The purpose of this post is not to tell you whether or not you should be traveling. Rather, I’d like to share my experience and my impressions of what it’s like to travel right now. I’ll share my experience with booking flights, what it’s like to fly and stay at hotels during the pandemic and my overall impressions of the precautions taken by hotels, airlines and tourist attractions.

Planning the Trip and Finding Award Space

At the beginning of September, my friends and I felt safe enough to travel abroad and decided to take a trip to Turkey.

If you’re anything like us, nearly every moment of this pandemic has been spent dreaming of travel. Especially as we try to avoid nauseating headlines like “Corona” being on the rise for baby names. With U.S. residents barred from entering Europe for the foreseeable future, now is the time to focus on feasible travel.

In this three-part series, we are looking at the basics of the cheapest domestic awards.

Update: The Chase United Explorer Card offer is now 60,000 miles for spending $3,000 within three months.

Sign up bonuses are, by far, the easiest and fastest way to earn big stacks of rewards. Many of the most lucrative sign up bonuses are only available for a limited time to encourage customers to sign up. In other words, scarcity marketing.

Spoiler alert: It worked on the first try, calling 1-800-421-4655.

Update 11/1/19: Just saved another $75 for a last minute United award I decided to book. I called 1-800-4655 number, and the first agent I spoke to tried to charge me close-in booking fee for moving my flight from December 2 to November 10. I hung up and called back, same number, and the second agent did not mention it whatsoever and re-booked for free.

United MileagePlus charges $75 to book an award less than 21 days before departure.

Right now, the Chase United Explorer Card comes with 40,000 bonus miles after spending $2,000 in three months, and an additional 20,000 United miles after spending an additional $6,000 total in the first six months for a total of 60k bonus miles for $8k in spending with a six month timeline.

The Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card comes with 100,000 bonus Marriott Rewards for spending $5,000 within three months.

Both of these cards' elevated bonuses will drop as of May 16, 2019.

United published some heavy-hitting changes to their loyalty program over the weekend. In a nutshell, United is following Delta down the path towards a totally revenue-based loyalty program.

United has announced dynamic award pricing effective immediately for flights with travel dates of November 15 and on. This means that instead of having set, published prices for award flights, the mileage price will fluctuate based on the cash price. No more award charts.

In January of 2018, I began a credit card fast that lasted for nine months. In other words, I stopped applying for new credit cards. At that point I had been cutoff from Chase credit cards for a long time, years, and was tired of it. I had opened a number of new credit cards, more than five in the prior two 24 months, which is where the Chase 5/24 rule gets its name from.

UPDATE: THIS OFFER HAS EXPIRED. THE CHASE UNITED EXPLORER BUSINESS CARD NOW EARNS 100,000 BONUS UNITED MILES FOR SPENDING $10,000 WITHIN THREE MONTHS OF ACCOUNT OPENING.

At some point on March 18, 2018 the biggest ever sign up bonus on the United Explorer Business Card will end. I'm guessing you'll have until the end of the day on Monday, March 18 to apply, as on united.com (as of Sunday evening, March 17) there is a banner that reads "75k BONUS MILES, 2 DAYS LEFT-- OFFER ENDS 3/18.

In the context of food, an omnivore eats all types of energy sources: animals and plants, and even algae, fungi, and bacteria. In the context of travel rewards, a points omnivore collects any mile or point they can to get more travel. Their motto is a dollar saved is a dollar saved.

This post is for all my points omnivores out there and particularly for those who strive to be one and are just starting to collect rewards cards.

The cheapest level of Business Class award space on United--that is also the only kind of award space bookable with partner miles--is pretty wide open in the early winter months of Australia's winter, which is early summer in the United States. May and June 2019 have the most days available, and with a few scattered seats open in April, July, and August. All beds are fully lie-flat.

This is news because it's not common to see this many Business Class award seats open to Australia, a notoriously hard destination to get to with miles.