Tag Archives: Travel Hacking

The Costs of 1 Year of Selfish Traveling

01 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, Asia, Australia, Best Of, Europe, Oceania, Travel Hacking

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This is the final part of our 15 part series on the Best of Our Selfish Years of Traveling. You can check out the other parts below:

  1. It’s Almost Over: The Selfish’s Top 20 Experiences
  2. Now THIS is Living: The Selfish’s Top 10 Stays
  3. Stop Drooling: The Selfish’s Top 20 Eats
  4. The Selfish’s Top 10 Biggest Letdowns
  5. The DO’s of Traveling
  6. The DON’Ts of Traveling
  7. 10 Tips for Haggling Abroad
  8. 15 Things to Pack for a Year Long Trip
  9. 33 Things We Learned While Traveling Abroad for a Year (Part 1)
  10. 33 Things We Learned While Traveling Abroad for a Year (Part 2)
  11. 33 Things We Learned While Traveling Abroad for a Year (Part 3)
  12. The Selfish Guide to Photography – Part 1
  13. The Selfish Guide to Photography – Part 2
  14. A Selfish Year in Pictures

The World

Our great Selfish Years adventure started when I discovered the world of miles & points, back in September 2011. Mrs. Selfish and I applied for 2 Citi AA cards, for a grand total of 150,000 AA miles a piece: enough for two business class tickets around the world!

We’ve done some pretty awesome things, flown some amazing flights, and stayed at some world class hotels. So how much did it all stack up?

Let’s look at the numbers, shall we?

trip map

Mrs. Selfish and I spent a grand total of 372 days of straight traveling, leaving the States in August 2012, and returning in August 2013. During the course of the trip we saw 102 cities and flew 61 flights across 25 countries. selfish-days-by-country

We spent the most days in France, followed by Japan, Australia, and England. Expensive countries, indeed – though surprisingly, Australia was the MOST expensive country – coming in at roughly 50% more in costs than any other country.

Some random factoids:

  • Miles traveled: 70,150
  • Number of pictures taken: 50,326
  • Average number of pictures taken daily: 136
  • Best award redemption (value for cost): Park Hyatt Sydney
  • Best business class flight: Qantas, Sydney to Los Angeles
  • Number of beds we slept in: 97
  • Average number of days in same bed: 3.81
  • Best bed: Heavenly Bed, any Westin Hotel
  • Amount of time spent packing & unpacking bags: 3.36 days
  • Number of massages: 46
  • Number of native languages we encountered: 16
  • Number of languages we learned “hello” and “thank you” in: 8
  • Most expensive economy ticket: Siem Reap to Bangkok at $1.31 per mile
  • Most free attractions: Paris
  • Days we spent no money: 1

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I wish I was still relaxing at the Hilton Queenstown

17 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, Hilton, New Zealand, Oceania, Queenstown, Travel Hacking

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After the disappointing stay at the Hilton Auckland, Mrs. Selfish and I decided to give the Hilton one last go at the Hilton Queenstown.

From everything we’d heard, Queenstown is the most beautiful city in New Zealand, and the Hilton Queenstown is one of the best hotels in the city.

Neither disappointed.

Queenstown Hilton 01

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Fun in Paradise at the Hilton Bora Bora

18 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, French Polynesia, Hilton, Oceania, Travel Hacking

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Editor’s note: This is the second of three posts on the Hilton Bora Bora. Check out our other posts here:

Today is a continuation of yesterday’s post on the Hilton Bora Bora. Whereas yesterday I was talking about how to get to this amazing resort, and how beautiful Bora Bora is, today I’ll be discussing what you can actually do there – other than the usual relaxing, eating, and napping, and taking long walks on the beach.

I jest of course, though there are plenty of beaches for strolling if you like that kind of thing. Not those shelly beaches either – these are powdery sandy white beaches!

Diving in Bora Bora

Since Mrs. Selfish and I are both certified divers, we decided a dive in the crystal blue-green waters of Bora Bora was a no-brainer. Unfortunately, options in Bora Bora are pretty limited, with only 4 companies. The 2 larger ones felt a little crowded and impersonal to us, so we ended up going with Dive N’ Smile, which was a one man operation run by Patrick.

Bora Bora - Activities 004

Patrick picked us up promptly from the Hilton and suited us up. Not only was his equipment brand new (and very nice!), but he also had steel tanks, which is not something we’ve never seen before.

Although the reefs around Bora Bora are dead, thanks to a hurricane that ripped it up a few years, there is a ton of wild life! We ended up spotting half a dozen lemon sharks, a giant school of blue-spotted eagle rays, and a couple of very active eels.

DCIM\100GOPROBora Bora - Activities 008Bora Bora - Activities 009DCIM\100GOPRODCIM\100GOPRO

Visibility was great, the animals were amazing, and the equipment and instruction were on point. Overall this was definitely one of our better dive experiences and I would highly recommend Dive N’ Smile. If anyone is thinking of going, shoot Patrick an email at: diveNsmile@mail.pf.

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5 Nights at the Insanely Beautiful Hilton Bora Bora

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, French Polynesia, Hilton, Oceania, Travel Hacking

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Editor’s note: This is the first of three posts on the Hilton Bora Bora. Check out our other posts here:

After our evening of cold croque monsieurs in Tahiti, Mrs. Selfish and I awoke early the next day and boarded a plane for Bora Bora, one of the most beautiful (and expensive) places on Earth.

Having read good things about the Hilton Bora Bora, I was anxious to check out our new home for 5 nights – an overwater bungalow in some of the most magnificent waters I’d ever seen. I booked the stay before the Hilton Honors great devaluation using an AXON award and an extra night, so the total came to 195,000 HHonors points.

Getting there and check-in

Getting to Tahiti itself can be quite difficult on miles and points, though flyertalk has several threads devoted to the topic as I mentioned yesterday.

Once you’ve reached Tahiti the intra-island flight from to Bora Bora is costly at roughly ~$450 round trip. Air Tahiti Nui has multiple flights a day starting in the early morning and ending mid-evening, but unfortunately none of these accept points or miles, just cold hard cash.

Pro-tip: Sit on the left side of the plane for stellar views of Bora Bora

After landing, you have two options for getting to the Hilton Bora Bora: a) take Hilton’s fancy speedboat to the property for roughly $125 per person round trip, b) take the boat into Viatape (the main town) and then catch Hilton’s boat from there for roughly $8 round trip. While we chose option B, we ended up giving our bags to crew of Hilton’s speedboat, which they brought to the hotel for us. I highly recommend this option.

Getting to Bora Bora proved more difficult than most destinations: with 2 flights to Tahiti, a plane to Bora Bora, a shuttle boat to Viatape, and a boat to the Hilton Bora Bora, but man is it worth it.

Bora Bora is easily the most beautiful beach destination we’ve ever been to, beating out Koh Samui, Bali, Danang, and Cancun. Since Mrs. Selfish and I wanted to maximize our time at the resort, we took a late-morning flight in, and an early evening flight out and boy was I glad we did, the Hilton Bora Bora is gorgeous.

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Finishing Sydney with a Bang at the Park Hyatt

15 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, Australia, Hyatt, Oceania, Sydney, Travel Hacking

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Mrs. Selfish and I visited Sydney a total of three times during our Selfish Year of travels, since Sydney is the major airport in the Oceania region. During our first stay, we stayed with family in the Manly area. For our second stay, we rented a flat downtown – in the seedy red light district.

Our third and final stay was different, however. Having booked us flights to Cairns to dive the Great Barrier Reef I was having a heck of a time finding a flight that would connect us through Sydney in time to catch our flight to Tasmania.

Finally giving up, I decided we’d have to spend one more night in Sydney. And we’d have to do it in style.

At the Park Hyatt Sydney.

Aw yeah.

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5 Nights of Pampering in the Park Hyatt Tokyo

01 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, Asia, Hyatt, Japan, Tokyo, Travel Hacking

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For our last five nights in Japan I booked us at the mother of all hotel redemptions – the Park Hyatt Tokyo. Famously shown in “Lost in Translation,” the Park Hyatt Tokyo has become a point-collector’s dream redemption: a luxury hotel in the middle of Tokyo, with killer food, killer views, and a killer price tag.

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Use British Airways Avios to Save Major Ca$h

26 Sunday May 2013

Posted by in Travel Hacking

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Since starting our Selfish Year voyage, Mrs. Selfish and I have flown a total of 58 flights, 28 of which we paid for with points.  The remainder of the flights we paid for with cash, and while none were completely cringe worthy (other than, perhaps the Air Tahiti flight to Bora Bora), they added up to a sizeable sum when combined.

So when I started looking into booking our additional flights in Japan I turned to an often under-appreciated currency – British Airline’s Avios miles.

ba-award-chart

When to use Avios Miles

British Airway’s Avios miles are almost completely worthless when flying British Airways themselves, thanks to their extremely high fuel surcharges.

However, they are superb points for saving money on short haul flights, especially if your flight matches the following criteria:

1. A short distance flight, ideally less than 1150 miles, or better yet, less than 650 miles. As always, use a tool like the Great Circle Mapper to determine the distance between city pairs.

2. Are you flying in a market where British Airways has strong partners? For instance, are you flying Japan Airlines in Japan? Quantas in Australia? American Airlines in the States?

3. Is the market you’re flying in expensive? Japan is a really good fit here, as is America in some cases.

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18 Hours in Fukuoka: The Grand Hyatt

24 Friday May 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, Asia, Hyatt, Japan, Travel Hacking

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After bidding farewell to the Westin Chosun in Seoul, Mrs. Selfish and I boarded the 5am airport bus for Incheon Airport.  Two flights and 9 hours later we arrived in Fukuoka Airport, Japan!

When looking at Japan, Mrs. Selfish and I knew we wanted to spend the majority of our time split between Kyoto and Tokyo, and about a week in less visited areas of Japan.

After further research, we determined we’d spend 2 nights in Kurukawa Onsen Town – a charming town on the southern island of Kyushu. The most direct way there involved flying into Fukouka for a one night stay.

Within moments of hitting the city, I knew we’d made a big mistake.  Fukouka is an amazing city, worthy of at least a few days of exploration, and is considered by some to be the food capital of Japan.

And the Grand Hyatt is no slouch either. Coming in as a category 3 hotel, the Grand Hyatt cost us a paltry 12,000 Hyatt points – which I transferred from our Ultimate Rewards pool.

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JW Marriott Beijing – One Classy Category 4 Hotel!

11 Saturday May 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, Asia, Beijing, China, Marriott, Travel Hacking

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Redeeming for miles and points is a strange beast.  On the one hand, part of me (and I suspect part of many miles & points addicts) wants to redeem my points for the most expensive hotel I can get. On the other hand, another part of me wants to stretch my miles and points across as many days as possible since we’re in this for the long haul.

Sometimes there’s a happy intersection where a quality hotel, for whatever reason, is a complete steal at its current redemption rate.  The JW Marriott Beijing is one such hotel.

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Saving money by renting apartments

07 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, Travel Hacking

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While staying at luxury hotels can be quite exciting, nothing beats the feeling of coming home.  Before we started our selfish year of travels, Mrs. Selfish and took tons of weekend trips, culminating in our once-a-year international trip over the Thanksgiving holiday.

While getting out of the States and traveling to new countries was exhilarating, it was also exhausting. If you’re from the States, vacationing is about three things: maximizing, maximizing, maximizing.

By the end of each international trip, we were more tired then when we had started.  Coming home in itself was a treat – a chance to catch up on sleep and get back into the ol’ routine.

Traveling for a year straight is the same deal, except now there is no home to come home to.  It’s exciting, but also tiring – not to mention expensive.  Fortunately, that’s where apartment rentals come in.

Our loft in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

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Additional ways to Earn Miles and Points

01 Wednesday May 2013

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This is the twelfth and final post on earning miles and points.  Check out my intro post on the topic, “How to Travel Hack your way Around the World.”

While credit card sign up bonuses and banking represent the easiest way to collect miles and points, there are any number of ways one can earn miles and points on a daily basis.

Below is a list of different ways to earn miles and points, along with links to additional information.

Shopping Portals

Earning miles from online purchases is one of the easiest things you can do to earn extra miles on a daily basis.

Buying flowers for Mother’s Day?  Earn 30x AAdvantage miles or United Miles per dollar spent, by shopping through American Airlines or United’s shopping site.

Next time you need to buy something online, I highly recommend using sites like evreward to determine how to get the most bang for your buck when shopping online.

Car Rentals & Hotel Stays

Renting a car, or staying at a hotel can often earn you airline miles or hotel points in addition to points you’d normally earn.  Be careful, however, as some car rental companies will charge you more money if you use a hotel or airline promotional code.

Frequentflyerbonuses has aggregated a ton of data on bonus offers for just about everything.

Dining Programs

Earn miles or points by registering for affiliated dining programs.  Register a credit card and earn bonus miles by eating at one of the many restaurants in the Dining Program.  There’s usually some sort of bonus when you initially sign-up, e.g. earn 1000 extra miles by spending $30 at one restaurant in the first 30 days.

This is an easy way to earn miles & points, but personally I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat at any of the participating restaurants unless it was a place I wanted to eat at any way.  It does stack well with other offers, however, like American Express’s Small Business Saturday.

The Points Guy has a great breakdown of the current dining programs.

Advanced Techniques

The following are additional ways to earn miles and points.  These are extremely *hardcore* techniques, and I would spend a decent amount of time researching how they work, if you’re at all interested in the black arts of travel hacking.  Be warned, they involve a lot more effort than the methods I’ve outlined above, and can involve a decent amount of risk.

Double Dipping

This technique involves clicking through a shopping portal once to buy gift cards, then going through a second time with those gift cards to buy what you really want.

Mrs. Selfish and I have tried this a few times with some success, but if you’re really interested in how this works, please do yourself a favor and check out the Frequent Miler, who is the authority on the subject.

Gift Card Churning

Not to be confused with double dipping, gift card churning is a very labor-intensive way to earn extra miles and points.  The basic principle involves buying gift cards through a cash-back portal with a miles or points earning credit card, then selling the card through a third party site.  You earn miles and points when purchasing the gift card, and hopefully sell the gift card at a small loss or, even better, a small gain.

Again, the Frequent Miler is probably the best authority on the subject.

Manufactured Spending

Simply put, this involves making purchases to earn miles or points while spending little to no actual money. Some techniques involve buying large value gift cards ($500+), depositing the money into a debit account like Bluebird, then use the gift card money to pay off the credit card bill. These techniques get shut down frequently, but seem to spring up just as frequently, thanks to ingenious travel hackers.

Other techniques involve using free-after-rebate purchases to help meet minimum spend, or to rack up spend in a bonus category.

This technique has become so useful in the last year that Flyertalk has opened a new forum to handle the topic.

Does anyone have any additional techniques?  If you have any tools or tips (especially ones that work while traveling), we’d love to hear them!

The Costs of 8 Months of Selfish Traveling

19 Friday Apr 2013

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If you’re just joining us, Mrs. Selfish and I have been traveling the world for the last 8 months – largely on miles and points – or are we? While Mrs. Selfish touched on our favorite memories yesterday, today I thought I’d take a look and see what our trip has meant from a cost perspective.

Within our Selfish Year of travel (or 369 days) we’re visiting a total of 91 cities – 78 we’re staying in, while 13 are day trips.  Here’s what that looks like:

Of those 91 cities, so far we’ve visited a total of 66.  So we still have a lot of fast traveling ahead:

So far we’ve visited 21 of the 25 countries we set out to see.  I was a little surprised by that number myself, considering we’re only 66% of the way in.  Then I looked at the country breakdown:

It turns out our upcoming stays in Japan and Australia account for 21.6% of the amount of time we’re spending abroad – probably two of the more expensive countries on this trip – whoops!

We spent the least amount of time in Monaco (1 day), followed by Switzerland, and Austria.  Interestingly, we’ll have spent 3 nights in the air – 2 nights on our way to Singapore (a red-eye + the time change), and 1 night on our upcoming leg from Japan to Australia.

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Earning Miles with Banking & Brokerage Services

15 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Travel Hacking

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This is the eleventh post on earning miles and points.  For a list of other posts, check out my post on how to travel hack your way around the world.

While credit cards represent the easiest way to collect miles and points, changing the way you bank can be a really easy way to passively accumulate boatloads of miles.

Banking & Brokerage Services

If you have money to invest or save and you live in the United States, you have a few options for earning miles.  Especially if you are interested in accumulating American Airlines miles:

BANK DIRECT

Earn up to 23,000 AAdvantage miles by opening a Bank Direct account:

  • 1,000 miles for opening a new account
  • 1,000 miles if you are referred by a friend (plus 1,000 for the friend)
  • 1,000 miles if you open the account with $100,000 or more
  • 10,000 miles for enrolling in direct deposit
  • 5,000 miles for using their debit card 12 times a month for 3 months
  • 5,000 miles for using bill pay for at least 3 payments a month for a year.

*UPDATE* Bank Direct has reduced the cap on the amount of miles you can earn based on the money you have deposited from $200,000 to $50,000. So you’ll only earn 100 miles per $1000 for the first $50,000, after which you’ll earn 25 miles for each additional $1000 in your account.

This reduces the maximum you can (easily) earn in a month from 20,000 to 5,000. You can also open a Money Market account, which earns 50 miles per $1000 in your account for the first $50,000, which will net you 2500 miles a month.

I can still do referrals if anyone is interested, but with the new changes BD isn’t quite as attractive as it used to be. 

Additionally, you’ll receive 100 miles every month for every $1,000 you have deposited in your account, up to the first $200,000. Mrs. Selfish and I bank with Bank Direct and thus far I can offer up two downsides:

1) $12 Monthly Fee – this occurs no matter how much money you have in your account, and cannot be waived.

2) Unfortunately Bank Direct has to have the clunkiest interfaces of any banking site I’ve ever seen.  If you can get around that their customer service is decent, though expect to speak to one of 6 representatives – seriously, their company is that small.

Analysis: If you’re a high roller with a lot of money in savings I would strongly consider opening a Bank Direct account. Being able to earn 240,000 miles for little to no effort definitely outweighs the $144 you’ll pay in annual fees in my opinion, and interest rates are at an all time low.  To put that in perspective, 240,000 miles is enough for 9 round trip tickets across the continental US, or for a first class ticket to anywhere in the world with points to spare.

If anyone is interested in a referral, leave a comment and we’ll hook you up – Mrs. Selfish and I could always use the extra 1,000 miles!

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How Suite it is… at the JW Marriott Hong Kong!

07 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, Asia, China, Marriott, Travel Hacking

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For our stay in Hong Kong I booked a last minute 5-night award to the JW Marriott HK only a week before we arrived.  Under the old category definitions, the JW was a category 7 hotel, meaning it cost 35,000 Marriott reward points a night.  Thankfully, Marriott Rewards gives you the 5th night free on award bookings, so our stay cost 140,000 Marriott Reward points.

Since Mrs. Selfish and I both applied for the Chase Marriott Rewards card, we both had a free night and 70,000 Marriott Reward points to burn!  Marriott is also nice because multiple family members can apply points toward one award, allowing me to Mrs. Selfish’s points if I fell short.  This was especially useful, because for our time in China I was planning on getting platinum status.

Unlike other hotel chains, Marriott allows just about anyone to try their “Taste of Platinum” challenge. By completing 9 paid stays in 3 months, plus the month you request the challenge, you’ll earn Marriott’s platinum status for the next calendar year.  Although it’s an amazing shortcut, the biggest benefit is the “taste” itself – for the duration of those ~3 months you’ll actually get platinum status, which gets you free internet, breakfast, a welcome gift, your choice of amenities, and an upgrade to a better room. We pulled a similar trick in Spain with Mrs. Selfish, but the AC Hotels didn’t really recognize platinum status quite the way Marriott-branded hotels in Asia do.

In Asia, they do one better, since there’s a great chance you’ll be upgraded to a suite.

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One last day in Singapore

06 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by in Accommodations, Asia, Hilton, Singapore, Travel Hacking

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After surviving many cab debacles in Kuala Lumpur, Mrs. Selfish and I finally got wise and arranged for a cab to pick us up from the Sheraton Imperial.  After 3 days in Kuala Lumpur, surprisingly our most honest cab driver was the one that took us to the airport.

Nevertheless it was slightly uncomfortable with all of our bags.  The standard cabs in Kuala Lumpur were slightly different from home, and we found we always had to put one of our bags up front next to the driver.  The reason being that a lot of the trunk’s space is occupied by a natural gas tank!

But no matter!  We were off to our last stop in South East Asia, a one day stopover in Singapore.

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