Frequent Miler on the Air - Introducing the 40K to Far Away Challenge!

Episode Date: June 30, 2019

Greg and Nick debate the 40K to Far Away challenge. Who's going to go the farthest in the most style?

Wait, that's okay. Hey. Hey, hey, what's going on? It's good to see you. We're together in real life for the first time for these chats. Face to face, live and in the flash. We actually set up both computers so that we could keep this interview style on the screen, but we're actually together. So for those watching, you can see me in next year's very similar artwork by for those listening on podcast just imagine that I just leaned over into into Nick's square on screen right so it's neat to be able to do one of these face-to-face because we see each other face to face like so rarely just a couple of times A year it's sure yeah, it is it's great. I mean actually these Online meetings have been a good way for me to feel connected with you as if we're face-to-face But it's always something better to be actually live as well, right? Which is part of the reason why we do, we started doing this FM to go series where

we are traveling around the country to different towns that where readers want to basically host us for a few hours. This weekend, we are in Minneapolis. We previously did San Diego and in early September we're doing the Bay Area near San Francisco. It's a great way to reconnect with readers or connect for the first time with readers and really it's we do it because it's fun. We enjoy the the excitement of it and And so far, so good. At least in San Diego, people really responded well. And I think we're going to have a similar great turnout tomorrow. I mean, this afternoon.

Right, right. I'm excited about it. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I always look forward to meeting people, getting a chance to talk face-to-face. It's always fun when you get a group of people that are into this together, too, because it's one of those hobbies that many of us share, but not necessarily with a lot of the people in our social circles. So cool to have a room full of people that kind of geek out on the same stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So for today's chat, the big news, the big topic is that we announced at the beginning of the week are 40k to far away challenge um and i do want to uh give people a a brief overview of that in case they hadn't been reading but but but first let's um let's talk about a couple other subjects that don't get came up this week yeah just a couple

other things i want to touch on um the big news and this probably would have dominated our conversation any other week is Citibank oh my goodness you want to introduce that like Citibank just blew everything up I don't know what's going on but Citi announced this week that they are going to be axing like all of the benefits on almost all of the cards everything but the Costco card loses like it's worldwide travel insurance the the car insurance the trip delay and cancellation like it's just all gone I it didn't make any sense to me at all when I saw it I thought this can't be permanent can it right so one person on Twitter the frequent flyer who I think has a book frequent flyer book or uh, I think he has a book, frequent flyer book or something like that.

Uh, he, he suggested maybe the deal is that they're planning to switch from MasterCard to Visa and they are just sort of clearing the decks of all of their, um, you know, benefits so that they're not promising any of them until they switch to Visa and then they reintroduce similar benefits. I feel like that seems like a really plausible explanation, because I can't see any other explanation as to why they get rid of everything. I mean, they're just cleaning house and there's no way to compete with other premium cards in the market without offering any of those travel protections. I mean, that's great earning 5X city thank you points on flights, but if you don't get

any trip delay or cancellation, it's probably not worth the earnings to continue booking stuff on the prestige card. I just can't believe with the way they've decimated the prestige card over the last two years, taking benefits away. I can't imagine taking away all of the travel benefits from your signature travel card. I think they got to be changing to Visa or something. God, I hope so because so as you know I mean I've switched my whole card strategy around in order to take advantage of prestige 5x for dining and

and flights right if they really take away these benefits for good, I'm definitely going to rethink that because the peace of mind, for example, that the Sapphire reserve gives me for travel protections, the, the prestige as it, as it currently defines as travel protections is close, close enough for me to say, this is good enough to go with this instead of the sapphire

if if it's really gonna be gone and what in November right November September September and so everything whenever it is then I just have to totally rethink it yeah yeah most people will tell you that how many times are you really gonna use it so does it really make a difference you could just pay for a travel insurance plan and that's true, but the whole thing about insurance is it's most useful when you didn't expect you'd need it. So the peace of mind of having it there is valuable to me. So I missed the news that the Costco card wasn't losing all these benefits.

The reason I know that is because somebody emailed me a correction from the bank. They said, hey, by the way, the Costco card isn't losing these things. Can you please update? And so that's the only reason I know. And that's, to me, really strange, except the Costco card is what? It's a Visa. It's a Visa. That's one of their only ones.

Or is it the only one, potentially, in their lineup? Off the top of my head, it's all I could think of. So that kind of, you know. Yeah, that supports the theory. It would have to mastercard though oh geez yeah yeah that would be huge this just barclays basically there's a major issue or an after card right that's right well that's crazy so anyway so let's hope something better is coming um one other thing i just want to touch on maybe really briefly is I was excited when I saw your post about business class on Air New Zealand being

wide open for awards and bookable with Virgin Atlantic miles I think. 49,000 miles one way in business class I mean that's a lot. What's the route? So you fly from any of the US gateways to New Zealand. So Los Angeles had a lot of availability, but they also fly to Houston, they fly to San Francisco. And I think they're starting the service to Chicago, or maybe they already have started service to Chicago. So the drawback, so to speak, was that it was only widely available in July and August. So you'd have to be planning a trip to New Zealand, you know, kind of at the drop of a hat, which seems somewhat difficult. Although the nice thing is it was during school vacation time here. So certainly some people might have more flexibility.

Now, to be fair, the other drawback is it is winter in New Zealand when it's summer here. So don't forget that if you're planning a beach vacation. But yeah, no, but it still would probably be great. summer here so don't forget that if you're planning a beach vacation but um yeah no but uh it still would probably be great i mean i i don't think at least on the north island it would be too cold as my guess no i people said that a few people that commented i think said that uh that it's pretty nice at that time of year um you know it's obviously it's winter but it's not that bad um compared to what we might expect here and uh you you know, in the 49K thing, you know, I'll be honest, we've been talking about this 40K challenge a little bit. So I've been looking at a lot of award charts lately.

When it comes to Air New Zealand, I just ignored charts for Air New Zealand because I know that they so rarely release availability. So that was huge to be able to see multiple seats, two, three, four, five seats, you know know on multiple days for two straight months so i don't know did you think about to make you think about a trip to new zealand did you contemplate booking a travel we're my wife and are always talking about it um we haven't yet booked one um but we're looking for maybe um sometime uh in the winter um 2020. So yes, I looked at it briefly. And if we didn't already have so much travel booked up in July and August, I would have seriously considered it.

Absolutely. But we have a lot planned. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, interesting opportunity. But same boat for me. But for the people who are able to get in, especially 49K, I mean, that's just such a a terrific deal and no fuel surcharges on that either uh so that's that's a terrific redemption to keep in mind for the future too if it ever comes around again nice having lots of transferable

currencies since virgin atlantic is partners with just about everybody yeah and it's funny how often lately virgin atlantic keeps popping up as like a great opportunity because I would say just maybe about three years ago and before that everyone just dismissed Virgin Atlantic like outright as a valuable currency and then people learned about the ANA first class sweet spot and then and then and then especially as Delta devalued their miles Virgin Atlantic became a much better way of booking Delta as well but but yeah and Delta made their awards much more available partner or to their partners yes just yeah really surprising it is it's great anytime I go to search now I

'm able to find quite a bit of availability, Virgin Atlantic miles have become more and more valuable to me, which is funny because you'd think that a partner that's partners with everyone would not have the most valuable miles, but. Right. Right. But, but just to be clear to everybody listening, um, their miles are great for those specific niche spots where, where it works. And, and it's hard to plan an entire itinerary around Virgin Atlantic miles if you have multiple stops but if you're if you're doing a non-stop from anywhere or you can position to a airport that they that you can book a flight from them then it's perfect well and it's

worth noting for parents out there that Virgin Atlantic is great for lap infants because they charge a miles price for lap infants. Whereas a lot of programs will charge you 10% of the, uh, the adult revenue fare Virgin Atlantic charges miles. And it's different with each partner. But for example, those, uh, air New Zealand flights, if I remember correctly, I think it was 2000 miles in economy or 10,000 in business. Uh, with ANA, I think the prices

were like three five seven or something economy business in first class so seven thousand miles each way at first class for a lab infant i mean that's just an amazing deal so if you are traveling with a lab then virgin atlantic is worth a look yeah so and speaking of virgin atlantic sweet Speaking of Virgin Atlantic sweet spots, one of the ones I've written about recently is I think it's 12.5K from Hong Kong to London with no fuel surcharge, like $45 in fees to go in that direction. If you go the other direction, it's also 12,500 but with a few hundred dollars in fees. Sounds like somebody's been looking at some possible itineraries with 40k challenge. Obviously. So all right, just to back up, the 40k to far away, that idea came up when I was out of the room, but you and Steven, and I don't know, maybe someone else too,

what we're discussing, somehow came up with this idea of giving us each 40,000 transferable points to play with. And each of us have a different transferable points currency. And the goal is to see who can get the furthest away. That's what our challenge is. That's the truth. And I got to give credit to Steven Pepper because I think most of this was his idea. Maybe I contributed something along the way. But it was a fantastic idea to take this 40K

and really kind of built from what can we do with a sign-up bonus? And we knew we need some cash in order to pay for fuel surcharges and things like that. So it really built off the idea that the Inc. business preferred sign-up bonus being 80K. So, okay, if we took 40K and cashed it out for $400 to pay our fees and used 4040K to transfer to partners or use as we please, where could we get?

So we decided that it'd be more fun if we each took a different currency because then everybody has different advantages and disadvantages and we can see which currency is really the best. I mean, lots of people out there will argue in favor of ultimate rewards. This is the test, right? We're going to put them all face to face. Right, right. So now, to be honest, when I first heard of the challenge, I thought whoever had Amex membership

rewards would have the big advantage. Me too. But then once I thought about it a little bit, and I realized, well, Chase is the only one that you get 1.5 in booking airfare straight up. And I know how cheap airfare can sometimes be to go all the way around the world. Pretty much. If you pick the right destinations, I felt like Chase is like, has such a strong advantage over the other two yet you and Stephen pick the

other currencies before and left me with the rewards. Were you just like, he's my boss. I'm going to give him the best. He's got to win, right? You know, you got to set this up and make it easy right now. No, I, well, my thought was first that I liked the challenge. I said, you know, I figured that thank you points have to be the underdog, right? I mean, there's no hotel partners.

You can get 1.25 cents towards flights, but that's basically it. And it's got the fewest transfer partners out of the bunch. So I figured, well, that's the most challenge. And so I really kind of wanted to take that on. And honestly, I've been finding good value in thank you points quite a bit. So I was kind of excited about the prospect of highlighting the value you can get. And Stephen picked membership rewards, which surprised me a little bit too. But that's what he was interested in trying to do something with. And I did think that membership rewards would be the one that I think I could probably get the furthest on. But now that we've been doing this and looking and we've been talking

amongst ourselves and spending a lot of late nights looking, and I'm really seeing the value of having ultimate rewards or something like that. Because the more I look at economy class travel, the more I realize that if you primarily want to travel in economy class, cash back or a 1.5 cent per point equivalent is really valuable because it's just hard to get amazing value out of your miles when you're trying to book economy class flights. Yeah, yeah, it really is. And the more I've looked, even at alternate awards, looking at their transfer partners and how I could leverage the value, I keep coming back to the fact that booking the travel, and again, this is especially economy travel using just the 1.5 value to just book it as a cash ticket has huge advantages it's often much cheaper that way and in fact I would earn miles which we haven't discussed this yeah I mean if I could earn enough miles and get them into my account fast enough to do something with it during this 40K challenge, I consider that fair game. I think it's fair game.

I think it's fair game. I had the same thought. I don't know. I was looking at things initially. It was, you know, wow, if I could book a cheap paid flight or two and pick up some extra miles that I could use as part of my 40K. Because, again, we're starting with 40,000 points and $400 we haven't been following with a 40k to far away challenge and so we got to get as far as we can and if we could take some of that money or some of those points and turn it into some more miles yeah I think

it's fair game I think it's on the whole idea is we can use whatever skills we have to to generate the best trip that we can so um so I think that's an interesting idea for me though I'm also finding that if you if you're interested again in, in traveling and economy, that's comfortable. There's a lot of instances where low cost carriers are just so cheap. And I found routes where the mileage price looks great compared to everyone else. But it's still not great compared to the cheap economy class fares you can buy on a lot of the low cost carriers out there. Yeah, absolutely true. I i found the exact same thing so i was looking to uh somehow get from i can't remember the exact details but let's say it was from uh shanghai to um singapore something like that and i found a low-cost carrier where

the flight was like i want to say 95 dollars i it. And that's like close to a 10 hour flight. Now, before anyone corrects me, I'm not remembering the exact city pairs, but it was something like that. And I was just blown away. Yeah, me too. I've been paying just a few dollars an hour. It's one of those things that I've been using miles and points for so long now, and I've been mostly using them to fly in business in first class that I haven't always looked at how cheap some of those

economy fares could be. And especially in Asia, it's just amazing to me how far you can fly for like $50 or $100 or even $150. And in a lot of those situations, I would prefer to hold my points for something more valuable. So I wouldn't necessarily use points even when I'm getting okay value because the $150 is a good enough price or the $100. So it's definitely been an interesting exercise, I think, for me in figuring out how can I use these miles and still get a bunch of value. So do you have any plans you want to share, Craig? Do you want to include us in yet or's clear that you're so in suspense I'll tell you about a plan that I almost had working so I had found it I had found a cheap flight to Asia and I I've been using by the way both ITA matrix and Google Google Flights just nonstop all the time to find these cheap fares.

And they've both been fantastic tools in different ways. And so I found this cheap flight. And I saw that it went through Japan. So there was a very brief layover in Tokyo and then it went on. But I wanted to do this excursionist perk thing with United where if I could fly, Japan is like a sweet spot for United in that they have flights around Japan for only 5,000 miles. And so if I could fly somewhere within Japan for 5,000 miles, um, and book later a, another flight within Japan for 5,000 miles, then I get a free excursionist perk within any, um, United defined region in the world other than Japan. So it has to be out at a region other than where you started and ended. And so I created, as you know, these maps

that show the regions. And I initially, when I originally had been looking at the regions without my map, I had thought that Oceania and Africa, Central and South Africa, Southern Africa, were the biggest regions, right? But then I put it all together and I saw Europe includes Russia Far East. So you could go all the way from Greenland to almost Alaska.

If you find a Star Alliance carrier that flies that way. Now that's true, right. So, you know, some of the ideas I had were just completely theoretical. And I was trying to figure out, before I got to this Japan idea, how I could hop over from a tip of Alaska, you know, to Russia to start my excursion in Sprint.

I haven't thought about how you could do that, but I'm not going to tell them. Okay. But the problem with that anyway is I need to get to Japan to start the excursionist perk because then it only costs me 10K per sort of award in order to do a free one-way in another region. And so my plan was to fly twice to to start two separate excursion awards, fly twice within Japan, end up close to Russia.

There are some airports that I found have flights to Southeast Russia, okay? And two airports that have Star Alliance flights. to Southeast Russia. Okay. And, and, and two airports that have star Alliance flights. And so I've been using this tool. Yeah. I've been using this tool called flight connections, which has been invaluable for this kind of thing.

Cause you could actually filter it to star Alliance, pick an airport. It'll show you all the routes from there. So, yeah. So my idea was listening, Steven pepper. Are you, are you listening so my yeah so my idea was fly around Japan a little bit hop over to Russia fly across the entire continent to maybe Greenland

but that might not be realistic but Iceland's pretty far pretty far even Dublin is pretty far. And then probably fly back maybe to another part of Russia and then hop back to Japan to continue. So the thing was I had to make my layover go from a few hours to a few days in order to make this possible to several days. And through Google Flights, I was able to figure that out and get that to work so I switched the flight and Google flights from a one-way to a multi-city mm-hmm and so I put the first leg stopping in NRT Tokyo and the second

leg from Tokyo to wherever this was and I can't remember Vietnam maybe. Um, and, uh, and then just kept like inching forward the date of the, uh, second leg, second leg. Right.

And I was able to find a way to, to expand it and get still a, not much more expensive flight. Uh, so that was really cool until, so I started looking up the price of accommodation in Japan. I'm looking forward to seeing Greg in a capsule hotel. No, I wouldn't have to stay in Japan at all. Oh, you would not even know. No, no, I wouldn't have to. Although one scenario had me

in Kyoto for a night, which I could stay for 5k. We know that. Right, right. But no, I wouldn't necessarily have to stay in Tokyo. But I mean, in Japan. But no, the big problem was a visa for Russia. Well, that was the other thing that came to mind. You have to pay for the visa. So that's going to eat up budget, huh? Yeah. And so there's some stuff about like you could get a transit visa, but it sounds like that

might be just as expensive. I guess it's completely unclear to me whether you could transit like every explanation I could find online about transit visas talked about going through Moscow. Right. And none of them talked about these little airports in southeast Russia that no one's ever heard of. So I scratch where English might be landed. Yeah. So anyway, so that's my big adventure that's not going to happen. How about you? Do you have any? It's a really interesting adventure that's not going to happen. Well, you know, I've gotten looking at a number of different partners. But my goal kind of has been to find a way to highlight

an interesting partner that people haven't been talking about or looking at yet and so i've gotten looking at some of the award charts for partners that they just don't get very much coverage so one of the first things i saw wouldn't work for the challenge but i i realized that turkish airways charges from from europe to oceania so in oceania and we're talking about all those pacific islands that sound really nice sound really nice and Australia New Zealand in a business class I think it's 52 or 55 no 52.5 K one way in business class from Europe all the way that's a great deal yeah that is a great deal if you can get Star Alliance carriers that go there so you could you could get a cheap flight over to from from the US you could get a cheap flight either to, from the US you could get a cheap flight either

in points or dollars to like Dublin for example. Right. And then go all the way to Oceania. And then like I said, that's business class and it's too many miles, the 52.5 because we're doing a 40K challenge. Economy class could be done for 40K from Europe to Oceania. So I would eat up the whole 40k, the whole budget right there. But there were some interesting itineraries that I saw, Star Alliance itineraries. One where I could have been flying from New York to Europe, of course. And then there are plenty just to get to Europe, right? Almost, yeah. Almost. I think I found a number of flights for just under $200, $170 maybe to get there. The bigger problem is that then, for example, if we wanted to fly Air New Zealand from London to New Zealand,

I would stop in Los Angeles, so I'd be flying from, let's say, New York to London, and then London to Los Angeles, and Los Angeles to New Zealand. That would be kind of there and back, forward and backwards. Right. And the biggest problem is that then the fuel surcharges. Between the fuel surcharges and the paid flight to Europe, I'd be out of money by the time I got there. Right, right. Couldn't you go the other way, though?

Couldn't you take Star Alliance carriers across Europe and then down into Asia maybe theoretically like a Turkish probably could get you to Istanbul and then onward from there yes and they could and that's something certainly worth looking at for the future but the only issue is the problem so to speak with Turkish partner awards is that you can only use one partner on a partner so whatever you fly fly but in that way okay yeah that example you have Turkish itself I don't know if they fly I assume they fly to they don't they don't yeah they play I'm sure they do fly to London they don't fly to Australia right now so you know you're limited to the reach of Turkish although that's a pretty long

range it's a pretty long range so but they do pass on fuel surcharges. So that's the issue. So that would kill it. Yeah. It would probably kill it for our, the purposes of our challenge because we're working on this $400 budget, but it's a really interesting sweet spot to me because it is often possible to get to Europe for like 200 bucks. And so then you get yourself a cheap award ticket from Europe to Oceania. So where in Oceania would you want to end up? Well, I mean, anywhere, right? I mean, Oceania is Oceania. I personally am a tropical island kind of guy. You know, my family, my roots are Puerto Rican. And so I always say that palm trees and sunshine are in my blood. So if, you know, if I can get to some little island somewhere and, you know, enjoy

a Hawaiian shirt, you know, nice little fedora. I guess I was just curious if you know enjoy a hawaiian shirt and you know nice little fedora and i was i guess i was just curious if you had like a like a dream destination that you've been hoping to get to i don't cook islands or whatever no not necessarily i mean there's a few places i have in mind that i'm not going to share yet but i but one of the things actually that i really wanted to do and this wouldn't work going from london uh is i really wanted to figure out a way to fly the united island hopper on this because my wife loves to travel but hates to fly. So I know she'll never get on that island hopper with me. And I thought, well, this is the one time that I can get on.

And if you don't know the island hopper, it's the flight from Honolulu to Guam that stops on like seven, six, seven tropical islands on the way, mostly U.S. possessions, I guess, territories. So that would be really interesting to me. It's like a 14-hour flight where you're stopping on a whole bunch of little tropical islands. And there are a number of programs, if you're going to go to Honolulu, there are a number of programs that do charge a decent price between the two. So if you're looking to get between the two, you can do it.

If you start playing with the transfer partners, You can do it for a reasonable price. But then once you get to Guam, you got to get somewhere else if you're doing this challenge. And that was not going to be as easy as I'd like. So unfortunately, I've had to toss out the island hopper. But that's another interesting direction to go if you're able to go from the United States to Hawaii relatively cheaply. We just recently highlighted the fact that people that are in the Midwest or the West can use Singapore Airlines miles this is just something in the week in review I think is where I posted it recently so you can use Singapore miles to fly in Alaska Airlines so for example if you're in

Nevada I know Alaska flies to Las Vegas so you could book Las Vegas to Honolulu for 11,500 miles one way. I mean, that's a great sweet spot to have to get to Honolulu. So, you know, if you get somewhere within the United States cheaply, you get to Honolulu pretty cheaply, then you could enjoy the island. And that's absolutely one of the things I've been looking at but when I realized that Singapore will let me get to Hawaii for 17.5 K from the East Coast from the East Coast or from anywhere in the US but then you could think of like I would have to do better than 6k to position to the place in the U.S. where it would make sense to use that path as opposed to just using Singapore miles to book in United to Hawaii right so if we were starting in Boston just making it up as a possible starting point then then that would be one option to get to Hawaii seventeen thousand five hundred

miles so if you're gonna position to Las Vegas so you can take advantage of this eleven thousand five hundred miles sweet spot to use Singapore miles and fly in Alaska then you have to get a really cheap flight for it to not be worth or for it to be worth saving the 6,000 miles, basically, right? Exactly, exactly. Thanks. So this challenge has been so much fun. I am thinking about it nonstop. I keep coming up with different ideas how to get from here to there and what potential destinations to go to I get ideas in my head like this Russia thing

I was talking about that are hard to let go and so they're spinning around in the middle of the night like I'll wake up at 4 in the morning be lying awake and then it's like I need to go look at a word charts to see if this thing is possible work you doing the same thing? Yeah, is that country, which program does, or classifies this country in Europe, and which one classifies it in Africa so I can try to take advantage?

Yeah, really, we are, and I know it's not just us either. I know Steven Pepper is frantically doing the same thing. And you know, I've been saying, don't sleep on Steven Pepper. The man's doing a five-year 50-state road trip in the United States. He eats and breathes economy class travel and eats a lot of value out of low category hotels and economy class style travel. So I think he's going to be a really formidable competitor. And he's got a lot of options with membership rewards.

So he's making me a little bit nervous, too, because each time I come up with an idea, the city thank you points anyway, a lot of times the ideas that I have are possible for him too. So, you know, I think that's going to be interesting to see what he does. He wrote this week about the things he's not going to do. So he talked about how he's not going to go to Europe and take the train around. And I was glad to see that because those Eurorail train passes in general usually aren't a very good deal. And he kind of pointed that out in his post. Typically, you can get by train from point to point in Europe much cheaper by just booking your tickets separately. Man in Seat 61 is my favorite website for train travel. It's really a great resource to be able to travel by train but what Steven showed that really did intrigue me and has me thinking about how I could use it is those cheap bus

tickets in Europe my good really oh my nine euros from Madrid to Milan I mean but it would take like a week I'm not afraid to do it I I once took great I mean I'm gonna laugh all the way around the world you know I'm gonna need to find a really good deal on protein bars in bulk maybe I can order them on Amazon in Europe actually see maybe I could do that bus trip but it more so also turn on the light of thinking about some of those transit options in the different places we go yeah yeah absolutely you go and that's been something I've been looking at a lot and the man in seat 61 has been useful Not just for the train thing But also hit there's places where he details how to take a ferry from one country to another and so that's been helpful to write

I'm trying to you know, figure out how do I get you know, maybe there's a sweet spot Within a region and then you have to get to the other region in order to get the other sweet spot. Right. Taking a ferry or a train when it's overland would be a really cool way to do it. Right. Or training in a land crossing maybe too. And I think from past experiences with manned C-61, I found really good detailed instructions about how those things work. And I also like that there's a lot of pictures so you can see exactly what to expect.

Exactly. So that's a favorite resource of mine for train travel. And I could really see that coming into play here with this challenge because we are going to try and get as far as we can, which I imagine is going to involve some mixes of transportation, some which will likely be more comfortable than others. But which form of transportation are you like least excited about i mean is it the economy class travel is it the prospect of being on a bus for a really long time or on a boat which one is like the most torturous for you out of the things oh definitely the economy uh travel so so some of the things i looked at as i said

95 to traverse like southern asia Asia it's hard to hand that away talking about like hours and some of them have connections so it's a lot more than that and they're described so Google flights now has incorporated data from I can't remember the name of the website there's a website that would that would show you how pleasant different flights are. And so now they incorporate that. So it shows you right in front. It says leg room is less than usual or something like that.

And so I'm looking at it going, oh, this is not going to be pleasant at all. And I don't think they're going to be feeding me. You know, that's the bigger worry for me. I'm glad you brought that up because, you know, I've been looking at some of these, too, that are really long flights. And I know there's not going to be any food. Initially, when I looked at, for example, the prospect of flying to London and then taking Air New Zealand to New Zealand from London using Turkish miles for 40K one way. When I thought about that, I was like, oh, well, I mean, at least I would get food on the plane. And there are priority pass lounges where I can shower in the places where the flights would stop.

So I thought, OK, well, that that will be not so bad. It'll be kind of comfortable. Then I realized I couldn't do that. And I started looking at some of these other like cheap carriers. And I thought, oh, man, I'm not going to get any food now. I might fly into a tiny little airport that's got no lounge. So there's definitely been some challenge as far as that goes and thinking that through so how about you what's the worst thing that you you know

I hate boats I get really yeah I got seasick I hate boats yeah but I I was just looking at ways to get by boat from one place in the ocean to another place in the ocean and I actually mentioned it to my wife yesterday I was like yeah you know I was looking to see if I could get from A to B on a boat and she said on a boat are you serious I think she underestimated how serious I am trying to win this gonna win no matter what I mean right for days have you tried ginger pills you know i haven't tried the ginger pills i guess maybe i oh yeah the tablets the ginger tablets yeah i guess yeah ginger ginger root it doesn't work for you you know those things have changed

my life really yeah ever since i've been able i mean shoot i wasn't able to fly without getting queasy often before i started taking ginger pills now that's changed i don't have to take them for that anymore but i would get massively seasick all the time and so started taking ginger pills. Now that's changed. I don't have to take them for that anymore, but I would get massively seasick all the time. So I started taking them. I haven't gotten seasick as long as I've taken them. There was one trip that I wrote about when I was getting certified for scuba where I didn't know I'd be out on a boat. I thought it was gonna be a land, a shore dive and did not take my ginger pills and the fish were all fed all day long thanks to whatever I had for breakfast

and dinner and lunch the day before too, I think so. See, now I'm looking forward to a couple of those stories. That's probably what I'm most excited about on this challenge is seeing what of those stories come of it. I am looking forward to you writing those stories. I am not looking forward to anything like that myself again. But let's wrap this up.

One last thing. I know I've been learning a ton from this exercise and this has been great. It has. Tell me one thing that you've learned that you could share with readers. Well, I think that the thing that you've learned that you could share with readers? Well, you know, I think that the thing that I learned is that I should be looking more at the partner word charts because there are sweet spots that everybody's written about and everybody knows about.

And then there are those sweet spots that still exist. I think maybe the thing that surprised me the most is that if you look at award charts and where places are classified and really that's that's the big tip is to look at where different cities are classified in an award chart basic example most people are familiar with Air France includes Morocco and Israel in its definition of Europe and those are places that aren't defined in Europe in some other award charts and so you can really take advantage of tossing a couple of those together when you find the right places that are in the same regions. Now, one that I found that apparently is not the case anymore,

I found other people have written about Hawaii being in the same region as Australia in a city thank you partner, Turkish Airlines' award chart. However, I found that they've changed it. People have screenshots of an old award chart where Hawaii used to be located within Oceania. So you could then theoretically book a really inexpensive flight from Hawaii to Australia. Unfortunately, it's not in Oceania anymore. So that idea doesn't work anymore. But it's reminded me to take a look at some of those fringe partners and see what their region definitions are more importantly than anything

else yeah yeah you has there been a well very good uh well you know i've written about some of my biggest finds like like um how far you can go uh with excursionist perks from United. I guess I knew about this before, but how valuable it is that Virgin Atlantic flight from Hong Kong to London is kind of crazy good value. So yeah, I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. I mean, but I will say it's incredible how much sort of data I've taken in about, I've learned about geography. I've learned, you know, what countries in Southeast Asia are close to each other that I didn't have any concept of before. I've also learned how far you can get on such a limited budget because i've been absolutely amazed yeah wow i really could make it all the way around the world if

all if my only goal was to get across oceans yeah i could totally do it on 40k and 400 and i don't think i would have thought that was possible until we started right right yeah yeah and and actually i realized the same thing and realized that just doing that, just circumventing the world is not going distance, but to the remotest parts of the world. I think it would really make this. And that's really exciting to me because that's the world that Miles and Points opens up. Right. I mean, you can obviously get to the most popular places and many of the most popular places are popular for good reason. Paris is a beautiful city. Prague is great.

There are lots of places in Asia that are super popular. But then there are a lot of places that are interesting that are way off the beaten path that you can get to for the same number of miles. So I think that's been kind of exciting too and looking at some of these places and saying, you know, wow, I hadn't, I had never thought about that as a destination, but that looks like it might be kind of cool for a day or two yeah yeah I'm pretty excited I think this is gonna work out to be pretty interesting I can't wait yeah so it just before we sign off I just had an idea I'm gonna see if I can contact the man at seat 61 maybe next week or one of these yeah yeah definitely bring him on bring him live yeah sounds like a good all right thanks it was great talking to you again as, as always. Yep. Very good. Always great to be here. Great to see you guys too. Signing off. Bye everybody.