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

Safeguarding important personal belongings when travelling....... Over dinner with friends during the weekend, one of them related to us about an incident in his recent  trip to Europe. He was on a group tour and one of the travellers in the group had lost her passport as well as all her cash and credit cards. She was the victim of a pickpocket. Apparently, the act occured while the group was in a small crowded lane while moving from one point in the city to another. The pickpocket (or pickpockets) must have had made use of the confusion and the crowd to carry out the theft. The aftermath of that incident effectively ruined the victim's trip. She was left without her important travel document which also happened to be her only form of identification in a foreign land. And she was also left penniless as all her cash and credit cards had been stolen. Thankfully for the lady, my friend loaned her cash and assisted her to contact the nearest diplomatic representati...

Connecting Flights....... This coming weekend, I will be traveling to Taipei (TPE) via Hong Kong (HKG). Because my flights were booked on different airlines under different booking codes, I have to collect my check-in luggage upon arrival in HKG from SIN, clear immigration and customs, check-in again for my next flight from HKG to TPE, go through immigration again as well as the necessary security checks before I can emerge airside at the airport for my connecting flight. Departure Hall of the Hong Kong International Airport, Hong Kong SAR, China (2017) Sounds like a hassle? Not when I will be flying J-Class (a.k.a. Business Class) on both sectors from SIN to HKG via SQ (Singapore Airlines) and HKG to TPE via CX (Cathay Pacific) on tickets paid with air miles. Sure, there are hassles with the connecting flights on 2 different airlines with different booking codes but they are worth it.  In order to ensure that I have a seamless transit at the Hong Kong ...

Air Miles, are they worth the hassle? We have all read and heard of folks flying premium classes on 5-star airlines without paying a dime. And there are loads of articles, many of which I believed are sponsored, which attest to the realities of these free-of-charge luxuries in the air. Are there any truths to these fairy tales of the air? If you noticed that I had used the words "fairy tales" to describe these stories circulating wildly on social media, then you probably would also have catch that I don't really believe in these tales. Truth is, I don't believe and here are the reasons why. My cup of gourmet coffee served onboard the Business Class cabin of a Singapore Airlines (SQ) flight from Singapore to Hong Kong (2017) First things first, there are no such things as "free stuffs". Air miles come with loads of terms and conditions and they are by no means easy to earn. To get those so-called free tickets on First or Business Class on a...

While traveling to Tokyo in October 2014, I chanced upon a seasonable promotion by Cathay Pacific (CX) which offered relatively reasonable rates on Business Class from Singapore (SIN) to Tokyo (TYO), with a stopover transit in Hong Kong (HKG). Although there will be a 3-hour layover at the Hong Kong International Airport, this did not deter me simply because I could make use of the Business Class lounges at the airport while waiting for my connecting flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo. And so I went on to book my flight tickets on 'I' Class. The flights on both legs of my trip from Singapore to Hong Kong onboard CX2710 and from Hong Kong to Tokyo's Narita airport (NRT) onboard CX500 were great. The service were as often, excellent and the inflight products were simply amazing. Here are some pictures taken of the inflight meals which I enjoyed en-route from Singapore to Hong Kong onboard Flight CX2710.  The Cathay Pacific Boeing 777-300 getting ready for passe...