We bring you more ways to get to South America and specifically Colombia with miles, the evolution of the Hyatt Credit Card, we travel to Denali & Slovakia & FinCon16, learn how to use Qantas miles in the Pacific, we learn about the greatest bubble in Japan, look at awesome storm pictures, we tour a United airplane food facility & more!
Here we go, what you need to know…Keeping it light, this is not a full time gig and certainly does not play like one lol.
Getting to South America using Amex Membership Rewards points. Goes through each partner in some detail. It will be nice to have a conclusion paragraph summarizing the best partners and the ones to totally avoid because they suck!
Since we are on getting to South America for free these days, how about getting to Colombia with miles then?
The Evolution of the Hyatt Credit Card, the Best Current Offer and How to Get it. Nice summary laid out. This credit card would buzz A LOT more in the blogosphere if there was an affiliate link for it. Still so ridiculous of some Titan bloggers who blog about this program and then can’t even get themselves to lay out the direct link to their readers, so pathetic!
Qantas miles in the Pacific. Hmm, interesting way to use these miles. Fiji Air and Vanuatu Air anyone?
If you go to Denali National Park, here are 10 tips to make the most of your visit. We can’t wait to see what happens next!
Loyalty Traveler has been traveling in Slovakia and he recaps his 10 day trip. Hmmm, I had never even considered this place, looks nice.
Personal Finance post of the day: The Greatest Bubble of All Time. It was Japan baby! Ends with some good and sensible advice. A reminder what it was is below:
- From 1956 to 1986 land prices increased 5000% even though consumer prices only doubled in that time.
- In the 1980s share prices increased 3x faster than corporate profits for Japanese corporations.
- By 1990 the total Japanese property market was valued at over 2,000 trillion yen or roughly 4x the real estate value of the entire United States.
- The grounds on the Imperial Palace were estimated to be worth more than the entire real estate value of California or Canada at the market peak.
- There were over 20 golf clubs that cost more than $1 million to join.
- In 1989 the P/E ratio on the Nikkei was 60x trailing 12 month earnings.
Storm Photography by Mitch Dobrowner. Wow #speechless
Airplane food facility tour. It is United, shocking! “Nothing is automated”! Expect to see this link appear in some “expert” blog as usual, if I only had a back link every time this happens…%$#k!
What an incredible picture: Extras in the Spartacus movie set with numbers so director Stanley Kubrick could address them individually and give them instructions. Wow!
I am attending a conference session with these presenters…I wonder if they will get security to prevent my attendance and/or asking questions in the Q&A. Since I got me a killer laptop (Lenovo Yoga 900) maybe I should live blog it, what do you say? 🙂 Or should I ask them for marketing tips, I think they can help out this blog to make more than 91 cents in the three previous days #nojoke. Anyways, this is a conference where you cultivate new target market…so the smart ones are here! To repeat: I have no problems with anyone, it is about blogs and not bloggers. Except two, you know who they are 🙂
Ok, here is something you will never see me do, just not my style, smh. Because I never want to end up here! Shoot, I have never watched the Emmy Awards either and don’t plan starting now.
Ok, now how about something inspiring, that is part of the mission too! What a beautiful picture this is, it brings tears to my eyes…The essence of Paralympics!
And I leave you with this…
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Hello.
BTW I was watching Andrew Zimmern (Bizarre Foods) last night in an episode about Crete and one about Croatia.
Pretty cool but always a challenge to reproduce what he or Bourdain can do with industry connections, a big budget, plenty of time, plus a camera crew to bring fame and fortune to the subjects.
Anyway I enjoyed it.
Also, I think in the last couple of weeks I have garnered three golds and one should have been silver that didn’t post properly.
Yeah I’m overdue for Colombia, my friends have all been.
Cool Trump gif.
One trouble with posting here early is that I don’t get to see the other comments unless I have time to log in again late in the day. Because sometimes that’s the best part ! I so much want to meet Ramsey some day to learn more about flight attendants. Just academic curiosity of course.
Thanks for the kind words.
Visiting San Diego tomorrow until Sunday, if you have time to meet. Always fun meeting blog readers.
It will be a riot to meet Ramsey…one day.
AND I LEAVE YOU WITH THIS…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjy2uo0s4ZM
@MIKE, I have posted many politically incorrect, factually accurate F/A stories here at TBB over the last 3 years and for some reason I have not been banned by Buzz yet. If you ever have any airline/crew questions (even X rated) let me know, I miss those crazy fun wild TWA days now that I am an old fart.
American sucked working for, they were like the Gestapo, everyone was paranoid you would be ratted on by pass riding arrogant AA employees. I refuse use to use my retirement flight passes with them, hence I am here collecting miles and points like you.
I don’t ban anyone.
Except spammers…two got in and then had to blast them. I update the spam control software so it looks like we are good now.
Love the F/A stories!
I’m new to the game and looking for the best sites to follow. Just wondering how you can say your site is AD-FREE! when there are not one but two big banner ads on your homepage??
Sounds kind of hypocritical don’t you think? Looks like you are a pimp just like the others
They teach you about pimps in newbie school?
@New York Newbie: Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.
You are right, that is a bad choice of words! What I always meant to say is that my site makes NO MONEY from ads run by sites like Adwords or Media.net or any other sponsored crap that masquerades as content but only purpose is to serve backlinks to the sites paying for the space! It was also a shot against Boarding Area blogs because they all make some ad revenue PER page view, my site makes NADA from page views. This is why I never check my “Google Analytics” or Alexa rankings (regular readers are laughing right now).
So…I had this canned paragraph for so long…I never changed it. So, thanks to you, I took out that first line while I ponder (over months most likely, I move slow) some new wording. Feel free to suggest a better wording.
Interesting that it took a few hours to get a negative comment as VERY late last night I added the CreditCards.com banner in the FRONT page on top of the Amazon banner which has been there for almost two years. Yes….I had forgotten about adding the creditcards.com banner in the front page. That was sooooo hypocritical of me hey?
The site makes some money from 3 sources: Loyal readers get some credit cards from the creditcards.com site where they have to hunt down the specific credit card without pics and arrows and of course DIRECT cc links, loyal readers start their shopping with my Amazon link for some beer money (I actually prefer wine), and my referral links where the clicks have not croossed into double digits in almost 4 years doing this.
Last 3 days revenue here: $0, $0, and 91 cents.
So it appears to me you prefer other sites that are not hypocritical so please go there.
@ABC: Lets be nice to newbies. They have a lot to learn. As in waiting a little bit to get a better feel for an online place before commenting 😉
George quite whining about the cents you get from the Amazon link… its sorta repetitive, plus we all know you got quite a few CSR sign ups from us (myself included) via the credit cards link. No saying that its a bad thing to earn money there, but don’t say you are not earning anything.
You must admit that the amount of whining in my blog has gone down A LOT! Why? Because readers are responding! There were day streaks here with NO revenue whatsoever! Only one in August! Suddenly, there was a recent streak Sep 16 and 17 with zero rev and followed up by 91 cents on Sept 18…so I broke down lol. Thankfully after I posted my whining this awful streak was over by another two CSR payouts, so thanks a lot man!
Your buddy Gary always says that he blogs about things that interest him. I blog about stuff here that entertain, educate and inspire. You may wonder which of these appeal to my whining. The answer is easy: Entertainment, more my own lol. And educational as many bloggers read me so I need to warn them repeatedly that this blogging thing may look easy but it is FAR from the truth. And it is also reverse-inspiring woohoo.
Read my post. I did NOT say I am not earning anything here. All I said in three days I earned 91 cents.
It is sooooo deflating to see all the effort that goes into this every day shows a zero response. If it was a $1 I would not have whined after a month 🙂 It’s like psychological food or something. I could be writing stuff for the Journal and wait for the phone to ring and make a lot more…but, someway somehow, TBB is part of my identity now and love what I do here…so I go on.
I got an early flight tomorrow and have so much to do…oh, I need to do a post too. You won’t believe what happens next…..Actually, I have some really eclectic stuff to share!
Nothing unreasonable about my comment. I give “NY Newbie” credit for identifying pimps at an early stage. This of course assumes that “NY Newbie” is a bona fide “newbie”.
Started about 6 months ago and enjoyed your newbie guide post. Straight talk. NO BS. But it seems your daily grind is to post other people’s work with links? and complain about your pitfall earnings
Blogs I love list is not travel hacking related. Who teaches you the game?
This is a curating blog. Always was and always will be. Main idea for it was to go through so many blogs I used to read anyway, separate the eclectic good stuff and share them here to my readers and always adding my spin while also keeping a pulse on the buzz about bloggers (read my name, get it?). I used to have 600 blogs in Feedly which drove me insane. Got it down to 200 something now, more manageable. Friend’s suggestion for blog tagline was “We waste our time so you don’t have to”. He had a point. Instead of going to all these blogs…I bring you what you need to know here. You are welcome.
Actually, this “curating” blog format is one that is growing and may have hit upon a gem when I decided to get into it finally in November 2012. Do some google searching if you want to know more.
See my response to Oliver2002 about my complaining. It was so much more, you have not been reading me long it appears. I break down when I see zeros lol.
Who told you all this is travel hacking related? As travel hacking is slowly dying due to too many douchebags online marketers publicizing it 24/7…this blog always kept a door open to be more inclusive of other stuff. At the end of the day, I share stuff that, again, are entertaining, educational and inspiring. I get lots of positive feedback about my personal finance stuff obviously.
>>>>>>>>Who teaches you the game?
Kid, when you learned about this I probably had crossed the 100 million miles/points mark so it is obviously not you and definitely not The Points Guy.
Keep enjoying the free stuff. You are welcome.
Phuck, spammers are breaching my Akismet filters, already killed two spam comments about some phucking shower. Looks like there will be more! Like I don’t have anything else to do…
Spammers must die, no mercy!
Ramsey, my questions have to do with dating the female F/As. Sometimes there will be one who seems extra attentive, but then has vanished at debarkation. I think I should have some cards made up with my phone number, including whatsapp etc. and just give them one during the flight if they seem interested. Of course I realize the friendliness may just be them doing their job. They aren’t going to get fired for fraternization are they?
Wow I can’t believe you forgo all that free travel.
Some time ago there was an ad in the paper (yeah, remember those days?) about an IT job at Northwest. And I clipped it and showed it to my wife and told her to look into it because…free travel! Well, lets just say it was good she never followed up lol.
I think things have changed a little since those days Mike. No idea about the protocol. And I think most are just doing their job. It is the fantasy of many male passengers to hook up with a hot F/A in their layover hotel. Not sure it happens much…they just go to the pilots’ rooms lol.
@Mike, If you want to bang, err I mean date F/A’s……YOU CAN DO IT!! Best bet is to get a job as a one. Because once they (the young ladies) get out of training, graduate and move to their new Domicile, all hell breaks loose. They come from all over the country often leaving home for the very first time, and it is time to live life in the fast lane……As the only straight male working the flight and if you are not hideous the opportunities are there for the taking. They will be knocking on your layover door late I night. You would also be surprised how many passengers both male and female that will come on to you. If you ever want to get on with an airline, I can help for sure.
If not interested in the above, I would say don’t be afraid to ask someone out if they engage you in an extended conversation, most of them (unmarried) are not in great relationships because they travel so much. Find out if they are laying over in the same city as you are. Or maybe you can hang out at the hotel bar that crews layover at (most airlines stay at the same hotels). Where do you live and travel to? ………….. Many large cities with airline F/A bases have towns nearby where newbie F/A’s live (they are on reserve, subject to call out, the first couple of years on the job). Long Beach, NY was famous for the amount of younger NY Based F/A’s from all airlines living there. Certain bars were crew hangout, you could find out which ones pretty easily.
I will travel back in time in my demented brain to come up with some ideas for you. I’ll ask my wife too for her prospective coming from a former hot swinging stewardess.
Whew ! ! ! Now those are some great ideas !