TBB Mission: To Entertain, Educate and Inspire. Aim to at least do one well!
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TRAVEL
Nazare Blow Up. EPIC waves, epic music, crazy surfers in this famous spot in Portugal. Wow!!!!!
Nazaré Blow Up from SURFPortugal Mag on Vimeo.
Abandoned Venues from the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics. Very sad…
What a Crazy landing!
MILES / POINTS
Austrian Airlines delivers a smile. By Southern Travel Girl. Wow, what an awesome move by Austrian Airlines. These are the things that customers remember and…smile! I want some coffee too!
St Regis Bora Bora. By Lenticular Travel. Best pictures in the blogosphere, no one comes close!
British Airways Visa for 100,000 Avios points is back. Mega $20k of minimum spend required to get all 100k Avios points (you have a year to meet it). I wonder when the day will come we will go ballistic against BA like we did with United. Can’t trust them British 🙂
You can earn up to 23 miles/points per dollar shopping online at Neiman Marcus. (It is 18 American Airline miles plus 5 additional Chase Ultimate Rewards points for using the Freedom card as department stores is one of the 4th quarter categories earning 5x). For all you into shopping, this is a significant bonus indeed. Mrs. TBB was alerted.
View from the Wing unleashes blog posts like a machine! Here is one I did not know before. If you are flying within Asia you can have some mega discounts using Japan Airline miles (you can transfer from SPG) flying on Bangkok Airways. Coach only which is really nice too (hey, they have a “coach” lounge in Bangkok!).
Inside Flyer magazine had a nice chart of AwardBookingServices. By the way, Randy Petersen says he has become a free agent too!
ON MY MIND
I am done with the award flights arrangements for our Spring Break next year to Maui, hooray! Looks like I need to work next on the hotels. Aiming for 3 nights (free of course, come on!) at the Fairmont Kea Lani and two nights in another one. We also have three nights in Oakland and the times are kind of inconvenient (getting in late and flying out very early). I am not happy with my “score” this time. But this is how we roll with two kids aiming for a super busy time of the year to Hawaii! For everyone who gave me ideas about a hotel in SFO, sorry! I goofed, it was Oakland! I wanted to burn some AA miles finally. We fly combination of Southwest, Hawaiian Air, Island Air and Alaska Airlines, all but American lol!
Now I need to start thinking about United burning. We thought Mrs. TBB was going to burn some to Malaysia to attend a cousin’s wedding but there has been an abrupt change in plans with the wedding moved up to December. The reason? Well it is eight months earlier! Nice plan hey 🙂
ODDZ & ENDZ
The Worst Prisons in the World. By memolition. I do not like the format of the pictures here forcing you to keep clicking but…some of these are quite shocking!
Check out this dog! Apparently it is a Tibetan mastiff.
BLOG BUZZ
Latest Million Mile Secrets interviewee:
“My name is Steve, and since 2011, my wife, Jordan, and I have been collecting points and airline miles to travel the world for cheap. We are an average couple who are working full time in the retail industry. We aren’t rich, but by earning points and miles we have already visited Puerto Vallarta, Baltimore, San Diego, and Seattle within 2013. Many of our friends, co-workers, and family members are intrigued by our hobby. Sometimes, when people inquire about our strategy for traveling, it can be difficult to explain in few words. The purpose of Point Travelers is to lay out our step-by-step strategy and ultimately help you earn points and travel the world!”
I am sure he is a nice kid but this is just getting totally insane, all kinds of “experts” popping up and unleashing their “expertise” on miles and points. Flog me please. Notice how he had the Credit Cards tab ready! So here I am feeling guilty of being pushy to my readers! Flog me some more por favor. And only five comments, all positive. Really Daraius?
A reader had emailed to tell me how wrong I was for not including One Mile at a Time in my “Blogs I Like” list. Really? Let me show you why! In the last few days that blog attempted to cram through all Chase cc links in a post talking about how the new United award chart damages Star Alliance. Then did a post on the super craptacular Friday dining “promo” to push the Sapphire card and then wasted bandwidth to do a separate post to tell readers how they can click on each Chase cc transaction to see how many Ultimate Rewards points they earned to push the Sapphire card again! We are talking two additional posts that would never see the light of day if it was not to unleash more credit card links on you. Sad. It was not like this before.
Eric, an employee at The Points Guy, ordered a replacement card from Chase to get it with a chip. And, can you guess what happened next? You would not believe it, I am telling you! He received it in the mail and, I know you are dying to know, it did have a chip, wow! Oh, while you are there, grab a Sapphire, Ink Bold, Ink Plus, Freedom, Hyatt, and a British Airways card too! We can’t wait to have a chip in all other banks so we can pump some more!
The least I could do, instead of trying to get to all the blogs, is get me an Uber account and start finding ways to conveniently insert it to my blog posts. Not. Credibility is your most important asset.
Shocking news: The Southwest 50k offer is STILL available, OMG! It was supposed to end on October 30 so I would really appreciate it if you click the @*&# out of my links. Keep on clicking till the cows come home!
One statistic that has stayed with me from the financial blogger conference I attended (FinCon13) was this: “Every day 100,000 blogs are registered with WordPress.com”. That is mind boggling! Speaker said that this number is likely too low. Whaaaaat?? Another one about content: “Too many links it starts to look blue” Aha, this is why I go blue in the face reviewing blogs…some blogs have SO MUCH Blue! You know who you are 🙂
The initial shock and horror of the United devaluation is starting to sink in…And it still hurts. What really pisses me off is this break in the charts with the Star Alliance. With Delta doing what it usually does (shenanigans) with Korean Air over at Sky Team…you really start to wonder about the future of these alliances. Amazing the turnaround when some of these airlines start to make money!
United=MileagePlusPesos
Numero Uno.
I’ll make you a Viennese Coffee anytime (after I have practiced……a lot)!
Cute dog!! Like your LLC too!
I still like One Mile at a Time. At least he comes up with decent content when he isn’t carpet blogging.
If you’re in your late teens or early 20s (and male). At this age, penis measurement exercises are more important. And many at that age think It’s cool telling your buddies you flew to Hong Kong in 1st class. Very sterile reports (and repetitive by now).
I agree with both … kind of … he has a very funny writing style, good sense of humor. He has a future in general publishing once Chase has full control of the world. But his trip reports are ridiculously repetitive now to the point I just completely skip them. Hey I appreciate I may be in a glass house but shit I don’t this as a job.
I do laugh at the reports from FTU etc of his literal “followers”. Those people I feel really bad for.
United devaluation makes me so sad. 🙁
so so so sad. 🙁
In terms of the 100k WordPress blogs… well in fairness I can account for two of them. My son started one to start posting about his lego creations. It has three readers, me, his sister and his mom. And my girl started one about american girl. Which has a similar three readers 🙂
You should link to those blogs. I want to add them to my “Blogs I think are extremely endearing” page
Does anyone know how I can get myself locked up in that Carandiru Penitentiary in San Paulo, Brazil?
@TWA44: Congrats, it’s about time 😉
@ Susan: I never turn down free coffee, especially courtesy of Austrian airlines. I left a comment in that post in your blog but I think it is in the spam folder, fyi,
@Jeff: That dog is better looking than my LLC for sure!
@HikerT: Yes but he is sure trending like Milevalue lately 🙂 He used to be so much better, that was my point. And I wanted to challenge him, we know he knows better!
@ABC: OMAAT is all about the luxury travel on the way there, not the destination. That’s fine, there is a market for that (oops, got a little smaller…Then again, he no longer flies United). I just don’t like the increased way of finding excuses of inserting cc links. And I have been reading him ever since he had no credit cards 🙂
@Miles Abound: I also completely skip over the trip reports. I have seen them before, they leave me completely cold. I agree about the writing style and the sense of humor. Oh, and you prove the presenter’s point about so many new blogs every day lol.
@ Please console him 😉
@Guy Fieri’s Hairdresser: Whatever you do, please do not, I repeat, DO NOT bring in a box of kit kats in that place lol.
Actually not my first time being first but then again, who’s counting 😉 !
As for all those blogs on WordPress, MIlesAbound is on target. I also have one there which I started in order to write about our time in Israel and Turkey, but not wanting to learn my way around the site and being pressed for time, I just opted for emailing the folks who might want to read about it. There are many more measures that are more meaningful than # of blogs registered.
OMAT’s excuse for pumping the Chase cards now (because they’ll be worth less after the devaluation so you should get them now) would be more believable if there was even the slightest chance that he would pump them less after 2/1
But is there any doubt that he’ll continue to do so as if nothing happened? He’ll just need to find a new excuse – if he discovered Carlson at the most convenient of times, rest assured he’ll have no problem with Chase products
“I’ve just discovered Amtrak”
It is out of control. Even the Canadian kid Jeff Kilometers got affiliate links (the numero uno drawing point of Boarding Area) to sell credit cards to Americans for cards he can’t get himself…what an irony this is!
I need to get my act together or just get me the &*(&$ out of here #anotherepiphany
Buzz, some options for your Maui stay for the other 2 nights are the Andaz Wailea Resort (Hyatt,) just down the road from the Fairmont. Once you stay in Wailea , you won’ want to leave that area. It is just so beautiful and elegant Mrs. Buzz will love it. There’s also a Four Seasons Resort (mucho mucho dinero, but simular to the Fairmont),The Grand Wailea Hilton Hotel, too massive, pricey, but nice pools for the kids)
and a nice Marriot Resort…..We just used our Barclay Mastercard for extra nights at the Fairmont, it is awesome, all rooms are suites and the bathrooms there are bigger than some hotel rooms. Fairmont tip, both of the main restaurants in the Fairmont ( KO and Nicks Fishmarket (Greek owned)) are really nice but expensive for a family. But, both have a great affordable happy hour that has seating for the kids (ocean views). ………The Kaanapali/ Lahaina area is about 25 minutes away and is much more developed and very touristy. We have stayed there too many times trying to save a few dollars, A fun area to visit to walk, shop or dine though…………B sure to take the kids for surfing lessons in Kihei. Kihei is the town next to Wailea that is on the ocean with shops and restaurants…………… Almost forgot, The Fairmont Hotel has a large Hawaiian boat that is free to signup for. You go out with a couple of hotel crew members and you help paddle, great workout,kid friendly. Also kid friendly, the Fairmont also has a great pool that is designated for kids and one designated for adults only………………………Don’t forget to keep an eye out for the orange shave ice truck with the Bob Marley logo (Maui Wowi) parked by Makena Beach…………..Eat cheap tips, Costco is located just outside airport area to stock up H2O, Kit Kats ect (your room comes with a refrigerator) / Moose Mcgilacuddy’s Restaurant w/ ocean view (Kihei) has 2 for 1 coupons in the magazines/ the famous Roy’s restaurant in Kaanapali has a great happy hour use Skypesos= Roys gift cards ( you can’t use them for flying )……………aloha.
Thanks a lot Ramsey. This time I saved all of your comment in a separate folder in Evernote! I do have many Hilton points left…i am scared to even look how many points is required for a night in April! But it may be a good excuse to burn away that other fast depreciating currency. Or blow some points on Andaz now that I won’t be transferring any to United anymore lol.
I too have stopped reading the so called “trip reports” that Lucky posts. They are not trip reports they are airline and lounge reviews for the post part. A trip, IMHO, includes visiting places other than an airport and a hotel lobby/room. They are getting very repetitive also, LH in F Hyatt in Suites, yada yada yada.
I did like his posts about traveling with his Mom and Dad though.
“Getting repetitive” – May be the understatement of the week 🙂 I feel like I have seen it all. And with no more Lufthansa FC for almost all of us…
ps… REQUEST…Please post pictures of Buzz on a surf board for your Maui trip report
That assumes he can stand up on a surfboard! Unless you meant one lying on the beach!!
Enjoyed your Maui tips. It is not my island of choice – I really love Kau’ai – but you do make it sound enticing! We gave our son his first surfing lesson on Maui about 18 years ago, which is perhaps the reason I now have a wetsuit draped over the shower door despite his recent move to CT!
Buzz pictures on a surf board:
NO, NO and NO. NEVER. I respect TBB readers lol.
Have done Big Island and Oahu. 2014 is Maui’ts turn. Kau’ai will be next. So far I loved the variety of the Big Island and the national park/volcano there the most!
Don’t forget the 10-min-stay trip to Big Island 🙂
In your opinion, is the BA card at 100,000 points worth considering? $20k is a LOT to spend (even with MS). I try to avoid it, and instead just do it via reimbursable expenses via work.
I love BA short haul trips. I can book Detroit to NYC LaGuardia pretty much any day for 4,500 BA Avios points one way. This is the BEST bang for this card. If you can easily swing the min spend, why not? 100k is 100k, you won’t see that too often. But if the min spen is a reach, do NOT go for it.
My next card will be the Barclays Arrival card. 2.2x earn per dollar plus 40k points will work for me. These pure airline/hotel points are becoming worthy of Chris Elliott rants lol.
I deleted your double posts so I do not get accused I pad the number of my comments (it has happened before, yes). No big deal.
If you are very flexible, Avios points are great. I have sometimes found Avios points to be difficult to use. Diversification is important in this game and having 100k Avios points may give you opportunities when you least expect it. You can use your Avios points on 33 airlines
http://www.headforpoints.com/2013/06/14/what-airlines-can-i-spend-avios-on/
Thank you George, you’re very kind 🙂
You ‘re welcome. I am very kind. Some bloggers do not think so…and I could care less 🙂
Well, that was a short hiatus
Huh, I added a smiley face after hiatus and that along with rest of the comment was ignored. Must be linked somehow to ObamaCare.
My follow up, was what wines did you select for dinner party and what was opened first? I believe that to be a valid question for a travel blog author .
May I tell you which card I used for it? And then blind side you with the other credit cards I could have used for it.
I am not a wine connoisseur. I buy them from Whole Foods when they are no sale 🙂
Which blogs readers are the dumbest? An MMS reader makes a strong push….
“I have a starwood question…. I just applied and was approved…. I got an email that said I have received credit for 5 nights and 2 stays toward SPG status….what does this mean? the link provided is not really clear….do I now have 5 free nights? or credit towards it? thanks”
So why exactly are we giving MMS credit for being so amazing at explaining things to newbies? He had a 70 part series on SPG and the SPG Amex, and his readers still don’t know what the 5 nights towards status is?
Also, if this questioner read TBB, he would know not to sign up for a credit card without understanding what he was signing up for. But such disclaimers aren’t usually found on the mainstream blogs
how are sure that this was an actual reader and not a fake post to pump more credit cards?
I think both of you make valid points.
Maybe it was a brand new reader visiting the site after googling about winning a prize online or something 😉
The “quality” of MMS’ blog mimics Blackberry’s stock price.
He’s again humping the mother-in-law rule with the BA Visa, after he just spent the past month (it’s even his “top post of October”!) linking people to the affiliate Southwest Visa with a $99 fee when there was a $69 version available
I’m sure his mother in law loves being a pawn in his used car salesmanship
A sure sign this hobby has reached critical mass!
There are lots of speed traps so lay off the pedal.
Places to see:
Honulua Bay north of Kapalua which is great of snorkeling if weather holds and there are very few people there (but you need your own equipment.)
Makena beach State park, big beach is fun to hang out and see the locals and Oneuli beach for the black sands.
For the hotels you can try the alternative of staying at the Hana hotel on the windward side and really experience the tropics.
For food recommendations (Lahina, Kapalua heavy):
Lonely Planet:
Costco (by the airport ) and Safeway (few locations )
El Cheapo:
Banna bread from a hippie dude living in a trailer (North of Kapalua ) address is 7605 Honoapiilani Highway, Hawaii, United States (cash only, also has fresh fruits ).
Another fruit stand can be found just north of Makena beach with fresh pineapple and coconuts.
Gazebo Restaurant (Napili ) a little hard to find, but a good ocean view and friendly service may have to wait but the dinner style food is really good.
Da Kitchen local food will have to wait close to the airport so perfect lunch stop before heading to the hotel.
Ono Tacos (Napili ) nice little hole in the wall that sells really good tacos.
Star Noodle (Kaanapali ) in the hills, great Asian style food.
We are on Vacation so we might as well enjoy:
Sansei (Kapalua ) really good and fresh sushi and seafood, get reservation as it is quite busy.
Downtown Lahina has some good restaurants but parking can be hard to find/expensive and get advanced reservations.
Blogger or sell Plasma:
Mama’s Fish house, beautiful setting, gorgeous view, great food but holy cow the prices( If planning to go get reservation days in advance).
These are great, thank you so much. I added them to my Maui folder in Evernote. Much appreciated!
George, would you mind sharing your folder somewhere please. I know you have a wealth of great info all accumulated and we are also planning something early next year. Thanks!
That’s no dog in that picture! It appears to be a muppet of some sort.
Oh yeah…the muppets. Sounds like that guy who quit and sent that letter to the New York Times. Wonder what happened to him 🙂
Good ol’ Greg Smith! Got me wondering… here you go:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/after-goldman-and-a-book-greg-smith-emerges-to-aid-regulators/
I missed that somehow. Some of those tweets were very hilarious, thanks!
Buzz, my 2c for what its worth – we enjoyed Kauai much much more than Maui. We have tastes similar to yours – much prefer hiking and the outdoors to clubs, resorts etc. Maui is wonderful and I am sure you will enjoy your trip a great deal, but I would strongly recommend Kauai for your next trip – it is a laid-back, gorgeous piece of heaven on earth (Maui felt a bit more “touristy”).
Looks like I will be aiming for Kauai in 2015 then!
Hilton is eliminating “points + fixed miles” earning. TPG uses it as a chance to push the Hilton Reserve link. Isn’t that just bad taste, even for him?
I saw that Brazilian movie called Carandiru, I think, about the riot that left a hundred prisoners dead. Very brutal. Way more brutal than the United Black Friday. It is a good idea to remind ourselves sometimes, there is the whole other world outside of our little hobby, I guess, .
Sounds like an interesting movie to watch in 1st class with a glass of Krug.
Yup, 1993 massacre.
Here’s the perverse logic:
Prisons are overcrowded in Brazil, and are extremely awful and violent places. (Carandiru is no more, as the site notes.)
A recent news report showed how even minors accused of small thefts are often sent to awful facilities that provide little in the way of rehabilitation and are overcrowded.
To avoid being a victim when behind bars, one becomes loyal to one of the dominant gangs in the prison. The guards, underpaid and understaffed, delegate order and rule-setting to gang leaders, and will sometimes move to separate rival gang factions from each other for fear of conflict. The result is that areas of the prison become monopolized by one gang or another, eith regard to law-and-order and resource distribution. The gang leaders extract a price from members, which is usually to mark you and require your loyalty once you leave prison.
As in the US, the markings of prison (tattoos, etc.) and a criminal record make it hard to get a job after imprisonment. You’re likely to commit another crime, and the probability that you’ll end up back in prison is high. Employment prospects for marginalized, poor urban youths in Brazil are getting better, but still aren’t great.
Now consider a public policy that “cracks down” on crime, with longer sentences, more arrests, or tougher prison conditions. In effect, you a) make it more likely that perpetrators, once arrested, will be back in jail, and for a longer time, b) make these perpetrators more dependent on gang loyalty to survive and c) thus end up strengthening the gang leaders.
In the end, you have gangs like the PCC that run drug trafficking in major Brazilian cities, while being run from inside prisons. You also have cases like the Mexican Mafia in the United States, which operates in a similar fashion. In both cases, loyalty on the “outside” is assured because street-level would-be petty criminals know that they’re going to need protection once they go back “inside.”
h/t: Work by others, not my own.
Good stuff, thanks.
Hilton is getting rid of the points & fixed miles earning opportunity
Somewhere, Lucky is using that news to push the Citi Hilton Reserve card
Ha! TPG left him behind! It is indeed a race to the bottom!
Today was a day all the bloggers were on FIRE dishing out affiliate links. I am left dazed and more dazed. Unbelievable. This is nuts, I am tired!
@TBB, million dollar idea. Create a Google Chrome extention that automatically blocks/deletes affiliate links from blog posts.
Similar idea, have the plugin automatically scan the blog page and report the number of affiliate links present and the likelihood that the post is a waste of time to read. That might even save you several hours a day.
But posts full of aff lnks do provide me lots of content 🙂