Greetings worldchangers! We landed in Portland on the 4th…weary-eyed and jet-lagged for sure (missed the fireworks)…but super excited to be here as we gear up for the second annual World Domination Summit. What’s that all about? Read our post about last year’s summit here.

Flying from Bangkok to Portland should normally take about 18 hours give or take. That would be about the limit of what most people could handle being cooped up in a flying bus with 300 other people.

So what would possess us to spend 72 hours to get to Portland when we could have been here in one day? In a word…value.

More on that in a minute. In the final travel mythbusters post we talked about money-saving tactics that can help you stretch your budget to be able to take that round-the-world trip you’ve always dreamed of.

Whenever we talked about transportation cost, we emphasized the tremendous savings you get by opting for overland travel as much as possible.

Well, there are some situations where overland is either impractical or impossible. Bangkok to Portland is one of them. So what do you do? Look for the lowest fare on Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity then pick the best one? Sure, you could do that.

Or you could do what we’ve been doing the last couple of years…travelhacking.

Whenever Jo and I have flown transcontinental, we’ve used airline frequent flyer miles to keep the costs as low as possible…and we’ve always aimed to fly in the premium class cabin.

 

When you use points or miles to get a plane ticket, you only pay for taxes and fuel surcharges. So a business class seat that would normally cost $5000 dollars roundtrip comes down to about $230 when purchased with miles.

 

You can see now why we didn’t mind spending three days to get to Portland. When we called up the airlines, they didn’t have any available seats in business class for a direct flight.

 

But there were plenty of business class seats available on this roundabout route that had us flying from Sri Lanka to Bangkok to Osaka to San Fran to Portland for the same price as a direct.

Customer service agent: “Mr. and Mrs. Abisia, I’m afraid we can only put you on three business class flights to get you to Portland. Would that be okay with you?”

Us: “Absolutely, and would you please note in our record that we would like the special Thai meal with the satay sticks as appetizers and ice cream sundaes for dessert?

Thank you so much!” The flights alone were totaled over 24 hours of traveling. So where did the rest of the time go? Layovers. LONG layovers. We’re talking 10 to 14 hours on the ground in some cases.

 

But those layovers become more than forgivable when you get access to the premium lounges at every airport you transit at no extra charge other than the $230 paid for your ticket!

 

 

 

All of this was made possible at such an affordable price because in the past two years we’ve focused our efforts on learning the craft of travelhacking.

What is travelhacking? It’s the strategic use of various reward and loyalty programs of airlines and hotels, with the goal of utilizing their services at the best value possible.

You got a glimpse of the results that are possible with travelhacking when we posted the Radisson deal back in May. You did jump on that deal…didn’t you?

 

Basically, we fill up on a boatload of miles and points whenever possible (we had over a million points before we started our full-time travel last year). How did we get into travelhacking?

Well, to make a long story short…we wanted to travel and we wanted to do it as cheaply as possible, and our friend Chris wrote an excellent guide on making that possible: Frequent Flyer Master

So we pretty much followed the principles laid out in that guide and have since been able to fly around the world twice already in business class.

When we flew from San Francisco into Bangkok last December, we even managed to add in a one-week stop in Germanyto tour their Christmas markets, and the ticket still cost only $230!

 

Now that you’ve got a taste of what travelhacking can do for you, we’d like to share some exciting news. At last year’s World Domination Summit, we went strictly as attendees.

What a difference a year makes. At WDS 2012, we’ve teamed up with Steve Kamb at Nerd Fitness to lead not just one but two workshops on travelhacking!

We’ll be covering everything from the fundamentals of travelhacking and how you can rack up hundreds of thousands of miles without ever stepping on a plane, to more advanced tactics such as parlaying bonus points from one program to get something better from another one.

We’re so excited about this opportunity to share this valuable information that has changed our lives in a profound way. And you get to be a part of it!  That’s right…we’ve already punched your ticket to putting you on the path to travelhacking.

Later this week, and exclusively for subscribers of Intrepid Motion, we’ll be sending out access  to the same resources and information that we are presenting in travelhacking academy workshops here at the World Domination Summit!

So if you haven’t already, please join the movement today so we can send you this valuable resource in the next few days!