The Best Kebab in the World
Blog Giveaway: 30 Days to Maldives Credit Card Consultation
Buzios, Brazil: The Case Against Points
- 43% said: Wherever has great award availability so I can indulge on Krug GrandĀ CuvĆ©e while in flight.
- 24% said: Wherever there is [INSERT HOTEL CHAIN], I get free breakfast with my copper status.
- 78.4% said: Wherever there is an exhaustive amount of Trip Reports, I want to see if I can get a better shot of the toilet than that other blogger.
“What Are Points Worth?” Shut Up and Book!
Do you recall your first crush? You were so careless with your heart, putting it out to the world without considering its fragility. Time marched forward, relationships ended badly, and, as a result, you are too hesitant to pull the trigger and try to fall in love again. This paralysis is exactly what redeeming points has become for many of us as we struggle with the following questions:
- Should I do cash and points or pure points?
- Should I save my points for an aspirational, yet wholly implausible and most likely unavailable trip or use them for something practical?
- Are these points worth 2 cents or 2.02 cents? No, they are worth 2.025, I think…
Blog Giveaway: Award Booking Service for 1
Look at me! Look at me! That’s what travel blogging has become. I’m flying all around the world, here’s me at the Conrad Maldives, I’m on an Emirates A380, or I’m eating lobster on Singapore Airlines. How shameless! To combat these selfish acts and to inspire blog readership, I’m going to give back to the community by offering my Award Booking Service for free to whomever can identify the location of the picture below. Here’s the legalese:
- Service must be used within one month from when winner is announced.
- You have to call the airline yourself once the route has been found. (Wi-Fi calling in Mongolia is unreliable.)
- I will need a full break down of your points. I hope you have British Avios.
- There are no guarantees that the magical flight will be available so no booking is guaranteed.
The Conrad Maldives: Heaven Can Wait
The Conrad Maldives Rangali Island Review is part of the Trip Report: The $77,000 Trip Heard Round the World which covers 5 Continents, 13 Countries, and 17 Cities.
- Tokyo, Japan
- Melbourne, Australia
- Wellington, New Zealand
- Sydney, Australia
- Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Maldives
- Saigon, Vietnam
- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Hong Kong
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Knysna, South Africa
- Durban, South Africa
- Mauritius
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Doha, Qatar
- New York, New York
- Helsinki, Finland
Island breezes, world-class hospitality with no care in the world, that’s my idea of heaven. At the Conrad Maldives, heaven, like good service, will have to wait. Last Christmas as part of my $77,000 Trip Heard Round the World, I stayed at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island in a breathtaking bungalow that overlooked paradise. Looking out to the sea, everything was spectacular, but focusing my attention on the resort’s geniality, everything was average. I hate to gripe about a beautiful place like Maldives so I’m going to keep the negatives to a minimum: It started with the $500 seaplane that was delayed, then delayed, and delayed again with both the hotel and the seaplane company blaming one another for the problem. Then came the unannounced cancellation of happy hour for Hilton Gold and Diamond members where for one hour a day, literally everyone on the island would make a mad rush to the bar for complimentary drinks. The resulting anger displayed from hotel guests was a telltale sign of three things: 1) The prices in Maldives are ridiculous. 2) Everyone is a raging alcoholic. (The Maldives is one of 3 countries that does not allow the purchase of alcohol by visitors even at the Duty Free.) 3) Points travelers may be in a little over their heads even staying on points. Finally, and most notably, upon checking out, the hotel mixed up my bags with that of a Chinese traveler and but for dumb luck my passport was headed with him to China. (An interlude for obvious Travel Advice, keep your passport glued to you even while scuba diving.) The hotel’s response for all of this was one of indifference and that’s putting it nicely. But enough about them interfering with my blue heaven, let’s talk about the celestial Maldives archipelago:
Blog Giveaway Winner! Anyone Who Quit the Cubicle
While nobody guessed Langkawi, Malaysia, the correct choice, I did send off some free books to those that made an effort. If you didn’t win the liberation from your cubicle by picking this beautiful island getaway, you can still win in life by picking up a copy of my book Everyone’s Advice Is Wrong from Amazon. (Click here to purchase.) If you’re still in denial that you hate your job then you can set this photo as your work wallpaper and pretend that you are still there. Obviously, you didn’t Make Tuesday Humpday.
Blog Giveaway: A Life Outside the Cubicle
Do you hate your job? Do you hate your cubicle? Do you wonder how you can ever break free? Well wonder no more. Today only, if you guess where the following picture was taken with some level of accuracy, I will send you a free copy of my book Everyone’s Advice Is Wrong so long as you make a good faith effort to write a review, good or bad, when you complete it on Amazon. Yesterday’s contest featured some interesting guessing techniques and today’s also has no rules. Here is an excerpt from one of the ten steps that must be completed to take you from your cubicle to the Caymans: Step 2: Make Tuesday Hump Day Transitioning from the metaphorical chokehold of the cubicle to a life of purpose can be a daunting task. Most of us are just trying to get through the workweek, praying that one day, one of our entrepreneurial seeds will germinate. This passive strategy is not enough. Changes, no matter how small, must be made to our current routine because waiting for a better life to show up while our best years pass us by is not an option. A novel concept of my own creation is to move Hump Day, the day obstructing us from our weekend, from Wednesday to Tuesday. This revolutionary idea really annoyed my coworkers. I would come in to work on Tuesday saying, “Oh, today is Hump Day—the weekend is right around the corner.” They would angrily protest, “Wednesday is Hump Day!” and that I could not arbitrarily change it to Tuesday. Complain as they might, I was happy on Wednesday because I had mentally overcome another workweek.
Simply the Best: November 2014
The month of November came and went but the frost of Mongolia remains. Here are the top 7 posts from the month of November: 1. The $77,000 Trip Heard Round the World: What 1,000,000 Points Gets You 2. China’s 72-hour Visa-Free Transit Rule: Flyer Beware 3. RTW Dividends From the Geographically Challenged: Istanbul to Seychelles 4. Losing My Virginity in Lufthansa Business Class 5. Hyatt Diamond Challenge and Mi Amor Argentina 5. Pho 2000 Saigon: President Clinton’s Bad Dining Advice 7. IGLOO-GER: The Helsinki-Ulaanbaatar Trip Report