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

Israel, Caesarea The original article was first published in this blog in 2016.  Caesarea was an ancient port and administrative city on the Mediterranean coast of Israel.  Located between the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa, this ancient city sits within the Caesarea National Park. If you like history and are visiting Israel or the surrounding regions, I highly recommend a side trip to Caesarea.  For me, my visits to Caesarea were the fulfilment of a personal bucket list item.  ****************** Caesarea is a small town in central Israel. It is located along Israel's Mediterranean coastline and is situated 45km north of Tel Aviv and a similar distance south of the northern Israeli port city of Haifa. Caesarea was built sometime between 25 to 13 BC by Herod the Great (a.k.a. Herod I). In the Bible, Herod I was described as the ruler who ordered the "Massacre of the Innocents" based on a prophecy at the time of the birth of Jesus.  Walking amongst...

Travel Plans for 2023 .......  With the completion of a cruise trip on 31 October, I wrapped up my leisure travels for 2022. Following the pandemic-induced stay-within-home-city period which for me stretched from February 2020 to April 2022, I had the luxury to go on six trips in 2022. A trip to Ipoh and Cameron Highlands in mid-May was followed quickly by an escapade to  Siem Reap in the last week of that same month. My first ever cruise experience happened in July when I sailed with Royal Caribbean onboard its Spectrum of the Seas ship from Singapore to Penang and back to Singapore on a 3-night trip. In August, I visited Kuala Lumpur, the city I visited in January 2020 just before the worldwide pandemic struck.  A repeatedly postponed trip to Bali, no thanks to the pandemic, finally happened in the first week of October. In the last week of that month, I went on my second cruise trip. Again on Spectrum of the Seas, I sailed from Singapore to Port Klang, Penang...

  " Travel whenever you can, Choose your journeys, Live your adventures, Write your story. " - Timothy Tan, tankstraveltales Port Klang, Klang, Selangor, Malaysia (2022)

Mobile phones with good quality cameras are now an essential part of everyday life, travel included. Gone are the days when one has to bring along a chunky conventional camera when travelling so as not to miss those opportunistic photo moments that one is bound to encounter. Whilst on a recent cruise trip as I was sighted-seeing from the balcony of my cabin located at the back of the ship on Deck 13, I took this photograph. As the ship pulled out of Singapore's Marina Bay Cruise Centre and travelled along the Singapore Strait heading for the Strait of Malacca, I decided that this view of commercial shipping will be a good digital memento of my trip. This photo reminded me of the busy shipping that contributes to global trade and keeps the economies of many countries humming along nicely. Commercial Shipping, Singapore Strait, Singapore (2022)