Privacy and data

What this is

I am Mike Lee. I work in tech and have been keeping these travel notes for years. The site is the public version of that notebook. There are no ads, no sponsored placements, no affiliate links, no email signups, no accounts.

I treat the project partly as a way to test ideas for my professional career. Architecture choices, editorial tone, the data pipeline, the way structured fields meet personal prose: these are problems I think about in my day job, and the site is where I practice them in public on a topic I actually care about.

What the site collects

Four analytics tools, all aimed at making the site load faster and read better:

• Google Analytics 4. Which pages people land on, where they came from, how long they stay. Consent Mode v2 is on, so analytics fire only after you accept the cookie banner.
• Mixpanel. Which place actions people choose, plus foreground reading time and scroll depth. It is initialized only after you allow optional analytics, does not use account identities, and does not receive the destination path of external links.
• Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights. Server response times and Web Vitals. This is how I find out which page is slow on a real device.
• Supabase request logs. Server-side database operations only. No reader-level tracking.

That is the analytics list. There are no accounts, email collection, purchase flow, or reader profiles.

Maps, images, and external links

Interactive maps request styles and tiles from OpenFreeMap, whose map data includes OpenMapTiles and OpenStreetMap. Country flags may load from FlagCDN and circle-flags. Wikimedia Commons images may be requested directly or through the site’s image optimizer. Those providers receive ordinary web-request information such as IP address, user agent, referrer policy output, and the asset URL. Their terms and licenses are listed on the credits page.

Clicking an external source, venue, booking, or Google Maps link takes you to that provider, which then applies its own privacy policy. Google Maps is governed by the Google Maps Platform Terms and Google Privacy Policy.

What I do not do

I do not sell personal information, run an advertising network, accept public uploads, or offer a public posting flow. Reviews and uploads on the site are Mike’s own.

Where the data on the site comes from

Most of what you read mixes public sources (Wikipedia, Wikidata, UNESCO, Atlas Obscura, the Michelin Guide, OpenStreetMap, NASA POWER, regional flag libraries) with my own photos, ratings, and notes. The credits page maintains the provider, terms, and license registry. Public images keep their own author and license credit. Reviews and personal commentary are mine. Hours, prices, and policies change faster than a personal site can guarantee, so check the live source before booking.

If something looks wrong

If a fact is off, an attribution missing, a photo includes you and you would prefer it not, or you run a place that is described unfairly, message me on LinkedIn (opens in a new tab) and I will fix or remove it. The reviews are my own and I am happy to clarify how I arrived at one.

Cookies

Optional analytics storage is used only after you choose Allow in the banner. Choose No thanks if you prefer. Declining does not change anything you can read or browse here.

Contact

LinkedIn (Mike Lee) (opens in a new tab) is the canonical channel for anything related to this site. There are no comments here on purpose. A direct message is the way to reach me.