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

Autumn Travel......  I work and live in the tropics so the changing of seasons don't really apply to me. But actually they do, because I love to travel to temperate countries during the autumn season. Why? Because the weather is cooler, the peak summer travel season is over, hotels and air tickets are generally cheaper and there are less crowd everywhere. Coming from the tropics, I can indulge in wearing my thicker clothing items such as my hoodies, wool sweaters and also dabble in wearing layered clothing, something that I cannot do in warm and humid Singapore! This year has been a pretty barren one for me in terms of travel. Into the ninth month of the year and I had only went on one actual vacation; my budget train journey from Bangkok to Singapore, in May and June 2024. My other trips; one to Ipoh in February was for the Chinese New Year Holidays to meet family and friends so it cannot really be counted as a vacation. The other trip was a 4-night return cruise from Singapore to...

Visiting Japan in Autumn......  Two months ago, I was writing in my Travel Bits series about travels becoming more expensive by the day, week, month and year. I also wrote about constantly scouring the internet for deals on air tickets and accommodation.  During one of these searches, I managed to score a good deal on a return-air ticket from Singapore to Tokyo. And because I had been on the lookout for such deals for the past half year, I knew a good deal when I saw one. Without any hesitation, I booked and paid for my air ticket. A day later, that same return air ticket to the same destination on the same outbound and inbound flight dates and times, had changed, It was 15% more expensive than what I had just paid a day ago. Today, two weeks later, I checked again for the same flights and the prices have now gone up  by close to 30% from what I had paid. For folks like myself with a limited travel budget to work on, the 30% price difference can make or break a trip....