Field notes

Staying online, city by city

When to install the eSIM, which ticket and map you will actually open, and which plan size survives the trip. The cities are the ones people fly to.

Singapore · Singapore

Singapore is dense, air-conditioned, and full of hotel wifi, and you will still want data the second you are between malls in the rain.

Dubai · United Arab Emirates

Dubai is a taxi-and-metro city spread across a highway. Hotel wifi does not help you when the pin for dinner is twenty minutes away.

Lisbon · Portugal

Lisbon is hills, trams, and a miradouro that is always one neighborhood further than you thought.

Bali · Indonesia

Bali is a scooter-and-Grab map. The temple is not on your hotel's wifi, and the turn you missed is a twenty-minute loop.

Sydney · Australia

Sydney is ferries and headlands. The opera house is not the hard navigation; the beach that is three coves over is.

Prague · Czechia

Prague's center is walkable and its restaurant tables are not, which is a booking problem more than a transit problem.

Reykjavik · Iceland

Reykjavik is small. The countryside you came for is not, and the weather plan changes while you are looking at it.

Cancun · Mexico

Cancún the hotel zone is a strip. The trip people remember is a ferry or a collectivo away, and those do not wait while your phone finds wifi.