Breaking
By Beverly Ngai
20 January 2022
Copyright © 2022 LOCALIIZ | All rights reserved
Check out Humans of Hong Kong, our newest video series focused on telling Hong Kong stories!
Copyright © 2022 LOCALIIZ | All rights reserved
Check out Humans of Hong Kong, our newest video series focused on telling Hong Kong stories!
Header image courtesy of @kelarn (via Unsplash)
Just when we thought we’d be able to hop on over to Singapore for a breather with the establishing of the travel bubble system, Hong Kong ended up succumbing to yet another wave of coronavirus. The situation may be disheartening, yes, but never fear! With increasing news of the vaccine on the horizon, we should keep hoping that the pandemic subsides and that our lives will go back to normal soon.
In the meantime, while we wait for travel to resume with bated breaths, our friends from Ipaymy are here to encourage you to think ahead with some holiday locations that should be on every traveller’s bucket list, as well as let you in on a way to rack up those air miles for when travel resumes.
South Africa is a huge country with incredibly rich cultures and diverse landscapes. Unfortunately, East Asian travellers largely tend to discount South Africa as a travel destination—or they might only know of the safaris there. Sure, nature reserves and safaris—such as the Kalahari desert, Kruger Park, and iSimangaliso Wetland Park—are well worth going to, but South Africa also has unparalleled shores and beaches, thriving creative scenes in Cape Town and Johannesburg, as well as superb winelands in Franschhoek, Stellenbosch, and Paarl.
Not to mention, South African cuisine is also fantastic, full of hearty flavours with plenty of indigenous evolutions and European and Southeast Asian influences. One simply cannot leave South Africa without trying some biltong, boerewors, Malva pudding, bunny chow, and hertzoggie. The best time of year to visit this country is either in spring or autumn.
Chicago first sprung up in our minds as an interesting place when we watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and if the city looked good on film even back in the mid-1980s, it’s become so much better now. Chicago played a key role in the emergence of jazz and blues music, so it makes sense that its music scene is vibrant to this day. As well as having a superb symphony orchestra, this is probably the best place to visit for jazz clubs.
Lovers of design will also love Chicago for being home to some of America’s most interesting buildings and monuments, such as the Cloud Gate, as well as top-notch museums. Some of the best neighbourhoods to explore include Pilsen, Logan Square, and Boystown.
The Maldives should need no introduction, and by now is practically synonymous with luxurious tropical travel. This is actually a collection of more than a thousand islands embedded in the sparklingly clear azure waters of the Indian Ocean. Well-known for the various luxury resorts’ overwater villas, there is much to do in this idyllic sanctuary, whether it be tanning on a beautiful beach or island-hopping (which only makes sense since there are so many).
Scuba to see fish and corals, snorkel with manta rays in lagoons, or even pay it back a little by planting pieces of reef. Food here is a heady mix of Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and African, which simply means mouth-wateringly delicious, so don’t make the mistake of only eating Western cuisine in the hotels!
Kiwis refer to New Zealand as “Godzone”—as in, God’s own country—and it’s not hard to see why. Home to plenty of natural beauty, there are enough beaches, wild forests, snowcapped mountains, pounding waterfalls, and craggy coastlines to satisfy even the hardiest of adventurers.
This island is also a firm favourite with adrenaline junkies for its plethora of active sports such as skiing, bungee jumping, whitewater rafting, glacier trekking, skydiving, and windsurfing. Otherwise, check out cultural activities and nightlife in Wellington, go dolphin and whale watching, attend a Maori cultural show, and soak in a thermal spa in Rotorua. And needless to say, any Tolkien fan worth their salt simply must visit the Hobbit holes in Hobbiton, Aotearoa!
The jewel-shaped country of Sri Lanka is every bit the gem you never expected. It has a bit of everything that makes a great travel destination: naturally verdant landscape, plenty of historical culture, fantastic food, and welcoming locals. There’s a reason that Lonely Planet named Sri Lanka the top travel destination in 2019!
Visit the ruins of Sigiriya and Anuradhapura, surf in Weligama or the Hiriketiya bay, make a day trip to the colonial fort town of Galle, as well as journey up to the Tamil-dominated north. Vegetarians will be well looked-after here, because its predominantly Buddhist population means that most traditional Sri Lankan dishes are vegan. Don’t forget to sample all the street foods you find along the way, and drink plenty of their world-famous Ceylon tea.
Are you feeling the travel bug bite particularly hard now? Since we’re sitting around getting increasingly antsy anyway, the best thing to do for your future travel plans is to use this time to rack up those airline mileage points, so once travel resumes you can immediately redeem them for tickets and hop onto the next flight out of town!
Ipaymy is the best way to maximise and accelerate your credit card points and rewards balance for expenses you are already paying for anyway. Instead of paying for regular outgoings like rent, tuition, condo fees, and other various invoices by bank transfer, cheque or cash, Ipaymy allows you to put these expenses on your credit card. If your landlord or the business you want to pay doesn’t accept credit cards, fear not, because Ipaymy can make it happen anyway. You can already imagine how quickly your rewards points will accumulate at this rate!
1. Simply provide them with your landlord or chosen business’ bank account details.
2. Input how much you need to pay them. Ipaymy then charges that amount, plus a small handling fee, to your credit card.
3. Ipaymy pays your landlord, supplier, or any chosen business, by bank transfer in as fast as two business days.
4. Sit back and watch as those credit card rewards and mileage points grow!
1. Set up payments on a recurring basis, so you never have to worry about paying rent, tuition, or piano lessons on time again.
2. Have a new credit card? Ipaymy is a great way to hit that minimum spend threshold so you can activate sign up bonuses.
Ipaymy is offering first-time users a chance to make their first payment of up to $10,000 for free. Simply use the promo code LOCALIIZ to have $200 deducted from the ipaymy fee! This promotion is applicable to payments made with Hong Kong-issued Visa or Mastercards.
Additionally, right now they’re also doing two other promotions. All recurring rental payments via ipaymy will be eligible for a 30 percent discount, while all other payments will be 20 percent off. Both these offers are ending soon, so check out this service while the discounts last.
Take advantage of Ipaymy’s limited-time promotion to quickly accumulate all the air miles you can earn, and wrack up a healthy balance for that dream holiday once leisure travel resumes!
Ipaymy provides users and businesses with a secure platform to pay their largest expenses such as rent, school fees, property deposits, salaries, invoices, and more. The platform is secure, trusted, and has already successfully processed hundreds of millions of transactions safely.
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