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

Switzerland, Interlaken, Valley of the Mountains This article was originally published in this blog in December 2018. This article captured my experience on what was my first visit to Switzerland and Interlaken in 2009. In this re-post, I had added more photographs taken during my trip. Most of these newly-added photographs had not been previously published in this blog or anywhere else. Excerpt from this blog post: "Staying in a valley amongst the mountains, even for only a few days, encapsulated visions that I had from my childhood years, to be able to live in the mountains and enjoy the beauty of nature. Goats, sheep, farms, wild berries, long hikes and rivers that run through valleys. In just a short few days at Interlaken, I experienced and truly enjoyed all these natural wonders and more. A personal bucket list item fulfilled." ****************** Located in a valley in central Switzerland, Interlaken its well-known as a resort town famous for its proximity to Jungfrau. 

Travel takes flight......  After close to two and a half years literally marooned in my home city, I finally started to travel again.  In the space of three weeks, I had travelled to Malaysia and Cambodia. My trip to Cambodia's Siem Reap was my first flight in 30 long months.  My trip to Malaysia was an enjoyable one, connecting with relatives and friends. We drove north, crossing the land border between Singapore and Malaysia's southern state of Johor before continuing northwards passed the other Malaysian states of Melaka, Negeri Sembilan, and Selangor and finally reaching the state of Perak and the city of Ipoh. A total driving distance of about 550 km. During my short one-week stay in Ipoh, I visited most of my favourite eating places, indulging myself and enjoying the culinary delights of Ipoh. Together with relatives and friends, we did a short 2-day, 1-night stay in Cameron Highlands, located on the border of the states of Perak and Pahang. At an elevation of between 800

    "To travel is to be curious ." -  Timothy Tan, author of this blog Artfully and beautifully-designed shopfront, Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan (2019) 

Having lived marooned in my city for the past 30 months, I had in the last three weeks completed two overseas trips; the first was a driving trip from Singapore to Ipoh and Cameron Highlands in Malaysia and the second was a flight to Cambodia's Siem Reap. With no trips scheduled in the month of June, I was planning on catching up on work, writings and readings while waiting for my upcoming first ever cruise experience. I had booked the 4-day, 3-night cruise to nowhere in the last week of April; intending to savour the experience of cruise life for the first time since I have never been on a cruise before. Even though it was a cruise to nowhere where the cruise embark and disembark at the same port in Singapore without stopovers in any other ports, I reckoned back then that it was something worth paying for because one never knows when some nasty pandemic surprises may rear their ugly heads again to put all travels back to a standstill. This morning, I woke up to emails in my inbox