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

Inspiration from Travel Programmes....... For most travellers, their typical travel itineraries will be planned around famous landmarks or icons. Some intrepid travellers will go further to explore the lesser known places, to experience things that the typical travellers will not get to enjoy. If we were to stay away from the famous landmarks and icons and instead ventured to explore the back alleys of the cities we had visited, what will be the kind of travel experiences that we will have encountered? Taking cues from some travel programmes which featured unexplored areas or back alleys of popular tourist destination cities, I had explored the suburban and back alleys of some of the cities I had visited. These included Nakano Ward of Tokyo which is just minutes away from crowded Shinjuku but seems like a world away when it comes down to ambience and crowd. A small shrine along the road, Nakano, Tokyo, Japan (2017) I had also travelled away from the city centre of G

Are short trips worth all the hassle? I am usually one who do not fancy the idea of short trips involving durations of 2 days/1 night or 3 days/2 nights unless these are overland trips to another city located within 100km of my home. However, at the urging of a friend and on the need to run a short errand, I just returned from a 3 days/2 nights trip to Bangkok this week. Bangkok is a 2-hour journey by flight from my home base of Singapore. Arriving at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport (a.k.a Bangkok International Airport, IATA: BKK, ICAO: VTBS) around 2.15pm local time, it took less than an hour for me to clear the necessary Immigration and Customs procedures before I'm on the subway from the Airport to the city.  Despite the short duration of this trip, I was not only able to complete my errand but also managed to take time out to shuttle around the city, enjoy the local food and even had time to sit myself in cafes to observe the mannerisms and dispositions of the