TANKS Travel Tales - a travelogue.......

This was a hurried booking for an unplanned trip from Singapore to the city of Thiruvananthapuram in the state of Kerala, India in the month of April 2016. The trip resulted from an 11th hour decision to attend the wedding of a friend. The booking was done just a few days before the trip and I was lucky to still be able to get a seat for the flight. The only direct flight available from Singapore to Thiruvananthapuram was offered by SilkAir, the regional arm of Singapore Airlines. I have flew on SilkAir many times before on my trips around the South-East Asian region but this was by far my longest flight onboard a SilkAir flight.  Total flight time from Singapore's Changi International Airport (IATA: SIN, ICAO: WSSS) to Thiruvananthapuram's Trivandrum International Airport (IATA: TRV, ICAO: VOTV) is slightly over 4 hours. The route is usually serviced by either an Airbus A320-200 or A319-100 aircraft. As is common on all SilkAir flights, inflight service onboard Fl...

Returning from Orlando to Singapore during my recent trip to the United States, I had two transit stops  These transits were at the Denver International Airport in Colorado (IATA: DEN, ICAO: KDEN) and Narita International Airport in Tokyo (IATA: NRT, ICAO: RJAA). I don't usually have the habit of photographing the same plane that I was about to board for my trip probably because I was always busy walking around the airport taking photos of other planes as well as photos of planes taking off and landing at the runways. Thus this photo will probably count as the first time I did take a photograph of the plane I was about to board. This was also only the third time I had flew or about to fly on a Boeing 787 and my very first time on the 787-9 variant of the Dreamliner. My previous two Dreamliner flights were both on the 787-8 base model on All Nippon Airways (a.k.a. ANA) and United Airlines respectively. United Airlines Boeing 787-9 preparing for departure from Gate B32...

I missed writing and publishing my regular Travel Bits series for the month of May 2016 by exactly one week. But rather than miss it completely, I decided it is better to be late than never. And so, I went about penning and publishing this blog post on a Sunday afternoon to make up for it. :-) The last month had been an extremely busy one for me on the work front. However, just as I had an unexpected trip in April 2016 to Thiruvananthapuram (a.k.a. Trivandrum), I had another unexpected trip in May 2016. This was a last minute and hastily arranged work trip to Orlando in Florida of the United States to attend an industry conference. Dome of the Orlando International Airport (IATA: MCO, ICAO: KMCO) as viewed from within the airport's passengers sitting area near the Duty Free shops, Orlando, Florida, United States (2016) As usual with all my overseas trips regardless of whether these are for work or personal vacations, there are tons and tons of work to clear before, d...