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

Hong Kong is a small city crammed with people and more people. Yet, Hong Kong is a very interesting place with just about anything and everything all packed into a small city with a total land area of about 2750 square kilometres.  In my many visits to Hong Kong, which is just under 4 hours by flight from my home in Singapore, I have almost always make it a point to visit the famed Goldfish Market. The name Goldfish Market is a slight misnomer. Because in the streets that make up this so-called Goldfish Market, shops lining the narrow streets peddled all kinds of tropical and marine fishes, besides the traditional goldfish.  Colourful freshwater shrimps for sale, Goldfish Market, Mong Kok, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China (2016) There are also many shops which sell reptiles including many types of Geckos as well as the occasional Chameleons. Various types of tortoises and turtles are also sold as pets here. These include species such as the Star Tortoises, Leopard Tortoises

Despite not being a large landmark by size when compared to the surrounding buildings and structures, the Hong Kong Clock Tower in Tsim Sha Tsui is one of the most iconic structures in the area. The lightings that highlighted the Clock Tower during the nights make this age-old icon an extremely photogenic subject. Different lightings illuminating this tower made it seem like a different tower each time I passed by this area whenever I was in Hong Kong. In my most recent visit to the city in August 2016, I happened to chance upon an extremely interesting light display on the Clock Tower. This special display was part of the city's 2016 Summer celebrations called the Pulse 3D Light Show. This picture was taken with my iPhone 6s Plus on 18 August 2016. Compare this to another photograph of the same Clock Tower taken in 2012 which was featured in one of my earlier post in June 2015: Hong Kong - Clock Tower . Pulse 3D Light Displays on the Clock Tower, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloo

While vacationing in the Maldives in August 2014, I had to take an unplanned domestic flight from the island of Mahibadhoo to Malé to catch an international flight home to Singapore. This was due to bad weather resulting in rough seas which ruled out the usual boat transfer from Mahibadhoo to Male. The nearest domestic airport to Mahibadhoo is Maamgili Airport located in Alifu Dhidhdhoo Atoll (a.k.a. South Ari Atoll). A 25-minute speedboat ride from Mahibadhoo brought our travelling party to Maamgili Airport and we were booked on Villa Air's flyme for the short 30-minute domestic flight to the Malé s International Airport. The relatively low-altitude flight route treated those of us seated in the window seats to exhilarating views of the beautiful atolls of the Maldives. An awesome sight-seeing experience from the air which was totally unplanned. Villa Air's flyme operates the ATR 72-500 twin-engined turboprop aircraft and I was thrilled to take this picture of the arr