Priceless Surprises: Free IHG Points!

I jumped on the bandwagon! I have been reading posts about this IHG Priceless Surprises Promotion since November and earlier this month, I finally got started. Mostly planning to work on my submittals to this contest with Shazia, an awesome gal from the amazing Girls Love Travel facebook community I am a part of, got me to find my supplies and get started. So yay for peer pressure social media networking! :)

Okay, so this is how it works. IHG, the hotel company that runs hotels like Holiday Inn and InterContinental, is having a promotion where if you stay at certain hotels, you get entries into this promotion. For each qualifying stay, you get one entry which gives you a chance to win one of the following prizes:

 

But there is a way around spending money on hotels to enter! IHG allows anyone with an IHG Rewards Account to enter by submitting entries via snail mail! You can submit up to 94 entries and the minimum prize you will get is 500 IHG Bonus Points per entry. So if you do the maximum allowed, you will spend around $46 on stamps and supplies and earn a minimum of 47,000 IHG Points! These will get you far, especially as the IHG PointBreaks program discounts dozens and dozens of hotels within the US and abroad every several months for 5,000 points a night.

The best way to enter is to follow the instructions listed on the Deals We Like blog post here. Deals We Like is a great travel blog and resource! If you have a separate email for promotional stuff, I highly recommend signing up for their daily email newsletters! If not, you will be getting a lot of mail from them in your inbox, so I also recommend having a separate email you check regularly that you use solely for deals and promotions. It's great for giving out at stores and places that ask for your email that you know will send you a lot of ads, but you don't want to miss on the best deals, so this is the way to go!

Anyway, the instructions are in the blog post, and basically you must register for an IHG account if you don't have one, and you MUST register for the rewards promotion BEFORE you mail anything in. Then, you write the required information on a 3x5 index card or similar sized sheet of paper. I had a ton of old unused index cards laying around from grad school, so I was more than happy to put them to use. These details must be handwritten, although the address on the envelope may be printed off. The address is also listed in the Deals We Like blog post.

So far I have submitted 10 entries here and there since it does take some time to prepare the entries. And this morning, I was excited to find that they had received my first 35 entries! I mailed a handful more out last week, and I have about 25 more I am planning to send in the coming week or two, and I am considering sending an extra 2 or 3 in case they were not able to read my handwriting or something on some of them. All entries must be postmarked by February 15, 2016 and received by February 22, 2016.

Once they receive and process your entry, you will get an email that looks like this:

When you click on the "Choose your floor here" section, you are taken to a webpage of an elevator, and you have to click play over the buttons.

Then you get a chance to choose which floor you want to "go" to for your prize.

I received 30 prizes of 500 points, 1 prize of 1,000 points,3 prizes of 2,000 points, and 1 prize of 5,000 points. So I'm not even halfway through my entries and I've already amassed 27,000 points! More than likely you will get several prizes that are worth more than the minimum 500 points, and I highly recommend anyone that has the time and a bit of spare cash to enter this contest!

Le Petit Prince

I fondly remember reading Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince in 8th grade, imagining all the planets and places the prince visited. I had quite the imagination for history, geography, and exploration from a young age. So, naturally, when I had the opportunity to watch the film, Le Petit Prince, in Tangier at the Cinematheque de Tanger, Cinema RIF, I jumped at it!

The ticket office! If you look closely, you can see Le Petit Prince listed as one of the Films du Jour

Cinema RIF is a refurbished 1938 movie theatre which opened in 2006 with the goal of preserving and promoting the cinema of Morocco and the Arab world. While this cinema typically shows local Moroccan and African films, we happened to be there during European Film Week which offered us the opportunity to see The Little Prince in French. Tickets were only 25 Dirham, which translates to roughly $2.50! Who could pass up this experience? :)

Somewhere inside the medina in Tangier

The lighthouse at Cap Spartel

Before we discovered the cinematheque, I had spent the entire day exploring Tangier with Liz and Laurens, my Morocco travel buddies. We took the overnight sleeper train from Marrakech and got an early start by hiring a taxi to visit the Grottes d'Hercules (the Cave of Hercules) and the lighthouse at Cape Spartel, then walked through the medina all afternoon seeing the sights. By mid afternoon, we were sitting in the Place du 9 Avril 1947 and trying to figure out what we wanted to do that evening. Having noticed the marquee at Cinema RIF in the center of the plaza, we were interested in possibly seeing a film after dinner. We decided to check out the showtimes since Liz's guidebook even recommended the cinema as a point of interest in Tangier. We were not disappointed once we discovered that Le Petit Prince was a film that was showing in a few hours. The film wasn't even listed on the marquee, and honestly, I didn't even know what kind of film it would be. I had heard that there was a huge movie adaptation of the book coming to theatres at some point in time, but I didn't think this would be it. I mean, tickets were so cheap, and art house cinemas like this didn't exactly show mainstream movies very often. But we were excited! Especially since Liz was reading another of Saint-Exupery's books on this trip. Not to mention the fact that it was The Little Prince! The story on it's own is such a classic tale, and I knew that anything that had to do with the book would be worth consuming.

It turned out that the film we saw was indeed the Paramount Pictures stop-motion film that has yet to be released in the United States! Le Petit Prince debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last May and was released in France last year, but the U.S. release date is March 18, 2016. Even though it was all in French (not to mention the fact that my one semester of college French was not enough to completely understand what was going on at all times), it was a thrilling experience to see such an amazing, beautiful film in Morocco months ahead of time. And for only $2.50! I love attending festivals like Sundance and watching films whenever I can, so this just goes to show that it pays to follow your intuition and do what you want to do when you travel! Initially, the cinema sounded great, although it seemed a little odd to be watching a movie in Morocco when I could do the same thing in the U.S. But it was definitely not the same! And we were rewarded for taking a second to look into the cinema there. It's kind of like how I avoided drinking Fanta in Europe when I first visited, only to discover that European Fanta is FAR superior to Fanta in the US! Things are never what they appear to be when you travel. And I absolutely love it!

Inside the Cinema RIF waiting for the film to begin! :)

My Utah Bucket List

On the topic of travel goals and bucket lists, I have a small list of things that I am hoping to do while I live in Utah. Who knows how long I will actually live here. I only ever expected to be here for 2 years while I was in graduate school, and I'm going on 6 years as a Utah resident. I still cannot ever bring myself to say that I am from Utah when I travel, especially because being from Hawaii is a much better conversation starter and also because Los Angeles and California will forever be my second home. But that all is beside the point. Here are the things that I hope to do while I live in this amazingly beautiful state:

• Visit Bryce Canyon National Park, especially while I have a National Parks pass
• Visit Bear Lake on the Utah-Idaho border
• Hike to The Wave at the Utah-Arizona border
• Spend a weekend in Havasupai, Arizona (it's not too far)
• Ski at Alta (skiers only!)
• See the Grand Canyon (it's not too far, either)
• Hike to the Spanish Fork hot springs finally 

Is there anything I'm missing? :)

2016 Travel Goals

I know this is a bit late, although 2016 got off to a busy start for me with both work and travel. I have been working hard on getting my new website, www.justonemoretrip.com, up and running from scratch, and I have been making big decisions regarding my career in these first couple of weeks of the new year. So now that I am finally getting my life together a bit more, here are some of my travel goals for 2016:

• Australia. It is finally time for me to hit my 6th continent after traveling to the other populated 5 contents several times over the past three years. Don't worry, Antarctica is also on my list, but probably not for this year. I really want to visit Melbourne more than anything, although a trip to the Sydney Opera House is definitely going to happen. I still have to find the right plane tickets and dates for this trip, but this is my number one travel priority this year.
• Petra. I am not sure if I can make this happen, but I really want to finally visit Petra in Jordan this year. It is one of the last new wonders of the world that I have yet to see.
• Cuba. This trip would be a stretch, but it would be a dream to visit Havana and even the rest of Cuba before American tourists are allowed to go (currently American visitors are allowed, but only under 10 specific categories, and tourists are not one of them). I want to see Cuba and get a feel for the culture as it is now, before all the old vintage cars and things are replaced with newer imports from the U.S. The only thing stopping me from getting a visa now is that my Spanish isn't fluent, and I would have to go with someone who can speak it well enough to understand the Cuban accent. This is one place I would not go solo.
• Eastern Europe. With all the deals to Central and South America last year, I didn't end up having enough time to do a mini backpacking trip through Budapest, Vienna, Croatia, and Prague like I had wanted to, although I did get to spend one day in Prague. I still want to take at least 10 days and go some time this fall.
• Chicago. I still have not been to Chicago!!! Luckily, I have plans to drive to Wisconsin with Elvera next month under the condition that she take me to Chicago once we get there. February is not the ideal time of year to go, but I just can't wait! :)
• Montreal. And probably Quebec City. A little piece of Europe in North America. This is pretty high up on my list. I have never been disappointed by Canada.
• Victoria. I have been wanting to take the ferry over to Victoria from Seattle for a while now. I hope I can make this happen some time this year. I think I could make a fun weekend trip out of it. Victoria is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous, and I'd love to see the gardens and do some hiking out that way. Maybe I could even see some whales!
• Celine Dion in Las Vegas. I love Las Vegas, and as many times as I have been there, I have never seen Celine Dion in concert!!! My very first album was The Reason on cassette tape that I bought in Thailand, and I listened to it every night in order to fall asleep when I was a kid afraid of the Night Marchers (Hawaiian ghost stories are no joke people!). I can't wait to finally see her live!
• Havasupai. I had reservations last year, but Tianqi had to go and get married on the same weekend that I had reservations for. I will try again this year, and so far it looks like I will be able to bring quite a large group of lovely ladies from my favorite Facebook group, Girls LOVE Travel! It will be a blast! Now let's just pray I get enough reservations when I call and call and call in on February 1st.
• Travel Blog. My final and most important travel goal is to blog more regularly, even if it's a small post here and there, and to set up and maintain my new website properly. This will be a big feat for me as I just barely started my web tech/development education in 2015. Actually, that is something I am extremely proud of, even though my skills are at a bare minimum so far. I randomly found this awesome group called Girl Develop It and started going to their meetings and learning how to code and about computers and stuff. I was even in a video (watch it here) about it! Now that I've finally found the perfect blog name, I hope I can transfer those skills I have learned into real life.

2015 was an EPIC travel year for me, and I know I won't be able to travel nearly as much this year. But I hope I can make these things happen! I'm so excited!! :)

2015 in Review

2015 has been a very exciting year in travel for me. I have no idea how 2016 can possibly live up to the past year, but I'll try to make it a good one. It took me some time to calculate this out, but I want to share this infographic with you summarizing my travels in 2015:

I think I did a good job with my travel goals from last year (read about them here). I met most of my travel goals for the year. I got to visit Dubai, swim in Jellyfish Lake in Palau, see the Taj Mahal, go on a couple of safaris (in South Africa and in Dubai!), and I went home to Hawaii four times. I even ran the Honolulu Marathon. One of my goals was to backpack through Europe, and while I did not have enough time to do a proper backpacking trip, I did make it to Prague! And I visited Germany for about a week, so I'll check that one off as well. I used most of my vacation time I was saving for that trip on several amazing travel deals to Central America, so I got to visit a handful of countries there instead. Here is a map of my travels this year:

Some of the things I didn't get to do last year are see the Northern Lights, visit Chicago, hike to Havasupai, and hike to the Wave. While I didn't get to go to Chicago this year, I actually have a trip planned for February, finally! And Havauspai didn't work out last year because the weekend I made reservations for ended up being the weekend that my best friend from USC got married in Alabama, so I will try again this year. I also did have a chance to hike to the Wave this fall, but the weather prohibited us from actually going on the hike, so I will have to try for that again this year as well. And I have no idea when or where I will ever see the Northern Lights. I think that is something that may be on my revolving travel wish list.

I'm pretty proud of my 2015 travel accomplishments! I can't believe I was able to do so much! Stay tuned for my 2016 Travel Goals and see what I will try to accomplish this year.