January 10, 2013 – The demonic travel blogging world, caviar & satay on Singapore First Class & much more!

MVP POST OF THE DAY

“Why Travel Blogs Fail. Insights to a Sordid, Demonic Community“

Thanks to Jason of Food, Wine and Miles who alerted me of this blog post on twitter. I so enjoyed reading this article at yomadic. All other travel bloggers should read it too! And loved the pic, so “edgy”, my kind of humor! I am definitely NOT a travel blogger, I just review them. And I have a special emphasis on miles/points related blogs! Actually…I just make it up as I go along!  Here are some excerpts from the article with my comments in brackets:

“I’ve taken a good long look into the eyes of the demonic travel blogging world for myself. In summary, it’s much more of a circle jerk than an orgy.” [no comment, just lol]

“…top ten link-bait lists featuring already heavily covered destinations” – [sounds so familiar, think credit cards!]

“If you’re going to blog, why not make it matter. Make it count. Find your voice. Write content for yourself, and your audience, not for your corporate sponsors.” [Yeah baby, that’s it, I am going to single handedly raise the quality in this space and call on you knowwhoyouare when I see blatant BS so you raise your game! I write for me, my readers and to reduce my therapist’s bills. No corporate sponsors (present tense), up yours Chase Bank and Bent Offers! Full disclosure: I do love the Ink cards, please never ban me, thanks!]

“I’m more than aware that what I write about here is not necessarily mainstream entertainment.” [Ok, TBB is definitely NOT mainstream! Sometimes I post what I listen to on Pandora on twitter…very weird far out stuff! ]

Nate, nice connecting online. Love the originality of your website, keep the good stuff coming!

BEST OF

Loyalty Lobby has a chain specific hotel promotion tab in its website. That’s good. I am still looking for a good place to bookmark that has ONLY the main current quarterly promos of the top hotel chains, a quick look there to remind us all about the main promos in ONE simple page and quickly compare them!  Everyone usually throws the kitchen sink in these promo pages, I just want the MAIN quarterly promos, such as the current Club Carlson Triple Points, the crappy Power Down Starwood promo, the double points Hilton promo, the Marriott megabonus (site was down when updating the post!), the missing Hyatt promo (hint!!), the takethebestone Priority Club promo at the moment….That’s it!

Loyalty Lobby on how to get Fast Tracked to Hilton Gold. Or you can get the Hilton no fee Amex and put $20k on it. If I had affiliate cc links I would very smoothly slide one in here. Please laugh!

Frequent Miler is doing his own Million Mile March, err excuse me, Million Mile Madness. Very original, I like it. I like all things original in this space, we need so much more of it! And why are so many mad people living in Ann Arbor, Michigan?

Travel Summary gives his Play-By-Play of his 100k Amex Offer. This is how legends are born:-)

A dolphin stampede overtakes whale watching boat. Wow, what an amazing site!

Points, Miles and Martinis wrote about the Top 4 Club Carlson Hotel Redemptions. Thank you for this post! I had no idea about the Norway properties and that there are two new properties coming to Maldives. Blogging is very educational! (and sure is time sucky!). And thank you for calling me “famous travel blogger”…I chuckled when I read this!

Midnight Sun. Iceland. HD Video. Wow! Saw this at Vagabondish.com first.

Fantastic video on how to stop TSA from stealing your valuables. Because, you know, “TSA are lazy pathetic thieves”. Very funny too! This guy does NOT like TSA, lol.

The Best F***ing Cruise Ship Review Ever by Gadling. Ok, this is full of F words. But I found it very funny, especially the end with F***ing Karaoke and the old man singing. If you do not like the F word, skip!

Ben’s “Bling it on: Qasr Al Sarab” review in UAE. For some reason, looking at the hotel pics finds me cold. Maybe I have seen so many of his pics in luxurious hotels that just does not do it for me anymore. Weird feeling. But I sure loved the desert and camel pics though!

Ben again reports that Alaska Airlines just posted the Emirates award chart! In the process, he also killed himself! This is how bloggers sacrifice for their readers,lol. In his own words (sometimes the kid really cracks me up): “PS: I was in my garage on the way to the supermarket when a friend texted me to say the chart has been published. I ran back to my apartment as fast as I could and literally tripped over myself and fell in my kitchen. My leg is bleeding a bit, but decided to write the blog post while on the floor before seeking medical attention. Do I get an A+ for being a dedicated blogger or what? :-)”

Gary Leff wrote an excellent post on how to fly First Class on Singapore Airlines on points. This would have been my MVP post of the day but Nate won it.  I may send wife and kids to see family in Singapore next Christmas and I guarantee you they will NOT be flying Singapore First Class!

A credit card with reward switching buttons was sighted at CES. No miles…but certainly interesting. I look at my fat wallet with all the cards for the different bonus categories and…it hurts!

NOT SO BEST OF

Okay, now there is video of the drunk man on that Iceland Air flight. I find this terribly disturbing to watch. I feel for the guy who obviously chose a horrible time to work on his drinking problem…but taking photos and videos and posting them on the internet I find highly questionable. Oh wait, this is what I am doing too! I am ONLY doing it here because it made an impression on me and I review travel blogs and things of that sort. You have been warned! If you think this is offensive I will take it down…

Did you know American Airlines owned a $23 million dollar luxury London townhouse used by CEO Tom Horton and other executives? Ludicrous! They finally agreed to sell it and employees loved it!

I must admit I am either becoming used to the credit card pimping, I find way too much other good stuff to feature here or, maybe, just maybe, there is a noticeable improvement out there in the practices of bloggers. If the latter, I think it is wonderful for all! Or, more likely (hopefully?), the most blatant attempts have been silenced a bit? Time will tell.

ODDZ & ENDZ

A Letter from AIG  Extremely funny! And super sad if you think about it…

Pennsylvania Man Attempts Suicide Twice On Way to Work, Ends Up at Work Anyway Just caught this, is this a joke? If not, this guy is a joke for sure! If not a joke, I hope the guy gets some help soon!