terminal we flew into and there was no way to get from

one terminal to another. So it ended up uh quite a drive to get to a average hotel yep okay that says it all right what about for team san francisco then best lodging best lodging i'll say the ritz carlton santiago it's beautiful yeah service great service great service yeah yeah it far outpaced the four seasons Macau in terms of service, I feel like. Yeah, although I do have to say the Grand Hyatt in Macau probably had the best service overall of all the places we stayed. Good point. Even though it didn't make the best of lodging for Team Tokyo

because they had a lot of good ones. They had a lot of good ones, that's right. All right, worst lodging for Team San Francisco? Worst lodging, I'd say the the windom the spooky windom you know they texted that the the spooky hotel because great everybody tim and i arrived last at that hotel without getting into the long story we arrived separately and uh and and so they said something about the spooky hotel and i was like what are they talking about walking in the lobby i was like what are they talking about this Walked in the lobby. I was like, what are they talking about? This place looks fine.

Took the elevator up. Elevator doors opened. And as soon as they opened, I said, oh. And Tim just about died laughing because it was one of those places where the lights turn on as you enter the hallways. So all of the lights were off. So the elevator opened and like it was a dark floor. Yeah. So you have to walk onto this dark, barren floor.

And even then, so just the lights light up just where you are in front of the elevators. Right. And the hallways are still dark. And so now you have to like walk into a dark hallway. And then finally you walk into what looks a little bit like a prison cell type of room. But it's clean. It's clean. It's a clean prison cell.

Clearly that was the worst lodging for us, no doubt. So overall, best lodging overall for the whole trip. Airbnb. Yeah clearly that was the worst lodging for us no doubt so overall best lodging overall for the whole trip b&b yeah that was a really wild experience worst lodging overall uh you gotta be the windom gotta be the wind yeah okay yeah all right that's that's lodging all right flight best flight for team san francisco uh best flight for team san francisco or team tokyo i'm sorry, team Tokyo. I apologize. Team Tokyo. Yep. Team Tokyo, the best flight. The flights were not particularly memorable for me on the Tokyo side. So we had two business class flights, one with Japan Airlines, one with

Cathay Pacific. The Japan Airlines one was a nicer flight of the two, if I remember right. Yeah, it was. I think it was a flatbed seat, whereas the Cathay Pacific was angled, if I remember correctly. That's right. Yeah. All right. So worst flight from team Tokyo. Yeah. I'd say the Japan Airlines economy flight to Manila from Tokyo. It was a pretty long flight, all in economy. Nick had a window seat in quotes with no window. I had a seat by where the window would be if there were a window, but instead I was just boxed in with a wall. So yeah, that was not my favorite either. All right. Flight on the team San Francisco side, favorite or best,

best on the team San Francisco side. Oh, that's easy. La Tom business class to Santiago was a great flight. Absolutely. All right. Worst on our side. Worst on the Team San Francisco side. So we had several short economy flights. I actually can't really differentiate them one from another.

They were all fine. They're all fine. Yeah, I agree. I agree. All right. So overall, best flight. Overall, best flight, La Tom business class to Santiago. Nice. Worst overall. Worst overall. best flight overall best flight latam business class to santiago nice worst overall worst overall again i'll say the um that japan airlines economy flight and it's mainly just because

it was longer than the other economy flights we had yeah otherwise they all there was nothing particularly bad about any of them yeah agreed nothing exactly they were all equally economy just that one was like five hours or so i think all right local transportation best for team tokyo um team tokyo uh best local transportation had to be the jeepney around the island in the philippines uh wasn't necessarily best for tim who's six foot something and couldn't quite fit in there but for the rest of us we really enjoyed it and enjoyed watching tim try to contort himself into the jeepney you know laughing a little bit extra because of course i was telling my family

about the trip last night and when we went to the waterfall in puerto galera and we all kind of jumped into the waterfall uh maybe it wasn't captured on the film or at least wasn't mentioned i'm not sure it was that initially uh tim lost his his bathing suit as he went through that waterfall and he's like oh my goodness i lost my shorts he's like you know reaching and and uh pulling him back up so under the water uh but but you know we were laughing about it last night because i said you know what would have happened if you just lost those shorts all together because we were like a distance from like a vehicle and i don't even know i had to change of clothes so like right and then the jeepney ride and everything else that would have been it would have been a mess yeah you know they did have a

gift shop um not too far away maybe maybe we could have bought him um something approximating shorts uh to to put on oh my goodness so that was uh so okay local transfer that was bad jeepney was the best what about the worst what was the worst local transport? Worst local transport was in Macau, the transport we never got. We spent all day trying to get a taxi. They just don't let you hail taxis there. They have this weird system where you have to use an app, but you can't use the app unless you have a local phone number. And we weren't prepared with that. Yep.

So unfortunately, that didn't work out. No Uber there and no DD, despite what Carrie had read in advance. So our best local transport for Team San Francisco. All right. Had to be the really, really nice hotel car from the Rets that Nick and I rode around in all day Saturday. That was a really sweet ride. It was. Yeah, it was an Equus, which was made by Hyundai before they started the Genesis brand. And I haven't been in a Genesis, but the Equus was super, super nice. I mean, that was, I think it's I thought we were in a very,

very high end Mercedes most of the day until Nick said, this is a Hyundai. Yeah, yeah. Who would have known? Who would have known? Yeah. My dad used to drive a Sonata

and the Sonata. Also, I remember surprising me as being nicer than I expected on the Hyundai side of things. But this Equus was it was something else. I mean, yeah, like you said, it was definitely up there with like if you've been in a BMW 740 back in the day, the aisle with the big, you know, kind of wooden consoles and stuff. This is sort of like that type of experience. Very cool car. Yep. So that was best local transport for Team Tokyo. Whato what about worst for team tokyo rather i'm sorry i keep

misspeaking san francisco yeah well when we're in santiago um most of our uber rides it was it was hard to get an uber to come and so even though like when, when we ordered like an extra large version, it still would show up with not enough seats for all of us, uh, if it showed up at all. And so we kept loading into smaller and smaller cars. So I'll just say the worst one was the smallest one, which I think was our second to last ride in Santiago, if I remember right. So Tim sat comfortably in the front seat and four of us sat in a tiny little car in the back seat. And sat might not be the right word. No, that was a squeeze.

So it just seemed like for a while they were getting progressively smaller and smaller to the point where it was definitely like clown car status. You know it's bad when tiny little Carrie is very uncomfortable. Right. Where she's like, you know what? This is OK for the first 10 or so minutes. And then I just can't feel anything anymore because I curled in a little ball. So, yeah.

Yeah. That didn't didn't bode well for us. So, OK, best overall local transport. Jeepney. Jeepney. It was so much fun. Worst overall local transport. That Uber or four peopleney. That was so much fun. That was overall local transport. Uh, that, that Uber or four people in the back of the Uber.

Yeah, I agree. All right. Food. Best overall food for team. Tokyo for team Tokyo. Best overall food. Um, I'd say the, the, uh, four seasons breakfast was, was really extraordinary. No, it was. It was awesome.

Really wide-ranging buffet. Worst overall food for Team San Francisco? Worst overall food. So I'm going to sort of go off the chart a little bit and say the worst overall food was the fact that they did not build in local food experiences. We were in Macau, never had any of the Portuguese food that they have there other than whatever was at the buffet. And in Tokyo, it took Tim and I to go out to get some sushi independent from what was planned to get any local food there. And I just find that difficult, difficult thinking to go to Tokyo and not really enjoy their amazing food there.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. Good. All right. What about for Team San Francisco? Best food? Best food for Team San Francisco. I'm going to go with that local food, that local dining experience we did in Buenos Aires.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. Worst food for Team San Francisco? This one's easy. When we arrived in Iguazu Falls at the airport around 9 p.m. or so, we had dinner in the airport. I can't call it a restaurant. No. The thing that sort of has food like substances. Right. Food like substances. Yes. So that's flattering to what we took its name a little too literally because it was very sandy tasting so yeah yeah that was nasty stuff no no

it was and uh yeah and i had a a brownie and i was like that doesn't quite taste right and carrie had a bite she's like i'm pretty sure that's rancid pecans. And then she had a second bite to confirm. She's like, no, yeah, that's definitely rancid pecans. And then she had a third bite. Right. And then an allergic reaction. So, all right.

Best overall food on the trip. The. Yeah, the local meal in Buenos Aires with a couple cooked for that was extraordinary. The food was great. And I think the one of the extraordinary things about it is the fact that I don't like beets and I don't like blue cheese. And the first dish was beets with blue cheese. And it was good. There are two things that I don't even like, but they were so well prepared.

I mean, everything was so well prepared. And the conversation that we had, that was, I think, the highlight of the food there. It was the chance to have a conversation with a local couple and really hear about what life in Argentina is like for them. That was, I don't know, that made it unique. What about the worst overall food? The restaurant-ish thing in the airport in Iguazu Falls. No, yeah. No, that was hands down.

That was awful. All right. Do not, do not eat at the Argentinian side airport in Iguazu Falls. All right. Activity. Team Tokyo. Best activity for Team Tokyo is really hands down team labs tokyo that was a amazing experience if if you're thrown off by the fact that that people refer to it as like immersive art uh thing and you're not

into art don't think of it that way think of it as like an adult playground it's it's just incredible experience check out the videos about it uh yeah just google it um even if you can't find our videos um so much fun we all had just blast hands down that would have been my answer too so uh what about worst activity for team tokyo worst activity uh well again uh getting macao to macao yeah that was unfortunate all right all right best activity for team san francisco uh Best activity of Team San Francisco. I'm going to go with the graffiti street art experience. That was amazing. Yeah, it was. It absolutely was. I agree. Worst activity for a team in San Francisco. It was nice that they arranged a private car to take Nick and I around the streets of Santiago to the hunt for my backpack. But I would have enjoyed that experience more if we ended up with my backpack at the end.

So a couple of points off for team San Francisco for not making sure that that activity ended with a retreat backpack. No. Yeah. It was, you know, and if team San Francisco had had arranged for that to be a free ride around town, that would have been a lot better, I'm sure, too. But it was not. So, yeah, what a day.

All right, how about award redemptions on the Team Tokyo side? First, let me say, so best overall for activities across the teams. It's a little hard to say because I'd say we probably had the most fun laughing and everything at Team Labs Tokyo, but I so appreciated that sort of once in a lifetime experience to do art with that artist that I guess by a small edge, I'm going to give the nod to the graffiti art experience. You know, I'm glad to hear that. And that's interesting to me because when I got home last night, my family asked, what was your favorite part of the trip? I'm like, how do you pick a favorite part? It's a crazy, crazy trip. Like how do you pick a favorite part?

It's crazy. Uh, but I said, I think that my favorite part was probably the street art in Buenos Aires for two reasons. Number one, because Carrie was so darn excited about it. And like, my goodness, her excitement is infectious. Absolutely. And so that that made like that made that something super special to begin with, because she was so legitimately, purely excited about it. And then the second piece of it is because we left something there. Right. And somebody will paint over that eventually, I'm sure. But today, somebody in Buenos Aires is walking past that mural that we left behind there.

And hopefully, you know, somebody looks at it now and then says, Oh, that looks pretty. And that's just kind of cool, because I never in a million years would have thought I would have done that. I also did not know that Carrie would say that, you know, her, you know, win the lottery and not need to worry about making money kind of a dream job would be making murals. So she was like, you know, in seventh heaven on that. That was, I think, perfect for her, but also just a fun and interesting experience that I would never have never have considered otherwise, but worked out really well. Sorry. I agree with you on activity there. Worst activity.

Overall. Oh, overall worst. Yeah. I mean, it's still hunting my backpack. Oh, hunting your backpack. There you go. Yeah, absolutely. That was a horrible activity.

Expensive activity for nothing. Yeah, yeah. We were triple Macau'd that day. Yeah, we were. All right, best award redemption for Team Toki. Yeah, you know what? This time, I'm just going to jump right into best overall award redemption. There's not a lot to say individually about these. Yeah, and others. from Santiago a few days later to Buenos Aires.

So the value of that ticket and that award redemption was extraordinary. Yep, absolutely. Okay, cool. What about the worst award redemption overall? I don't know off the top of my head. They're all kind of equal, yeah. Yeah, all the economy redemptions are kind of equal. So, all right, That's a word redemption.

Key tips for travelers. Okay. So that's best and worst of each thing. Was there anything more on those categories? No, I'll just want to say, if you're waiting for a final judgment on which team won, that's still coming. Look for it on the blog. I'm going to be writing up like how many points I gave to each team for each of these things. And then I'm going to be writing up like how many points I gave to each team for each of these things. And then I'm going to be giving people an opportunity to weigh in, to try to convince me to give one team or other more points or maybe fewer for different parts of the trip. And then we'll we'll use all of that to come up with a final declaration of who won the trip. But really, we all won. We had just one of the most amazing times of our lives, I think, on this trip, believe it or not. Agreed. Despite my situation with a backpack, I still feel that way. That's great to hear. It's great to hear you feel that way. Yeah. I mean,

how often do you get to travel with four friends, essentially? And then for almost, you know, for two weeks, really, and seeing such amazing places. So it was fantastic. And I think that when all the final numbers come out, I think people will also be surprised at how relatively reasonable it is. I mean, obviously, we use quite a few miles and points and some money to book this. But I think, you know, when you compare it to what people spend on some trips that are much simpler, I feel like for the complexity of the trip, it's going to be pretty impressive. And if you just wanted to do one or two pieces of the trip, entirely doable with far less, obviously.

So, yeah, it was super exciting. When are you ever going to get five people in first class on one flight and have the whole cabin to yourselves? I mean, there were so many of those types of experiences along the way that were just super memorable that I'm sure all of us will probably remember for the rest of our lives. So that was a great, great trip. Nobody got sick of anybody. That's true. We still love each other, still want to travel together. In fact, for future challenges, we're talking about actually returning to the sort of older format of having a strict budget for future challenges and probably doing things individually or maybe in pairs, but traveling separately. But however, despite that, we all agreed we want to continue traveling together as a group

of five, but maybe outside of the challenge format. Maybe we'll be doing something to spotlight Sweet Spot Awards and combining a frequent miler to go as part of that travel, things like that. So look for more content about us traveling together in the future might not be in the challenge format um let me say we had prepared for this uh show to to talk about a key key tips for traveling with five i think we'll hold that off for until next week that won't be the main topic of next week but we'll slide that in if we remember um and but i think there are some good key tips to talk about but

that's i think that is more of a conversation than we probably have time i think so so i don't know i think that wraps it up for today yeah i think it does yeah absolutely so uh so if you weren't following along again i'll remind you that uh that you should get on instagram and go to the frequent miler instagram page and on that, right underneath our main profile stuff at the top, but before the reels, you'll see that section of highlight reels where you can click on them and advance through the stories and see the things in real time. And I think those are in many ways, the best way to see the full story or to get a feel for what the trip was like, because you'll see videos and, you know, some of them are set to music and things that I feel like kind of add to the flavor of the trip. So it's worth going through

the highlight reels there following us on Instagram, checking out all the reels we've posted. And I'm sure there are going to be many more to come because there was far more that we did. And far more footage that we had than what we've even been able to like scratch the surface with so far. So there's a lot more coming carry is going to be, you know, have her work cut out for her. She's gonna be very busy with that over the next months, I'm sure. So check out our Instagram page for all that stuff. And if you want to get more about this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list.

You can follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions and learn about all of these types of things as well. If you have questions or feedback that you'd like to be considered for a future giant mailbag or question of the week segment, you can send those to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody. Thank you.