Travel Bits: January 2026

Travel Year 2026 has commnenced....... 

I am a little late with my monthly Travel Bits post for this month because I had been travelling and on ly just returned home less than a week ago. Then, there were the office works, the home chores and of course, the usual procrastination to deal with before I could actually sit down and start writing this blog post.

Truth be told, I am behind in lots of work and chores but I will just have to manage each tasks as they come!

So where have I been travelling to? I started the year with a trip to the airport on 1 January 2026 for my 1.30am flight on 2 January to Hong Kong. I was actually on my way from Singapore to Osaka but transited in Hong Kong to meet my partner at the Hong Kong International Airport before taking the onward flight to Osaka. 

It was a really short trip to Japan as we only had 6 days before we need to return to Hong Kong and Singapore respectively. This was because I had a cruise scheduled on 8 January from Singapore to Penang and Phuket.

Despite the relatively short few days we had in Japan, we managed to cover quit a fair bit of places in Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto, While I had been to all three cities once before, I did not really had time in my previous visit to visit any places of note besides Osaka Castle. And because this was also my partner's first visit to these cities, thus almost everything we experienced during the trip were new to us. 

We finally got to visit the more famous (or should I write "touristy"?) places in Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto. Included amongst the many things we experienced for the first time were, dining on the famed Kobe Beef, walking along the river of Osaka's popular Dotonbori district, and visiting the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove in Kyoto.

The very cold winter weather in Japan during our visit did slow down our itinerary and it was a pained for me to walk because I had stupidly brought along two new pair of shoes for the trip. And those were the only pairs of shoes that I had during the trip.

Tsutenkaku Tower a.k.a. Osaka Tower, Naniwa-ku, Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan (2026)

Nevertheless, it was a really enjoyable trip for us and I was glad to be able to finally get to visit the places in Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto that I had seen so often on travel shows and read about in travel magazines.

Returning from Osaka via a red-eyed overnight flight from Hong Kong, I had to repack my luggage and leave for my cruise on 8 January within hours of reaching home. After boarding the cruise around noon and getting the keys to my cabin at 1pm, I was already so tired from being awake for more than 24 hours that I simply threw myself onto the comfortable bed and slept for two hours straight, re-charging my biological batteries!

 

Deck 15 of Ovation of the Seas, Straits of Malacca

I took it easy for the next 4 nights of the cruise, enjoying and pampering myself with the luxuries of cruising and finally, I returned to Singapore on Monday, 12 January.

It will be all work from now until the first week of February when I should be going on a short weekend trip to Hong Kong to visit my partner.

It has been a great start to my travel year for 2026! Tiring but awesome. 🌏