Travel

Mused.com is like a Google Street View x Google Earth for place GSV and GE don't go. It describes itself as

Bringing Immersive Cultural Heritage Experiences to Gaming, Classrooms, and Libraries around the World.

Once you sign up for a free membership, you can do things like:

• Go Inside the Great Pyramid of Giza
• Explore the Maya Temples at Copán Ruinas
• Confront The Great Sphinx of Giza

Note that I had difficulty making this work with Google Chrome but it worked with every other browser I tried. My default is Arc.

RollAway is a new company offering rental of an e-Van with a 5-star makeover. They launched a few months ago in the San Francisco Bay area and, presumably, will offer more vehicles in more locations in the future.

I love travel and unorthodox approaches to entrenched systems so this struck a chord with me.

More on the RollAway website.

In November, I received copies of two books by writer and walker Craig Mod. I've been a fan of his for many years, but these are the first of his books I've purchased. Shipping from Japan to Canada, on top of the cost of the books, was what had always stopped me in the past, but I do my best to support artists directly when I can so decided now was the time.

If you're not familiar with Mod, he's mostly known for his work in the book world. He also has a wonderful podcast on bookmaking called On Margins, though he might have killed that as it's been a long time since he's put out an episode. It's well worth listening to if you're into creating things.

Since Craig is a walker and a writer, these books are about walking.

Craig describes Kissa by Kissa as "a book about walking 1,000+km of the countryside of Japan along the ancient Nakasendō highway, the culture of pizza toast (pizza toast!), and mid-twentieth century Japanese cafés called kissaten."

Craig's books are gorgeous. Cloth-bound with debossed covers. The paper is lovely to touch and the photos and essays are wonderful:

Things Become Other Things is Craig's latest book. He describes it as "a 30 day walk in Japan. A memoir. Fishermen, foul-mouthed kids, and terrible miserable wonderful coffee."

You can purchase the fifth edition of Kissa by Kissa here. The first edition of TBOT is here. Both titles are cheaper for members of Craig's Special Projects. Those memberships are how Craig makes his living.

If you'd like a better overview of Craig's work, you can find it here.

Anecdote Alert

These books are the kinds of things I used to bring in for customers of my shop, Volver — beautiful items that I personally own and can recommend — before I stopped carrying non-records. This was an effort to spread awareness and get better prices for my customers by eliminating the cost of shipping.

I did this most successfully, book-wise, with Wendy Erskine's Dance Move, a brilliant collection of short stories which still hasn't been published in Canada. I can't recall how many copies I brought in (20 or so), but they all sold out and still no other shop in the city took it upon themselves to import copies.

I have no idea if Craig would be into this (offering me bulk, wholesale pricing), but I'd consider approaching him if enough Bell Ringers wanted me to try.

Travel Lemming creates travel guides by locals and experts.

They've put together an easy-to-use list of the 50 Best Places to Travel In 2025. You can filter the list by parts of the globe, season you plan to travel, or both. They write:

For 2025, we’re encouraging travelers to reject the AI travel planners Silicon Valley wants to shove down our throats. Instead, get your travel suggestions from the same place humans have since the beginning of time: other humans.

Last year's list focused on Slow Travel.

Toronto vlogger Maurice Moves with another excellent video, this one on top-notch prep for international travellers. These are great tips that most travellers don't realize they need until it's too late:

Ev Williams (one of the creators of Blogger, Twitter, and Medium) on his new app, Mozi:

Clearly, it would need to be private. Non-performative. No public profiles. No public status competitions. No follower counts. No strangers.

Mozi claims to be a private social network that connects you to people you already know via your contacts list. This may seem a little counterintuitive, but here's a true example from my own life:

I lived in a small town called Oliva, Spain, from September through November, 2017. In the summer of 2018, when I was living in Culver City, CA, I saw a photo on social media of a friend I'd drifted apart from and hadn't seen in 20 years. That photo was taken in Gandia, Spain, in October, 2017. Gandia is the neighboring town to Oliva and my friend was staying just 2KM away from where I was living. In fact, in those months, while I was hiking through Orange Groves, we were closer to one another than we are when we're both home in Toronto.

Had Mozi existed back then — and we'd both been using it — we would have been alerted to each other's presence and been able to make plans to meet.

I'm not normally someone to evangelize for social media, but I do find the purpose of Mozi to be useful and am therefore giving it a shot. At the moment it's only available for iPhone (there's an Android waitlist) and it's pretty much pointless unless your contacts are on it, but I'm willing to give it a shot and see what happens.

While in the South Pacific, I tried Kava, a legal drink made from the Kava plant and which has mild effects on the nervous system.

Instantly, upon drinking it, my lips began to tingle and then feel numb and a warm calm came over me. The taste is dreadful, sort of like muddy water, and it doesn't help that you drink from a dirty coconut shell that is shared by others.

You get Kava at Kava Bars, which usually open when the sun goes down. They advertise themselves with a single, dim roadside colored lightbulb, usually green or red. Here's a Kava bar in daylight in Vanuatu:

A woman I befriended on the island Efate had a husband who died of liver failure due to his addiction to Kava.

I was reminded of the drink today after reading about Betel Nuts, which I'd never heard of before: This addictive nut is driving record rates of cancer – yet millions continue to chew it. Fascinating.

Here's Drew Binksy on it:

Road to the Sea is a travel / nomad / sailing blog by a literal couple who've been on the road or water since 2011.

We have been full time land-based nomads since 2011. We became nomads separately at different times and in different places. In 2015, thanks to close friends, we met on the road, fell in love, and have been traveling together since. We have been all over the United States, parts of Canada, up to Alaska, over to Hawaii, and as far south as the tip of Baja. After eight years we decided to expand our travels and took to the sea. With no experience or knowledge about sailing, or boats in general, we were starting from scratch. We knew only two things when this all began; the style of sailboat we wanted, and that we wanted to sail. 

They're currently in French Polynesia. Follow along!

Folly offers off-grid sanctuaries for the discerning traveler. They've locations in the Mojave Desert (where these pics are from), as well as Joshua Tree and a farm in New York state.

See all their properties on the Folly Collection website.

My Life Elsewhere is a website that allows you to compare two countries by various metrics: cost of living, healthcare, basic income, etc.

Fascinating resource.