Photo Report + Travel Tips: Cancun

It’s only February and I’m so happy to say I fulfilled one of my New Year resolutions – travel outside the U.S. My boyfriend and I went to Cancun for 4 days, thanks to Expedia’s mistake promo, and we had an amazing time away from the snow and soaking up the sun – we’re now roasted but it’s worth it =p

Here are a few tips that I learned along the way for anyone who’s planning on traveling to Cancun:

  • Once you step outside the airport, you’ll be bombarded by tour guides trying to sell you bus and tour tickets. Pat and I took a shuttle (to Downtown) that costed $17/person. But if we took a taxi, it would have only costed 250 pesos, or about $20 for both of us.
  • Bring a credit card (preferably one with chip and pin and no foreign transaction fees) with you. The currency exchange rate is 1 USD = 15 Pesos. If you use USD cash, you only get about 13 pesos per dollar in store.
  • Bring lots of $1 bills for the bus. We stayed in a hotel in downtown and took the bus (R1 and R2) to the hotel zone. Each ride was $1 or 13 pesos per person. We ran out of dollar bills and paid with $10 and $20 bills, we ended up getting charged way more – probably because the bus driver wasn’t good at math or I didn’t do the calculations beforehand.
  • If you’re doing any tour, they usually pick you up from your hotel. Cancun time is one hour behind Eastern Standard Time. Make sure you change your clock. We forgot and missed the pick up so we ended up losing the deposit.
  • Speaking of tours, the prices are likely negotiable, especially during off seasons. We weren’t originally planning on doing any tour but we got chatted up by a tour guide and he offered us a tour with an advertised price of $109 USD for $50 USD.
  • Pat and I have heard horror stories about stuff gone missing in hotel rooms. Unless you’re staying in a super high end hotel, the safes are not that safe. We brought tape and a few ziploc bags, put our passports inside and taped one to the bottom of a shelf and hid the other one under the sink.

The day before we flew back, we were on our way back to our hotel and walked pass a souvenir store. The owner approached me and asked to trade my t-shirt (with the sparkly red-lipped gorilla, it was one of my favorite shirts I owned) for any shirt in his store. I agreed. And from now on, t-shirts are going to be my travel souvenir.

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Sipping margaritas on the beach. This might have been his 4th.

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Along this river had alligator warning signs but the water was so clear. What’s worse than getting eaten by an alligator? Apparently, not jumping in the water.

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This was a Mayan ruin by Playa Delfines (Dolphins Beach) in Mirador. It was a less popular ruin and the admission was only $4.

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If you have other tips for traveling to Cancun, please share them in the comment so other people can benefit. I hope this post is entertaining and informative.

What To Do During a 12-Hour Layover in Seattle?

On my way back from China, I had a 12-hour layover in Seattle, from 8am to 8pm. I knew I didn’t want to sit in the airport for so many hours, but I hadn’t done any research on what to do or what to see in Seattle, I thought I would just be spontaneous. Arriving in Seattle, not having a clue where to begin, I asked my friends on Facebook for suggestions. I ended up stopping by the Public Market Place, which had selection of vendors ranging from arts and crafts, produce, and a lot of other souvenirs. I also felt like a tourist and visited the Space Needle and Seattle Center. I made my last stop at Chinatown. I just had to see it because the only two Chinatowns I had been to were in Boston and NYC. Seattle Chinatown wasn’t that different, but the waitress at the restaurant I stopped by for lunch was really nice and offered me a free appetizer.

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Selfie in front of the Public Market Place in Seattle
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Exotic seafood
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Seattle farmers market
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Space Needle
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Seattle Chinatown gate

 

How I Booked Flights to China on Miles and Points

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Guang Zhou, China (see more photos here)

Back in November (2013), I signed up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card with 40,000 bonus points. My goal was to earn enough points for a round-trip ticket to China. At the time, United costed 60,000 miles. A devaluation hit in February 2014, costing 70,000 miles for the trip. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough miles to book my ticket before the devaluation.

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United 35,000 miles one way from the U.S. to China

Once I had 70,000 points in my Chase Ultimate Rewards account, I transferred them to my United Mileage Plus account. The points were supposed to transfer instantly but I didn’t see them after refreshing my browser multiple times. I had a mini heart attack. I later found out I had to log out and then log back in to my United Mileage Plus account to see my miles updated.

Total cost for my sister’s ticket: 70,000 United miles + $80 taxes and fees.

Then I proceeded to book my ticket using my Barclay Arrival miles.

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Barclay Arrival miles redeemed for travel credit

Since I was paying my ticket with “cash”, I had been watching the airfares for a couple weeks, which were all above $1,000. Then one day, it dropped to $991, thinking it was a good deal, I went ahead and booked it. About a month later, it dropped a couple hundred dollars more – nooo!! But whatever, I’ve since learned to stop watching for airfares after I made my booking.

Barclay Arrival miles can be redeemed within 120 days after the booking. Although I didn’t have enough miles to redeem the whole $991, I waited until almost the end of the 120 days so I could rack up more miles. I was able to redeem $700 against it. So my out of pocket cost was $291.

TL;DR I paid a total of $371 for two tickets from Boston to China that would have costed $2,000.

Photo Report: China for 2 Weeks

Since I moved to the states over 10 years ago, I’ve wondered how things have changed over the course of a decade. I decided to pull the plug and pay my family a visit. I booked my sister and I tickets to Guang Zhou, China (3 hours flight south of Beijing,) for 2 weeks during her Christmas break.

We thoroughly loved the food and sight-seeing. We made a lot of great memories with my dad and cousins. Though my biggest pet peeve was the slow Internet. We took advantage of the public wifi from a store next to where we stayed. It didn’t come as a surprise that all of the social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) were blocked by the great firewall of China. Not only that, none of the Google services were accessible. That meant that I was not able to check my wedding photography work email. The way I got around it was to use TeamViewer to remotely control my laptop in Boston. Alternatively, I could use VPNs but I didn’t know what they were until I was already in China.

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Canton Tower overlooking Guang Zhou

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We visited a temple near our house.
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Inside the temple
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We quickly left the temple before anyone kicked us out for taking pictures.
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Beijing Lu shopping district
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Could this be winter? The flowers were blooming.
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Cousins reunited

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Rawr!