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

Singapore, Mount Faber Despite being born and raised as well as living and working in Singapore for almost the entirety of my existence, I had never taken the cable car in Singapore before. This is despite that cables cars are not a rarity here and have been around for as long as one can remember. Eventually, I did get to try out a cable car ride in Singapore. And not just a ride. I had booked an in-car dining experience to celebrate New Year's Eve of 2020 and welcome the arrival of New Year's Day on 2021. What an experience! This article, posted in this blog in July 2021, is all about a personal bucket list item fulfilled. For me, a bucket list item don't have to mean traveling to the ends of the world, diving into the deepest oceans or climbing that highest peak. It can be anything that one has always want to try or do but has never get around to actually doing it. Its not about bragging rights or awesome materials to post on social media.  It is about achieving what one

Revisiting places.......  I have a habit of re-visiting the same countries, same cities and same towns when I travelled on vacations. My creature-of-habit style even extends to the accommodations that I stay at, the places I dine in and even the stores that I shop with during trips. I always believe that on any first visits, we only have sufficient time to mentally decide whether we like a place, whether this place somehow struck a chord with us deep within and so on. On a second visit, we start to get to know the place as it grows on us. And from the third and subsequent visits onwards, we start to appreciate the place at a deeper level as we discover more and more about it, especially those proverbial off-the-beaten-track aspects of it. I start to make friends with the locals, true friendships that continue even after I returned home. We kept touch through social media, phone messages, phone calls and of course, in-person when I return for another visit. And these are the reasons why

    Alight from the train am I, Into a land of bygones past, Walk the streets alone am I, Into eras of glories past. Marvels fill my brain, Flights of fantasies within, Thoughts flow like trains, Imaginations like fountains spring.  This, my journey begins, Air of excitement reigns, That, my adventure ends, A road well worth the time. - Journeys , an original poem by Timothy Tan, tankstraveltales On my second trip to Angkor Wat, Krong Siem Reap, Cambodia (2022)

With the blink of an eye, the year 2022 is history, 2023 is the present and 2024 is the immediate beyond.  2022 will be remembered as the year when international travel was allowed to resume, the year when supply chains were the main talking points of economists, logisticians and politicians alike, and also the year when the world suddenly becomes a lot more unfriendly. On a more personal note, I started leisure travel again in  May 2022 and completed a total of six trips for the year. Not revenge travel to compensate for my hermit lifestyle in 2020 and 2021 but merely seizing the chance to explore the world again and reconnect with relatives and friends living in other parts of the world. The last two months of the year had been tough for me. In the middle of October, I had stupidly took on a full-time appointment. Saddled with sisyphean tasks that even the legendary Hercules himself will be hard pressed to fulfil, I decide to throw in the towel, raise the white flag and return to my