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

Johor Bahru (JB) is located at the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia and is connected to Singapore via the Causeway , across the Straits of Johor. Due to its close geographical proximity to Singapore, as well as the favourable currency exchange rate between the Singapore Dollar (SGD) and the Malaysian Ringgit (RM), many Singaporeans and Malaysians working in Singapore, typically made day trips to JB via the Causeway. During these day trips, most travelers will dine and shop. It is not uncommon to see folks returning to Singapore from, JB in the late afternoons and evenings, laden with shopping bags. This happens on most days, not just the weekends. Although during weekends, the crowds crossing the Causeway are noticeably larger. Being someone who does not really enjoy being in a crowd, I mostly stay away from such day trips. On occasions when I drove across the Causeway, it was mostly to travel further inland into Malaysia, either to Kuala Lumpur or to Ipoh. But on one weekday after...

Currently in the midst of my 27-days Pan-Asia 2023 trip, I have been regularly recording my travel experiences on a daily basis. Due to patchy internet connectivity during large parts of my trip, I have mostly return to the "old ways" of recording events of my voyage, using the traditional pen-and-paper method.  As I am currently traveling with a bunch of my favourite fountain pens and journaling notebooks, this method has proved to be a reliable way for me to record and capture my daily adventures faithfully before fading memories fog out the details. In my current travel, I have been moving from city to city, lugging all my belongings with me. It was a tiring experience and one that is not really enjoyable. Nevertheless, I got to see and experience more things that I would otherwise be able to. In a day trip to Tsuruoka in Japan's Yamagata Prefecture, I managed to get a little off the beaten track and witnessed for myself the raw beauty of Japan's natural heritage a...