Hello friends,

Welcome back to my newsletter where I share short, poorly edited notes about stuff I find interesting.

I’ve been thinking recently about knowledge–not the deep intellectual stuff that gets taught in university classes, but the quotidian knowledge that guides our daily lives–and how the pleasure of sharing that knowledge in person with total strangers is being interrupted by technology.

I started thinking about this while staying at an all-inclusive resort in Cancún, Mexico for a much needed recovery after a rather dramatic year (I’d list the drama, but I’m not in the mood to talk about it right now. Trust me, it sucked). I chose this kind of vacation because I was looking for something simple, but it’s not normally how I like to travel.

Cancún is purpose built for tourism. Although people have lived in the region for thousands of years, the city was envisioned in 1968 to attract visitors and their money. The most common way for a traveller to interact with this place is to have a car or van pull right up to your hotel door and ferry you neatly to your next destination, preferably with a beer in your hand and a little tequila in your belly. You remain comfortably sequestered from the people whose job it is to make this place go. After a few days of that sort of thing, I was aching for the freedom of the city bus.

Because my family didn’t own a car, I became an expert in public transit at an early age. As a child, I prided myself on being able to get from one place to another without adult supervision. I had this uncanny ability to fall asleep on a long bus ride and wake just in time to pull the bell for the right stop.

Maybe it was all those trips on city buses that made me the kind of writer I am—one who observes. Growing up, I read a lot on the bus, but I also spent hours watching: out the window, my fellow travellers. I knew the city in a way kids who were driven around never could. Occasionally, I learned to lean on my fellow passengers for protection or knowledge. I learned who and how to ask if I needed help.

This comfort with transit has served me well travelling abroad. I’m not scared off by bodies packed together in an overheated coach or racing to switch from the bus to the train. I keep a map of the Tokyo subway system on my bathroom wall for visitors to admire the elegance of its design and to demonstrate this proficiency. Some part of me will always be that plucky kid who could be trusted to catch the 60 along Winnipeg’s Pembina Highway all by herself to meet her dad at Portage Place.

The bus system in Cancún is relatively straightforward except that the stops aren’t marked in any discernible way. No maps, no schedules, not even a sign that declares it a bus stop rather than a random covered bench. I was staying in the “Hotel Zone,” a long line of resorts on a narrow strip of land flung out into the sea from the mainland like a jump rope. There’s one wide road along that strip that’s serviced by two buses that run every five minutes or less. The covered benches sit at random intervals along Boulevard Kukulkan, recognizable only by the people crowded into narrow shade, waiting.

Aside from my lifelong fondness for public transit, I like travelling by city bus because it gives you a view of the life of a place that isn’t a part of the manicured tourist experience. To travel by bus is to know the city according to its own rules. In a car, you choose the most efficient route to your own destination. In a bus, you get the route that the city requires. You share the goals of travel. You hear the music of conversation and catch glimpses of faces in every state of being. If you pay a little attention, you learn a lot about humanity from the bus. You disembark with a broader sense of the world.

Navigating public transit abroad hasn’t always been easy, but my experiences have mostly been pleasurable. I often think fondly of a conversation I had with an older woman who went out of her way to walk me from the subway station to my hostel in Tokyo or joining forces with a group of Brits to board the packed bus to see the Terracotta Warriors in Xian, China. Living in Vancouver, I’ve played the role of informant more times than I can count. Historically, there have been no shortage of lost tourists emerging from the Canada Line station looking to find their way to Queen Elizabeth Park. I get why some find these interactions intrusive, but I enjoy the chance to share what I know and make visitors feel welcome.

Recently, though, I’ve found those interactions are fewer and fewer. Tourists at the station are now more likely to huddle around a phone screen trying to orient themselves to digital maps than they are to catch the eye of a friendly stranger. Rather than ask for a random local’s recommendation, they carry the marching orders of their favourite influencer or even an AI travel advisor. Faces buried in their phones, these tourists see locals going about our lives as little more than non-player characters in their curated adventure.

The bus I took in Cancún was a veritable chariot compared to the city buses of my childhood and youth where sweat dripped from the hairy armpits of riders hanging from the overhead bar. This bus had new seats and air conditioning. Sleepy hotel workers in their many uniforms spoke in soft voices or dozed. The biggest drama came when a couple of men got on in house painter’s whites carrying an awkwardly large ladder. There were no announcements of the stops, but I managed it by keeping my eye out for the grocery store the front desk clerk had mentioned in his directions.

It wasn’t until I tried to make my way back after an evening of tacos, Micheladas and traditional dance in Parque de las Palapas that I ran into trouble. As my partner and I waited for our bus, the traffic on busy Avenida Tulúm mysteriously disappeared and police began setting up barriers. In a place where taxis are notoriously unreliable and the heat makes long walks a sweaty impossibility, we were stranded.

Panic had begun to set in when a woman carrying two large shopping bags stopped my partner to tell him what was happening and offer to help us find the next stop. We didn’t talk much as she guided us down the street, but I found myself thinking about how her short hair and wire glasses reminded me of my art school colleagues back home. “The stop is just down here,” she said with an encouraging smile, pointing us along a street we would never have found on our own, and went on her way.

After, I realized this was one of the few interactions I had in Cancún that wasn’t mediated by the grinding force of commerce engendered by the extreme economic disparity between locals and tourists. This was just a stranger who took a moment out of her day to share her knowledge with a couple of lost tourists, and I couldn’t be more grateful. I hope to have a chance to pass the favour along soon.

Travel has become smoother thanks to the technology we all carry in our pockets, but it’s also a lot less personal. It’s easy to navigate a new city using Google maps and Reddit but that ease has come at the cost of a myriad of interactions with locals and fellow travellers. Sometimes, those encounters develop into wild side journeys, but most are just an opportunity to share a brief moment of human kindness.

How has technology changed your travel habits? Do you love public transit as much as I do? Share your thoughts with me below (or on Instagram or Bluesky or Threads or whatever you’re using these days)! If you'd like to read more or subscribe for very occasional updates, you can do so here.