Note from Sarah Page: Scott wrote this post back in 2014, but I am re-posting it now because it's an invaluable trick. Every economy flight I fly I check my armrest for the secret lever under the joint of the arm and four times out of five, it's there. 

I fly a lot of flights in economy class. While all my long-hauls are in business or first, when I fly domestically or hop around Southeast Asia, Europe, or Australia, it's almost always in coach.

It's just not worth using airline miles to book short flights in first class.

In March 2017, I went to Minsk, Belarus without a visa under the new program to allow citizens of more than 80 countries to visit the country for up to five days, which launched in February 2017.

Recently I flew from Buenos Aires to Houston to Honolulu in United economy. (I booked the award for 25,000 Singapore miles plus taxes.) Door to door, it was over 26 hours of travel, which is a long time to not be able to lie down and sleep.

The first flight was basically full, but the second flight was operated by a 777 with a 2-5-2 configuration in economy and several completely empty rows of five seats at the time of check in. Farther back in the plane, the configuration was 2-4-2 with several open rows of four.

Greetings from Patagonia!

With 2016 in the books, and my rundown of last year’s travel here, I thought I’d share my upcoming travel plans.

I pretty much know exactly where I’ll be in January and half of February, see a few options for the rest of February and March, and then have no idea what I’ll do from April on.

2016 was a great year of travel for me, and hopefully for you too.

The year started on the tarmac in Nagoya, Japan, about to take off in Thai Business Class on a Dreamliner to Bangkok.

The year will end, for me, in a few hours in sleepy Puerto Natales, Chile where I arrived by hitchhiking yesterday, and where I'm prepping for my Torres del Paine eight day hike that kicks off in a few days.
COUNTRIES VISITED (16)

In chronological order (new countries in bold):

Japan (45 minutes)
Thailand (10 days)
Singapore (2 days)
Vietnam (10 days)
India (2

For a limited time, the Barclaycard Arrival Plus is offering with 50,000 bonus Arrival miles after spending $3,000 on purchases in the first 90 days. Arrival miles are perfect for covering cheap economy flights when miles aren’t worth spending, award taxes/fees, Airbnb’s, hotels, etc.

You’ll earn 56,000 Arrival miles after meeting the minimum spending requirement of $3,000 in three months for the sign up bonus (50K), as every dollar spent earns two Arrival miles.

You can now download Netflix shows and watch them offline. This means that you can now watch Netflix on planes or other places where wifi is expensive or non-existent.

"The new feature is included in all plans and available for phones and tablets on Android and iOS."

When I downloaded the Netflix app for my phone, an immediate pop up heralded the news.

Not all shows are available for download yet, so I clicked around to see what is.

Right now, I'm re-watching Mad Men Season 7. The entire Mad Men series is available for download.

In July, I jumped around the Balkans, seeing:

Kotor, Montenegro
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Mostar & Sarajevo, Bosnia

The Route
I've spent all summer in ex-Yugoslavia other than a quick trip to Spain. The plan has been to learn the Serbo-Croatian language. I wanted to switch bases from Belgrade to Zagreb via an efficient route that would let me see more of ex-Yugoslavia.

Eventually I settled on flying from Belgrade to Tivat, Montenegro and bussing the rest of the way to Zagreb with stops every few hours along the route.

A month ago I wrote about ridesharing apps Uber and Lyft. If you aren't familiar with Lyft yet, it is very similar to Uber in that it is a mobile application that connects people in need of rides to drivers. Both are somewhat of a substitute for your standard taxi service.

I have a friend named Cate that used to drive for Uber, and recently made the switch to driving for Lyft.