The Irony of Miles & Points

Sometimes I wake up and I realize just how unbelievable all of this is. Just the irony of who we are, and where we are. It’s the story of sleeping on the beach, and sleeping at the JW Marriott in the same week.

Follow me for one second…

We’re 26 and 28 and I’ve been to over 40 countries. We’ve seen more islands than most americans have seen states I bet. Just off my head, Bali, Fiji, Easter Island, Aruba, Langkawi, Guam, Saipan, Puerto Rico, Zakynthos, Phi Phi, Koh Samui, etc…

We’ve been around the world and seen places I used to dream of going. Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, the Colosseum, the Parthenon. We’ve stayed downtown in 5 star hotels in Hong Kong, Sydney, London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Panama City, Budapest, Tokyo, Johannesburg, and so many more.

But you know what I haven’t noticed until lately? You don’t really see many 20-somethings in shwank 5 star hotels.

Ironies…

So here we are at another 5 star hotel. We’re walking around and again, it hits me. First, we’re like kids compared to everyone else here. And second, these people actually have money, right? But logically, since most rooms in a hotel are not suites, our room has got to be much much nicer than the majority of these actually wealthy people.

Broke kids.

But what do we look like? Constantly we assume that we must look like trust fund kids. Daddy booked me a club room again!

What’s even more peculiar is that one of the two pairs of shorts I have are now seriously on their way out. Seriously, the pockets have holes so big that if I forget and put my room key in either of my front pockets it goes straight to the floor. They’re faded and now unraveling.

And I’m not sure if anyone remembers or read about our hotel stay in Paris. Turns out we were on the same floor as the President of South Korea. Everytime I walked out of our suite, there were like 20 men dressed in black and with wires coming out of their ears, and standing around like museum pieces. Odd. Then I take the elevator down and there is a red carpet from the elevator to the front doors. Not meant for me, but the irony is extra sweet when you walk on it.
Because during our Europe trip, I had one pair of jeans. When we started Europe it was summer, and when we ended we got to see snow in Austria. And here we were on the last week of the trip, and my one pair of jeans… finished, I guess you could say.

A rip went from the waist, down my butt, to about half way up my thigh. My boxers were showing. Yet, there wasn’t much I could do until we got back to the room. And when we did get back to the room, well, lets say the manual sewing job did not hold up.

So picture my dumb not-shaven – hadn’t had a haircut in who knows how long – self. Now with a rip down my jeans and my boxers showing.

Crap. I just remembered, that my one long sleeve shirt was a plaid shirt with a giant growing rip down the elbow.

BTW, this isn’t the standard I try to maintain, I just am really frugal. Not only do we not buy things new (at all), I tend to wear things out. This just happened to be untimely, and having no cold weather clothes to switch into, meant I was incredibly unprepared.

The Irony of Points

Now, where I’m staying, the hotel is still on PointBreaks. I want to say to everyone here, “you know you could book this room right now for at most $35?”

What’s funnier is that we’re doing something unlike us. Instead of taking the bus, we’re taking the hotel car so I can charge it to my credit card. Why? Because right now I’m on this completely free series, and I’m kind of too serious about the idea. :-p So instead of taking the bus for like $2 each (guessing), we’re talking private cars.  (The $2 bus can’t be reimbursed by the Barclay Plus card but the hotel car can be…)

We arrive at the airport and a guy has a sign with my name. We hop in, he gives us water and shows us the air controls, and when we get to the hotel they try to take our luggage for us (although I generally prefer to “serve” myself). Then we go straight up to our suite where we get free drinks from the mini bar and they bring us a welcome tray of cheese.

Weird. We’re living like kings all because it’s the free-est thing.

See staying at a hostel would cost money, but staying at the IC cost 5,000 points we got from a credit card.

Paying for a local taxi is cheaper, but taking a private car can be reimbursed on my credit card.

It may be cheaper to route through Atlanta or something to get to Panama, but paying with miles it’s the same price no matter what the route is. And normally, you have to pay more for a stopover in a city, but with miles it’s the same price.

The Irony of Blogging

I’ll close with one more irony of the entire thing.

When I first started blogging, I never said that we took the bus. Not sure if I was embarrased or if I thought no one would take me seriously as a blogger.

When I was first blogging in 2011 we had tons of miles and very few hotel points. I just thought the value was way higher in miles… and that’s still true, I’ve just gotten better at hotel points. And I was still into stopovers in 2011. So we could see tons of places, and we had no place to stay.

Most of the time we’d just find a local place, like a homestay. These were often not so very nice. Sometimes they were actually great… and sometimes pretty sketchy. Boy do we have stories.

And sometimes we couldn’t afford a hotel room. In Hong Kong in 2011, strangers let us stay at their place. Strangers we met earlier that day. We slept on the beach in Thailand, and a banana boat in Langkawi. My favorite or least favorite depending on how you want to remember/spin things, is the time we went to HND airport two nights in a row to spend the night. It was cheaper than a hotel room.

But I don’t mind telling those stories anymore.

Why?

Because that same year, we probably went to 20 countries.

Because even if you’re freaking flat broke, you too can get millions of miles and tons of free flights.

And sure, you don’t want to sleep on the beach, so shift your priorities like we did from then to now. Choose to make a portion of the millions of miles/points you earn hotel points.

What I now know is that being broke doesn’t take away from the travel is free message, it makes the entire point! And who cares what people think, because that’s who we are. A couple with no money traveling around the world.

I wouldn’t do a thing differently in these last years.  Except… like maybe not drink tap water in certain countries.