point fu

I wrote this on the 17 hour, no-wifi flight and boy with what's going on in Los Angeles and Tehran this sure as hell reads like fiddling while Rome burns. Got a coffee in Sydney and the barista hears my accent and says 'my god, are you guys ok?' No, we're not…   This was my first-ever trip on Qantas (!!) and, in short, it felt like United Polaris on a good day – pleasant staff, comfortable bed, decent food. 85,000 Alaska miles (topped up with my BILT card). It's a well-timed flight: take off around 10pm, eat dinner, go to bed, wake up, have breakfast, land at 6am in Sydney. I didn't even have time to watch a movie, just a couple games of Balatro ;) *gay gasp* 👎 As already mentioned, no wifi . I’ll forgive LATAM for not having it, but for a carrier with this pricing and reputation it’s unacceptable. Full stop. That said, it’s an overnight flight completely designed around maximizing your sleep so it just wasn’t that big a deal in practice.  There's a staff...

United announced 3 big crappy changes which are all general devaluations of their miles and their overall program. I never personally used the Excursionist Perk , nor the instant full-fare coach upgrades, but I get why people are sad they're going away. For us, the news that Mileage Upgrade Awards are becoming dynamically priced later this year sorta blows a hole in our current, Australia-heavy strategy .  As I'd already mentioned, the per-leg cost of: a $1000-ish coach fare  + $300-$450  co-pay + 30,000 miles   was already starting to add up, but if I'm suddenly paying, say, 60,000 miles per leg for an upgrade instead of 30,000 then it's time to look at other options.  No good points game lasts very long (check my similar gravy-train farewell from 2014 ), and while I'm grateful for the 2 years of togetherness (and back health!) it's afforded us, it's time to start looking around at other options. For my next Sydney visit in June, I decided to follow a Sea...

United announced some major updates to Polaris Business Class yesterday and it's crazy to think this blog has been around long enough to have my thoughts on Polaris ' birth nearly 10 years ago. Re-reading that post makes the launch of this new seat seem fairly trivial in comparison to that: the branding, the service, the lounges are all up and running now. Other than the door, the difference between the new seat and the old seat is fairly small - a lot smaller than the difference between the first Polaris seat and the Business Class seats that preceded it.  LOL a worker at the BK Navy Yard leaked the big Polaris reveal 24 hours early So yes, they're going to roll out an off-the-shelf seat (with doors!) that's been in use by Qatar and Hawaiian for a while now. A seasonal flavor will get added to the ice cream sundae cart. There'll be a new self-serve snack area. A bunch of the middle seats will have double-bed features ( including a shared mattress pad ). The new p...

Bank of America giving this card the bougie Out Of Box Experience My credit card strategy for the past few years has been:  Churn a new card sign up bonus once or twice a year Use the Amex Platinum for 5x points on airfare and access to their lounges Use the Amex Gold for 4x on dining and groceries Use the Chase Sapphire for all non-airline travel and for dining abroad (Amex isn't as widely accepted and they have a nasty habit of not counting foreign charges in the right bonus category) Use the Business Amex for the 35% points rebate (the Dell and wireless credits largely cover the annual fee) Use the United card to top up Kelly's PQPs so he'll stay Star Alliance Gold I always told myself if my life became more complicated (like say for example I got a JOB), I'd probably just ditch most of my cards and get the BofA Premium Rewards Elite and charge nearly everything on there. Welp, that time has apparently come. No, don't be insane, I haven't gotten a job, but we...

UPDATE (14 May 2025):   Well, I got it! A $402 check for my lost hotel night! We had checked out of our Madrid hotel and were waiting to board the AVE high speed train to Barcelona when a massive blackout took out power to the entire country of Spain and parts of its neighbors. It was a big mess, but we absolutely made the best of a rough situation and managed to arrive about 24 hours later than planned. This meant trying to find a hotel in Madrid (with no power and no cell reception) and a missed night of prepaid hotel in Barcelona.  next-day controlled chaos cudda been worse: my friends were ON the AVE when the power went out! Our hotel told us we should give Amex a call when we got home to see if their insurance would cover our added expenses. (FYI - the Barcelona hotel said if we'd booked directly with them, they would have immediately refunded the missed night, but because we booked with "Amex Expedia" they couldn't. ) Here's what I learned: After lots of ...

Ooh! United just announced several new (and useful!) routes in the Pacific SFO – Adelaide . I still haven't been. I could definitely see meeting up with Tim there at the beginning of a visit if we found a cheap fare there. Honestly, though, I thought the same thing with Brisbane and I've still never done that. You figure these routes will help pull people off of the Sydney/Melbourne flights who would have been connecting so that leaves more seats to Sydney for us. They're claiming that SFO-Adelaide will turn 51 destinations into 1-stops versus their current 2-stops. I can't imagine 51 places you can get to directly from ADL that you can't from SYD, but ok.  SFO/LAX – Hong Kong – Bangkok and SFO/LAX – Hong Kong– Saigon . I'm paraphrasing a bit here because they're technically only launching the intra-Asian legs, but they're timed conveniently to line up with United flights arriving from SFO/LAX . I would have preferred direct service rather than a HKG ...

We booked a last minute flight to seattle to surprise my brother for his 50th. Alaska was our best option, but thanks to chatGPT and a lack of info from Alaska, I had no idea they have their own lounge at JFK T7. After buying coffee I went looking for the BA galleries lounge (which I figured they wouldn’t let us into on a domestic itinerary) and, y’know, launched the gay meetup app Sniffies just for fun. Lo and behold what do i see but an Alaska lounge 20 steps away (with no airport signage). They let us in on a domestic first ticket and it had all the usual alaska things: strong coffee, the pancake machine (they’re calling it a pancake printer now) and a DIY trail mix bar.  gorpin’ to the Decemberists whatwhatwhat?! AI is wrong 60% of the time 

( last update Feb 2025 ) It's odd that I haven't written this until now, honestly. I first went to Korea right around the time I started writing this blog 10+ years ago. But I find that I write these guides mostly in response to people asking me for recommendations so maybe more people are going to Korea lately? *shrugs* General Stuff Due to Google and Apple not adhering to Korea's security policies (SK is technically still at war with North Korea), lots of normal digital life stuff doesn't work here (Apple/Google maps, AirTags, Find My, etc). There are rumors that Apple might start complying in mid 2025, but until then,  download the Naver map  app . Even if you get Google Maps to work, Naver is important for checking a business’s opening hours. Google’s are completely wrong.  UPDATE (4/2025): Apple's FindMy works now ! Download the KakaoT app for car hailing . Uber sorta works, but it's only Uber Black and Uber Van. Using a ride hailing app will ensure that t...