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

Autumn season is here.....  Just to clarify, I live in a tropical city . Thus, there is no such thing as autumn. But I do travel. And when I travel, I love the mild cool weather of autumn. Personally, I dislike summer, anywhere in the world. The heat and humidity that characterise summer is something I do not enjoy. Maybe this is because I experience "summer" all year round where I live! Besides the uncomfortable heat and humidity of summer, the peak travel season that is summer also drives up prices of everything, from air tickets to accommodation. Even if prices do not factor into the budget of the well-off travelers, there is the issue of being able to book train seats and getting that restaurant reservation. But autumn is a different season altogether. The peak summer crowd is usually absent. The weather is mild and cool. The natural scenery usually spectacular in temperate countries as the leaves on the trees started to turn yellow, orange and bright crimson in colours...

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 Sin...

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....