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

Estonia, Tallinn, Praying at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral This article was originally published in this blog in June 2018. Visiting the Baltic region for the first time in 2017, I was both amazed and impressed by what I experienced. As I travelled around the region, the ticks in my personal Travel Bucket List keep growing. This is a region deep in history and culture. It will take many trips over the coming years to fully appreciate what the region has to offer to travellers like myself. I will surely return for subsequent visits. ****************** Tallinn is both the capital city as well as cultural heart of Estonia. Located on the shores of the Baltic Sea, the city of Tallinn is both a reflection of new and old. The recent economic growth of Estonia has transformed the country greatly. Evident of this is everywhere including in Tallinn itself, mostly represented by gleaming, neat and artfully designed office towers. Yet, with its UNESCO World Heritage Site-inscribed ...

This morning, I received an email from the airline that I was booked with for my travel to a neighbouring country next month.  The email was a kind and helpful gesture from the airline as it provides a checklist of the pre-travel actions that I need to take prior to the trip, the various documentations required and getting all paperwork in order before the trip starts. Besides serving as a checklist on the  tasks I have to complete for a smooth trip, it also serves as a reminder to me that traveling again after more than 24 months will be a vastly different experience. Things are just no longer the same as pre-COVID.  The onerous tasks required to ensure COVID vaccinations certificates and pre-trip COVID test results are validated and submitted on time, ensuring that travel insurance covers COVID-related medical expenses up to an amount dictated by the host country, getting both hard and soft copies of all documents in order and bringing them along with me to the airport ...

Getting back into the groove....... As countries slowly but cautiously peel back border restrictions in an attempt to revive battered economies and move to live with COVID-19 in the so-called endemic state, things are starting to look a lot brighter. While a few countries are still trying to beat COVID-19 with zero infection strategies, the rest of the world is finally coming together again and re-opening to each other. The hermit-like style that has defined my life since March 2020 has also slowly taken a back seat. I have been going out of my home a little more, cautiously but surely. Work and social life have both taken on a more physical and personal approach as opposed to being just a small screen on those online meeting places. All said, I still take personal precautions such as being fully masked whenever I am out and about, even keeping my mask on at all times while attending work meetings. Additionally, I also avoid crowded places as much as possible and try to time my journey...

Visiting the S.E.A. Aquarium at Singapore's Sentosa resort island left me both amazed and bewildered at the amount of sea life on display. What impressed me most are the efforts of the Aquarium to (as close as possible) present the animals in their natural environments and their efforts at encouraging conservation of our global marine life and environments. This was my first visit to the aquarium and it was time and effort well spent for me. I got to observe marine life in their natural aquatic environments in a way that no video or photographs can ever replicate. I will certainly be back for repeat visits in the near future. Moray Eels, S.E.A. Aquarium, Sentosa, Singapore (2022)

"Do not be afraid to get lost on your travels, You will only find yourself after you got lost." -  Anonymous Street Art, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia (2017)