Greg The Frequent Miler

Last Week, as part of the Million Mile Madness challenge , I flew to China twice without a visa. On the first visit, I simply transferred to another flight without leaving the airport. On the second visit, though, I entered China and stayed the night. While I'll describe both experiences below, the purpose of this post is primarily to cover my experience with actually entering China via a 24 hour Transit without Visa.

Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is happening now! Follow us as Greg, Nick, and Stephen compete to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines before November 23rd.

I first flew Etihad First Apartments in 2019 on an overnight flight from Abu Dhabi to London. I was blown away by that experience . Now, in November 2025, I had the great opportunity to fly Etihad First Apartments from Paris to Abu Dhabi. Thanks to this being a daytime flight, I loved it even more than before!

Etihad First Apartments is the name for Etihad's amazing first class suites on their Airbus A380 aircraft. Each suite is like a little room with a narrow hallway, a recliner chair, a bench that converts to a single bed, and a vanity station with a mirror and drawers. There is also a bathroom with shower which is shared by first class passengers (but not at the same time). In addition to the incredible physical space onboard, first class passengers are treated to fantastic service and catering. Overall, it is unquestionably an awesome bucket-list experience.

When Citi added Preferred Hotels as a transfer partner at an incredible 1 to 4 transfer ratio ( details here ) our excitement was muted due to the fact that only a few hotels were actually bookable entirely with points. Now, though, many hotels are bookable with points (212 at the time of this writing). Suddenly, this is exciting. Very exciting!

Preferred Hotels & Resorts is a collection of independent hotels around the world. For point collectors, there are two ways in which it's possible to book many of these hotels with points: book with Choice Privileges points; or book with iPrefer points (iPrefer is Preferred Hotels' own rewards program). In either case, it's sometimes possible to get great value for your points. And, in either case,

I just received an exciting email from SAS. The subject heading is “You're a SAS EuroBonus Millionaire!” You may remember that in our Million Mile

Seven years after they were first introduced, do Delta One Suites hold up? With the addition of mattress padding, I found that...

In October 2024, Citi added Preferred Hotels as a new transfer partner. Those with the Citi Strata card could now transfer Citi ThankYou points at an impressive 1 to 4 ratio to Preferred Hotel’s I Prefer points. That begged the question, what are I Prefer points worth? Please note that at the time of this […]

Since 2022 I've been publishing annual “state of the business” posts detailing how Frequent Miler has been doing in terms of blog readers, podcast listeners, revenue, etc. Now, once again, here's your chance to peek behind the curtain…