[INTERVIEW] Who is Pekflyer?

Another interview! Today is we feature my friend Allan Yong, from Perflyer (English, Chinese), geared towards the Chinese market. But since it is a bilingual blog, we can all benefit from the information that is being shared!

What inspired you to start Pekflyer (好积友)?

The real reason for me to start Pekflyer was to maintain my writing skills in both Mandarin Chinese and English. It always helps if you do something more often right, not to mention that my Mandarin writings skills have declined quite a lot since I moved to Canada.

What makes your website different from others out there?

I think Pekflyer (好积友) is one of the only bilingual travel hacking related blog in Canada. I am mainly focusing on providing tricks and tips from my experiences, and provide commentaries on the industrial news to help fellow travellers to better prepare and plan for this game. Occasionally, I would comment (harshly) on my travel experiences.

What were some of the challenges you faced when starting your website? What has kept you going?

I guess the challenges are always about finding the time between your real life and writing blog articles. I am in my second year of my PhD study, and also involved in multiple business ventures, in short, I am quite busy.  At the same time, I think travel by points and miles is something I am passionate. As an old Chinese saying, “you need to read 10 thousand books, but also travel 10 thousand miles to understand this world”, so it kept motivates me to write more, especially my content can help other people.

What can we look forward to with Pekflyer?

As an interaction designer and Information professional, I am currently designing and developing an online-based visualizer/app that will be part of my site. It will provide an interactive learning mode to my site, which will give readers an infographic of each topic from my site, so they can see all the topics at once and try to find the information they need quickly.

What is the favourite place that you have travelled to so far?

I think I liked all the places I have been to :), and I wouldn’t mind going over them again:)

If you can go anywhere in the world (that you have no been to yet), where would it be and what will you be doing?

Probably Antarctic, which is too expensive, and not achievable with points and miles yet:) I would be hanging out with penguin there, and have a selfie if possible and allowed.

What is a fun fact about yourself?

This question is the most difficult of this interview, my fun fact about me is that I changed my car license plate to Pekflyer when I was forced to get a new set of plate.

Can you share a tip or trick that you’ve use for travel?

One trick I would share, not sure if it was shared by others, always be calm and be firm when you are on the road, it will solve a lot of travel-related problems. Also make sure you are protected by your credit card insurances or whatever insurances you could buy, you never know when things would go wrong.

What advice would you give travellers and “Pointshoggers” out there?

If you are into points and miles game, self-discipline is quite important for you to extract best value from this game.

Any final thoughts?

Hope everyone could leverage points and miles to be able to travel to wherever and whenever they want:)