Wild Card challenge destination 3 check-in | Special Feature Episode | 9-31-26

Frequent Miler on the Air

This episode serves as a live-streamed check-in for the Frequent Miler Wild Card Challenge, focusing on scoring Destination 2 and recapping

Key takeaways

• Nick utilized Air Canada Aeroplan points to book Virgin Australia flights between Sydney and Melbourne.
• Tim leveraged ANA Business Class awards via a Tokyo stopover to optimize his journey from Seoul to Sydney.

Main topics

• Wild Card Challenge scoring
• Airline award strategies

Notable quotes

We are varying levels of alive, but we are at least live.

Conclusion

A high-energy recap of global travel adventures that provides practica

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Speaker 1 (0:11) This podcast episode is sponsored by Saley. Saley is an eSIM service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saley gives you flexible prepaid data plans in over 200 destinations worldwide. Setup takes just a couple of minutes on your phone before you leave, and your data activates automatically when you touch down. Plus, in order to reduce your data consumption, Saley actually blocks malicious sites, trackers, and annoying ads while you browse. Whether you need a quick Speaker 4 (0:44) gigabyte for a weekend away or unlimited data for a longer adventure, Saley keeps you connected without any Speaker 1 (0:50) surprise bills waiting for you at home. Ready to upgrade your international roaming? Download Saley from your app store and use our code FREQUENTMILER at checkout to get 15 % off your first purchase. Details are in the show notes. Speaker 1 (1:04) Due to our wildcard team challenge, Nick, Tim, and I are currently too busy flying around the world to create our usual podcast content. Speaker 4 (1:12) The Speaker 1 (1:13) following content is a recording from Speaker 4 (1:15) the final wildcard challenge live stream check-in. Frequent miler on the air starts now. Speaker 3 (1:22) We are varying levels of alive, but we are at least live. Speaker 1 (1:29) Well said. Why don't you do your song and dance? Speaker 4 (1:33) Okay. So, oh, yeah. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give this a like. Give us a thumbs up. Leave us a review. Leave us some stars. We appreciate that. Don't forget to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list and follow us on all the various social media. We always appreciate all of those things. If there's more song and dance, I don't in this moment remember what the rest of the song and dance is. So that was good. That was good. Speaker 3 (1:57) We don't have a theme song yet. So welcome to our final live stream. Thanks for joining the chaos. And it will be a little bit chaotic because we've told you all that we're going to announce a winner, but we have some. surprises along the way, one of which is we're not announcing a winner, but we'll announce lots of other things. First off, I would love to introduce a background character that you guys have heard us talking about. Hi! Hi, Yanni! Speaker 5 (2:29) Nice Speaker 2 (2:30) to see you all. Speaker 5 (2:32) You have to be twins. You can hear Speaker 2 (2:33) us, right? Yes, Speaker 5 (2:34) we can. Do Speaker 2 (2:35) our voices sound the same? Speaker 5 (2:38) Very Speaker 2 (2:38) similar, Speaker 6 (2:40) like doing the... Doing the voiceovers, I feel like you do sound a little bit like Carrie. Well, here's a Speaker 3 (2:44) question for the viewers watching live right now. I want to know how many of you realized the voiceovers was not my voice? But I'm guessing a lot of- For the record, Speaker 1 (2:55) the three of us sitting on a couch in Melbourne all raised our hands. Just for the podcast listeners. Speaker 3 (3:00) I am strongly guessing that some of you YouTube viewers out there had no idea that it wasn't my voice in the summary videos. It's been my twin sister Annie's voice. She has the same voice as me. Annie helps us out every year for the challenge. She helps with the recap videos and some of the, like, it's a big edit job, what we do. And having Annie help is life-changing. Let's Speaker 2 (3:27) get Speaker 3 (3:27) a round of applause Speaker 4 (3:27) for Annie. Speaker 3 (3:28) You Speaker 2 (3:29) guys are too kind. I mean, we just cloned Carrie. We're twins, so, you know, we might as well do that. You want to give, like, a rundown of, like, what this week looks like for us? Yeah, so we set up, like, a command center. I actually brought, I have, like, those little mobile desks. I brought those from home. I brought my own coffee maker because Carrie's coffee pot is about, like, this big. We need, we're drinking Ann Arbor lobster butter all week if you're. Oh, Speaker 1 (3:55) nice. Speaker 2 (3:56) Which is awesome. And I will help her with the reels and stuff, but I'm also doing those daily recaps. So we're kind of hopping back and forth. So if you see those daily recaps come out a little bit late, it's because I've been helping her too. So those are a lot of hours of editing and we set up shop in the living room and the dogs are hanging out with us, which is great. Speaker 3 (4:15) And she comes out from Ohio. So every year for this challenge, we just huddle. Speaker 2 (4:22) Yeah, the last couple years ago, I was doing it from Ohio, and so it just made more sense for me to come to Lewisburg, and then we can give our clips back and forth. West Virginia HQ. Thanks, Annie. Hey, good to see Speaker 3 (4:34) you. Speaker 2 (4:34) Also, before you go, Speaker 5 (4:35) Annie, I think it also should be known that Annie does the theme music. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Frequent Miler podcast is actually Annie Yoder as well. And if you're interested in checking out more of that, you can find it at, I believe, AnnieYoderMusic.com. Yes, I actually Speaker 2 (4:53) haven't checked my website in like months, but you can find me on Spotify and iTunes and stuff. I have one album. I really have big hopes of doing another album someday, but so far my music degree is going towards a few jingles and one album on Spotify. Speaker 1 (5:07) It's an awesome album. It's an awesome album. You should definitely give it a Speaker 2 (5:09) listen. It Speaker 4 (5:10) really Speaker 2 (5:10) is. Speaker 4 (5:10) I think that anybody who does not create content, probably can't appreciate how much time goes into editing those videos. Like it's incredible. And I just recently saw somebody else who creates content on Instagram doing a reel about, does it take everybody else four hours to edit two minutes of video? And yeah, lots of people are like, it does. Speaker 3 (5:32) Actually, we looked it up last evening. The average, we're pretty much within the standard average for editing minutes per. published minute. But some of them, it's a 24 to 1 ratio. Speaker 2 (5:46) I have to say, though, if ever there's a work or a job or a task that I do that the hours just melt away, I'll be like in the zone. I'll look up. It's been seven hours. You know, it's it's it's really I think it's really fun, even, you know, even if it's time consuming. So, yeah. Before Speaker 5 (6:01) you go, though, I'm just curious, whose footage do you enjoy editing the most? Speaker 2 (6:05) It's like picking a favorite child. I can't do it. There's something fun about each of each of your voices and perspective. And that's what I think is really fun is. pulling these different voices and these different viewpoints. A few of you have to edit out a few more ums than the others, but that's, it just, we, the ums increases, the days increase. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. All right. Good to see you all. Safe travels. Back to you. Great to Speaker 4 (6:29) see you. Good to see you. All right. Speaker 3 (6:32) So Steven, can you introduce what we're doing next while I get back in my headphones? Yes. Speaker 6 (6:37) So just as a very quick recap, at the last live check-in, we rescored their Destination 1 stuff. So going into it, Greg had been in first place, Nick had been in second place, Tim had been in third place. Based off of rebuttals from our contestants and readers, we ended up rescoring things a little bit, which completely rejigged the standings. Greg ended up losing a couple of points. So he dropped down to 102 points, which put him in last place after the first destination. Nick ended up gaining a few points because we reduced how many points he lost for taking an Uber. So he was at 107 points, while Tim ended up getting several more points. And he ended up at... 107, is that right? For some reason, I thought Tim had... I think it was actually 127. I will have to double-check that quickly because that doesn't seem quite right. Speaker 5 (7:35) Well, you've been underscoring me the whole time, Stephen. I can double Speaker 3 (7:41) -check that real quick, Stephen, in my graphics. Speaker 5 (7:45) I actually have no idea. I'm just giving Speaker 6 (7:47) Stephen a hard time. Oh, wait a minute. No, sorry. I hadn't included Nick's negative two. So Nick was on 105. Tim was on 100. Speaker 3 (7:54) That's right. That's right. That was Speaker 6 (7:55) my bad. I was just looking at the spreadsheet and highlighted all of the cells. So cool. So that's where we were at after the first destination. At the second destination, because particularly Tim and Nick hadn't done all of their activities yet, we waited until now to score them for that, just in case that influenced any of the scoring. But before we do that, we're going to have each of them give a very quick recap about... in Destination 2 just as a very quick overall highlight, particularly to mention anything that they did after the last live stream. So we'll start off with Greg. Speaker 5 (8:33) Yeah, that's right. Right, because we had not finished our Destination 2s because we wanted to just really, really soak in all of the Destination 2 magic that we could, unlike Greg, who really wanted to just cruise through it quickly. Speaker 1 (8:50) So, Speaker 4 (8:51) Nick, you want to start? Sure. So after the last check-in, I had my second, I really had my one full, full day in Hanoi, Vietnam. Loved it, by the way. Had a blast just wandering around. What a wonderful, chaotic city. I found it so exciting how chaotic it was. But that day I was in Hanoi, I did a, I went to the flower market very early in the morning. I had done that just before the live stream, perhaps. And so that was cool to see the wholesale flower market and check. out the movement of flowers around the city there from that. And then I went and took a coffee making class and learned how to make Vietnamese coffee six different ways, which is something I really enjoyed Vietnamese coffee already. So I was really glad to learn how to make it. Then inspired by my food tour. The night before our last check-in, I booked a cooking class at an actual restaurant in Hanoi, and I learned how to make pho and bun cha and a couple of other things. And so that was awesome. We actually went shopping for the ingredients, learned how to make them. And so I made a couple of dishes there and then got to enjoy eating them. And then after that, I went and picked up my new tailored. jacket in just 24 hours. They got it finished. So they tailored a jacket. So I now have a custom tailor fit blazer. And that was pretty cool. And then I headed back to the airport and flew Vietnam Airlines premium economy to get to Australia. So that was, I don't know, we recapping Australia as well? I don't know. We'll do that a little bit later. Yeah, Speaker 5 (10:22) just your destination to wrap up. Does Nick lose points because he actually pre-summarized Australia? Speaker 3 (10:29) He does not. Speaker 1 (10:30) All right. Speaker 3 (10:33) Who's next? Speaker 1 (10:34) I guess I'll go next. So let's see. After the first live stream, I went immediately. I was in Medellin already, Colombia, and I went out on a street food tour of the Medellin area where I was staying. That was terrific. I love trying all the different types of food that he introduced me to. And then the next morning, I went on an all-day tour to Guadalpe. And that included a nice boat ride, cruise thing. And the town of Guadalpe, which... The tour guide said it was one of the towns that inspired Encanto, the Disney movie. The internet seems to question that. But, well, it certainly seems like it could have. It's very touristy, but it is so vibrant with so many colors and just music playing, people dancing. It was really, I did not think I would. would like it. I thought it would make for good like footage because it's so colorful. But I actually loved it. I loved walking around that little village. And then it was followed up by going to the rock, which is a gigantic rock that has steps built into it. And so the thing to do there is climb the rock. So you climb 700 and something steps to the top and it's exhausting, but so satisfying because you get to the top and there are gorgeous views of the lakes all around below the, you know, way down below from where you're standing way up high on the rock. And it was just gorgeous. And I just love that, that whole experience. So unfortunately, that was about it. I had to fly out the next morning. Speaker 2 (12:44) All Speaker 3 (12:44) right, Tim. Speaker 5 (12:46) So let's see, though. At the end of the last live stream, I was about to go to a Dodgers game. No, no, no. Was that right? No, no, no. It wasn't. Oh, my gosh. Like, literally, I have quite literally no idea what day it is. Speaker 3 (13:02) Yeah. Speaker 5 (13:02) It gets hard. None. So. Last time I was in Seoul, which is just like a Dodgers game. It's like the Dodgers game of East Asia. But so I was in Seoul. I had spent two nights at the Mondrian Hotel, which is in a core property there. And the second day, I already summarized the first day that I spent there in the last live stream. But so the second day was the first day was all about like palaces and harvest festival activities and stuff like that. The second day, I really wanted to, one of the things that I remember being my first couple times to Seoul, being really surprised by is I had not realized how mountainous a country Korea is. Like there's a lot of mountains, both Korea and Japan, but in this case, Korea. And I really wanted to go and do some hiking in one of these mountains. And I had originally thought about actually renting a car and going to one of the Speaker 5 (14:03) the national parks in the east part of the country. But instead I decided to, because within Seoul, you can really easily reach a lot of really cool mountains from like just normal metro transit. So there's one particularly popular hike that's a part of the Seoul Trail that goes around, that effectively that goes around the mountains around Seoul. And this one, it covers two mountains, Mount Acheosan and Mount, it starts with a U that I can't remember right now. And you effectively, you go, you take, and you hike from one metro station to the other. And in the middle is a big mountain range with massive panoramic views around the entire Seoul metro area. So I did that. Marvelous hike. You could absolutely tell that it was a holiday weekend. And it was, and that people, the Koreans like hiking on holiday weekends because there's a lot of people there. But it was still really, I mean, just marvelous. It's amazing that, like, I left my hotel. in the middle of Seoul and two hours later I'm on top of a mountain with panoramic views around Seoul with you know with nobody in sight it's pretty cool so did that came back to the hotel and then got to there's a popular Korean dessert that's called binju that it's sort of like shave ice but instead of being made of water ice it's made of milk ice So they shave milk ice and they create this and then they put kind of toppings and all this stuff on it. And the hotel that I was at has some really bougie, way too expensive binju that they serve that I had a property credit from my Chase booking that I needed to use. So I used that on a sweet corn binju that was incredibly delicious. It was a big pile of this shaved milk ice. topped with sweet corn puree, topped with corn flakes, and then they served popcorn on the side. And you mixed it all together with scoop by scoop in a side dish and ate it. And it was just this blissful mix of textures and sweet and salt. It was marvelous. And then after that, I went down to the sauna in the hotel that you had to pay extra for. But luckily, I had Chase property credit. And I did some dry sauna, some cold pool, some hot pool, some dry sauna, some cold pool, some hot pool. Did that for about an hour. And then after a while, you know, my knees and everything that I had just hiked on felt a little more human again. And I went out and did the went to the Guangjiang night market. which is a famous night market in Korea. They actually, it's a day market and a night market, but the night market is more people go to for food. And part of the, one of my many challenges was that I was supposed to do a dinner that incorporated some sort of dietary restriction. And Stephen told me that lots of meat wasn't a dietary restriction, that it actually had to be some sort of removal of something. I, the suggestions that I had were gluten-free and vegetarian. And because I had already started with the binju that was both, I then did three extra courses at the night market of jap chai, which is a sweet potato noodle. So it's good. It's a gluten-free noodle and it's also vegetarian because it's made out of sweet potatoes. Then I went to another place and had a gimbap, which is a, I've been told not to call it Korean sushi. It is a nori-wrapped rice roll stuffed with vegetables that is not sushi, that is delicious and is also vegetarian and gluten-free. And then I also had a mung bean pancake that tastes surprisingly like a hash brown patty, but is also gluten-free and vegetarian. So we had a four-course progressive vegetarian and gluten-free dinner. And after that, I went to a marvelous thing that Seoul does that is very popular over the Harvest Festival called the Seoul Outdoor Library, where they do they have three locations around Seoul. They set up. Hundreds, well, maybe hundreds is a couple hundred of these like double sided recliners, all just in the middle of the of a square. They have compartments full of books that you can go and there's like colored lights everywhere and there's a playground and there's an outdoor movie screen and all this sort of stuff. But they have like 15 or 16 different sections of books. And the idea is you go, you select your books, you have a little basket. They have a light clipped onto the side of the basket. You take the basket back to your recliner and then you clip, take the light and you clip it onto your book and you read your book outside at night in the middle of whatever square you're at. And hundreds of people do this. And some of them are reading, some of them are, you know, hanging out and chatting, but it's just a marvelous scene. It's very colorful and feels very autumnal. And that was my last activity. Then I went back to the hotel. And used the rest of my hotel credits on two drinks because that's all it took to use the rest of my hotel credits. And had a marvelous last day in Seoul. That's what I did. Nice. Speaker 3 (19:29) All right. I think that means we are ready for scoring Destination 2, right? Speaker 6 (19:35) Yes. So I guess seeing as they gave their order and how they're sitting on the couch, then we may as well start. What we're going to do, rather than give the individual scores for wallet friendliness, ingenuity, luxury, and duplicability for each of the things, we're just going to give one score for flights, one score for hotels, and one score for activities for each of them. That's going to be the total score. I'm going to have a post coming out tomorrow morning, which we'll have much more detail about. what their specific scores were for each element but just so that that way we don't end up spending the rest of this live stream i'm just talking about the individual scores so um for next flights from um guadalupe to uh vietnam you scored 33 out of 40. for your hotel in Vietnam. You scored 36 out of 40 because it looked like you had Speaker 4 (20:29) a Speaker 6 (20:29) pretty nice stay there. And your activities, I know that you were a little bit concerned about the