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

For me, food is always a highlight of any trips. Local food, especially street food or hawker food is always a delight.  When it comes to hawker food, Malaysia certainly has a lot to offer. When I had a one-day stopover in Taiping  in Malaysia's Perak state during my South-East Asia Train Journey trip in May 2024, I seized the opportunity to savour as much local food as I possibly could eat. I was not disappointed, Every dish I ate was delicious and left me craving for more... 🍲 Claypot Rice, Taiping, Perak, Malaysia (2024) Chicken Noodles, Taiping, Perak, Malaysia (2024) Noodle Soup, Taiping, Perak, Malaysia (2024) Satay, Taiping, Perak, Malaysia (2024) Apom, Taiping, Perak, Malaysia (2024)

Revisiting places.......  I have a habit of re-visiting the same countries, same cities and same towns when I travelled on vacations. My creature-of-habit style even extends to the accommodations that I stay at, the places I dine in and even the stores that I shop with during trips. I always believe that on any first visits, we only have sufficient time to mentally decide whether we like a place, whether this place somehow struck a chord with us deep within and so on. On a second visit, we start to get to know the place as it grows on us. And from the third and subsequent visits onwards, we start to appreciate the place at a deeper level as we discover more and more about it, especially those proverbial off-the-beaten-track aspects of it. I start to make friends with the locals, true friendships that continue even after I returned home. We kept touch through social media, phone messages, phone calls and of course, in-person when I return for another visit. And these are the reasons...

In only my second visit to Siem Reap in May 2022, I had the chance to go around town sampling local food.  It was a delightful experience as I dined at small eateries and cafes alongside locals, ate what the locals ate and of course, saved a lot of money compared to if I were to dine out at expensive and touristy establishments. For me, part of the travel experience is to sample local food. Whenever the chance present itself, it is local food that I will choose, wherever in the world I visited.  Sampling local food is one of the joys of travelling, Siem Reap, Cambodia (2022)