Nate and Kara Buchanan vlog their visit to Kuala Lumpur, focusing on sightseeing at the Petronas Towers (photography struggles, nearby temple), exploring the Suria KLCC mall and its food court versus nearby street food, and returning to their hotel where they sample executive-lounge offerings. The video closes with Nate explaining how they used credit-card signup bonuses and strategic spending to fund hotel stays: they reference having ~1.8 million miles/points, a Hilton signup bonus (80,000 points) plus 15,000 extra points from spend (95,000 total), a required minimum spend of $3,000, and that their chosen DoubleTree costs roughly 10,000 (stated once) or 8,500 (stated later) Hilton points per night for their six-night stay, yielding either 60,000 or 51,000 points spent for the week.
Questions this video answers
February 16, 2016
About 1.8 million miles and points
80,000 Hilton points (signup bonus)
15,000 points (from meeting the minimum spend, via buying Kroger gift cards)
$3,000 minimum spend
Chapters
We are going to this place for breakfast.
We have to stop going to all you can eat buffets. We are going into our third night in Malaysia, and this is the first time we have withdrawn money from the ATM.
Loving this place.
I'll take 91 degrees.
No more cardigans. Every day this week, our first time stepping out into Malaysia.
Look. That's where we're going. We don't even need Google Maps. We'll just look at them. Somehow we have lost the Petronas Towers. We might have to resort to Google Maps. I think we're back Because Kara sensei direction is never wrong. This will be fun. Let's let her get us there.
Well, we had to walk over to go over that bridge. Yeah, which means we should go back that way.
Okay, I'll follow you. This will be fun.
Oh, no.
They're right there.
Where did you think they were?
That way.
And where are they?
Right there.
Hey, I got to see here, didn't I?
That was neat. You want to go check that out?
There appeared to be a worship service going on in that temple.
We decided not to go inside. It's pretty, though. We made it to the towers. Now how to fit ourselves and them in the frame. Look at that.
Bye.
The patronus town. Well, so far we've established two things. One, it is extremely hot here, and I'm not used to the heat. And two, it is really hard to get a shot of you with the entire Petronas Towers. Ah.
Whoa.
Pretty metal in here.
That's like $20. Say, there's a good chance we're not going to the top.
Do you agree with the decision?
We weren't sure what was in the patron towers. It appears we were in a large.
Mall, but there was a food arena on the top floor. So that's where we're headed.
We're in this, like, really nice mall food court. We thought it was gonna be way too expensive. A whole plate of food was, like 250.
This is crazy. Not quite as cheap as the food at the hotel, but I think we can branch out a little bit. I think we can afford Subway sandwich costs, like, $5. This is the most expensive thing that I've seen here. You can literally eat a grilled lamb shoulder for less than a Subway sandwich. We all care out of eating at the food court. We're going for a more local experience.
Shut up.
It's true. It is. You won't admit it.
I was the one who said we should go.
You came to terms, but initially you.
Wanted to eat A spooky because it's air conditioned, it's cheap.
And it looked really good.
I'm not against either for those reasons. I just thought it'd make for a really bad vlog.
Yeah, I went to the hotel all.
Day and then we went to a mall. And eight.
Yeah, we decided we couldn't come all the way to Kuala Lumpur.
And eat at the mall. We're ditching this joint.
Going to find some street food. Since we've been in Asia, I've noticed that the escalators here are all raw, way less efficient. So we're going down the escalator.
Okay.
There's the other escalator. We have to go all the way.
Around.
To the other side to keep going down. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the escalators in America have the ones going in the same direction on the same side. So all you have to do is step off the escalator, turn, and then keep going down. And then on the other side. It's for people who are going up.
It's a much more efficient system.
Drives me crazy. We read about a really good Indian buffet type place that's really close to the temple. We were just at down the road, so we're gonna go try to find it.
Sounds like a better experience than the food court. We've seen quite a few heavily armed guards here. Like those five men standing behind us with the AK47s. It's kind of this weird feeling of like maybe I should feel safe because there's security guards with large guns. But also I kind of feel unsafe because there needs to be security guards with large guns. There's also a couple stationed outside of our hotel. I don't know. Just a thought.
I got us here.
I'm zoomed in. You weren't even in it. Haha.
Come on.
Wonder what that does.
I don't know.
Hello. Hello. What do you do? Oh, I don't know.
Excuse me. Excuse me.
All right, sorry. We're in so many different ways. I'm kind of good for going back to the food court. Really. I mean, I just can't read the menu. Nobody's helping us. All right, let's go. Just. Let's go outside. Let's go outside and talk about this.
Is that too local for us?
I mean, it's pretty local.
Problem is none of the men.
Nobody was being very normal.
No, we were just in the way.
Are we going back to the food court after all that?
What do you want to do? I feel like you don't want to eat there, you shouldn't see anything.
Look good. All right. The street food didn't look near as good as the food that was in the mall. Also, there were way more people in the mall, and we tend to go wherever the most people are eating.
A little disappointed in us that we weren't brave enough to eat there.
But we'll do some more research on where to get good street food, and next time, we'll be more prepared and more adventurous.
I love how big naan is.
You think we would have learned our lesson at little India?
We only got two this time, not three.
There was no filming in the food court. We didn't miss anything. We ate some mediocre Indian food compared to the Indian food that we had on the streets of Singapore.
So before we traveled, neither of us really ate Indian food. So our first, like, real Indian food experience was in little India, where it was amazing. So now I feel like we're never gonna have anything that tastes that good.
We'll ruin forever unless we go to India, I guess.
It's only $4, so never be too.
Mad when food's that cheap.
Now we're just gonna go to dinner at our hotel where it's free.
It's. Especially after you've been traveling for a month. It's not that we're spending a lot more money than we were when we were at home, but it's just that, like, you're constantly pulling out your wallet and paying for stuff. And so it's.
So nice for things just to be free and not have to just, like, constantly feel like you're.
Spending money just hard for Nate. He's done a really good job.
You can even have new food experiences in the double tree executive lounge. Cara.
What is that?
Marinated octopus, pickled cucumber, and pineapple.
It smells very fishy.
Let me know how it is.
I've never even seen a red octopus.
It's marinated in something red.
Yep. Your own video. You have to. My next. Yeah.
I think I can smell the fishiness from here.
Wow.
Not the best.
It wasn't chewy.
It was like cartage. That's like the one I tried on my mileage run.
I feel like I need to explain why we spent so much time in the hotel. That was kind of the plan.
Before we left for this trip. We saved up over a million and a half miles and points to help pay for this trip and make it possible. Part of those points that we earned were Hilton points. I wanted to explain how we're staying at this Hotel completely free for a week, getting free breakfast, access to the executive lounge, and getting a room upgrade. And it's way easier than it should be. All I did was sign up for this credit card, and I put black tape over it so you can't sell my money. We earn the majority of our 1.8 million miles and points by signing up for credit cards. But we specifically earn 95,000 points by signing up for this Hilton credit card. Let me explain.
When you sign up for a travel credit card, there's this thing called a sign up bonus. It's usually some amount of either frequent flyer miles or hotel points that you get for signing up for the credit card. With this credit card right here, we got 80,000.
Hilton points. In order to get those 80,000 points, we had to spend $3,000. This is what you call a minimum spend. We met this minimum spend by buying gift cards at Kroger because you earn five times the points when you spend money at grocery stores using this Hilton card. So in addition to the 80,000 point signup bonus, we also got 15,000 points, bringing our total to 95,000 Hilton points. The reason we decided to come to this hotel is because it only costs 10,000 points a night. We're staying here for six nights. So we're spending 60,000.
We're staying here for six Nights, and it's costing us 8,500 points per night to stay here. Hold on. It's costing us 51,000 points to stay here. There are absolutely no fees, just points. So we are staying in this super nice Doubletree hotel, completely free for six nights. In addition, we're getting two meals a day. So this is really helping us save a lot of money on our trip. So if the vlogs this week are a little lame, I'm sorry, but we're enjoying the luxury of staying in a nice hotel after staying in quite a few dumpy places. And we're saving a ton of money. One more thing. Not everybody who stays at this hotel gets free breakfast and access to the executive lounge that is reserved for gold and diamond members. Also, by signing up for this card, we got gold status. So that's how we're getting access to the executive lounge. That's how we got the room upgrade, and that's why we're getting free breakfast every morning. If you enjoyed learning about how we're using miles and points to save money on this trip, let us know in the comments below. And we can definitely do some more of this, because miles points are a huge part of this journey. Hope you enjoyed it. If that was super boring, you can let me know too.
