Interview with Rapid Travel Chai (131+ countries & credit card guru)

Two weeks in a row! This podcast/video thing is a real thing now. My goal is to have interesting conversations with experts on travel and miles and points and let people listen. Last week was with Frequent Miler, this week is with Stefan from Rapid Travel Chai.

Stefan is the most well traveled person I know. And he’s not just a country-counter, he’s someone passionate about seeing interesting things in a country or interesting parts of a culture. Because of his travel passion he’s an expert on miles, credit cards, and all kinds of things we didn’t talk about (like car rentals). Mostly we talked about travel (because that’s the reason we do this whole miles and points thing).

• Interview with Stefan Rapid Travel Chai mp3
• Watch video on youtube here

Update: I will have this up as an iTunes podcast as soon as my computer skills reach ~2010. Which… I said will “take another 24 hours” a week ago. Clearly my estimates were off. I don’t know why iTunes hates me.

Skip ahead to a part we talked about:

• Counting countries (UN vs travelers century club)
• How do you see so much? @ 4:20
• Avoiding touristy places (and finding local spots) @ 9:18
• Miles from credit cards @ 25:10

For Those Who Read

Country counts

I once mentioned the travelers’ century club in a post on how there’s no good way to count countries.

For instance if you’ve been to Northern Ireland have you been to the UK? But as Stefan put it, they use a list of UN countries plus self governed territories. Is Kosovo a country? Some countries in the UN say yes and some say no. Kosovo says it’s Kosovo and Serbia still says it’s Serbia.

The travelers’ century club defines countries in a much more broad way. England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland would all be separate and wouldn’t just be the UK.

One thing I never heard before this conversation is how Antartica is actually divided into different territories (despite it just being some uninhabited chunk of ice). Look it up! He said some members of the travelers’ century club planned a trip (costing $80,000) to go stand on the center and check it off their list. Crazy.

Avoiding Tourist Traps

Wise words on spotting a touristy town. Mojito bars, wax museums, and in the US, “fudge shops”. Hilarious. Recently I spotted a restaurant that had a pirate in the middle of Riga’s old town. What the heck?

Stefan talks about getting to see the local history and sites when he travels. One of his sources is LonelyPlanet as they include so much information and he goes through it and looks for unique or more obscure places and then plans a route to go see those places.

Credit Cards

Stefan earns at least half of his miles from credit card sign up bonuses. A lot of MS or resell tactics can take more commitment and have higher risk.

Personally, I hugely relate. Not having a home I easily skip out on half the opportunities. I spend zero effort learning about a lot of things and just try to do a few. Like portal stuff. I don’t have a home to ship anything to, so I tend to only do what I can liquidate instantly. And relating to the risk, I shared how we traveled around latin america with thousands of dollars in gift cards because we couldn’t fit all the liquidating in before our flight.

He tends to go big every 90 days or more. Sometimes really big, as he said he did 12 in one day recently. And while he says it’s “not scientific”, he seems to have each system figured out pretty well.

One thing I’ve noticed about Stefan is that he ventures out and gets credit cards other people aren’t talking about. I mentioned how few people talk about the Fairmont card, but it’s basically the same sign up bonus as the Hyatt one – two free nights. Of course, he already has the card. But he also goes for less popular banks too. He mentions going for two Capital One venture cards, FlexPerks cards, and more Club Carlson cards. It’s just interesting because he didn’t list one of the 5 cards you hear about every day in this hobby.