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

Singapore , where I was born and grew up in and still live in, has always been compared to Hong Kong . While both cities have their similarities, they also have their unique differences which defined each city it each own right. I was first "introduced" to Hong Kong as a kid when I watched Hong Kong-produced TV dramas with my family. Then, I started listening to Canto-pop, basically pop songs by Hong Kong artistes. While I was not conversant in the Cantonese dialect then, I did slowly picked up the language due to constant exposure. Today, I still do not consider myself conversant in Cantonese. But I can at least understand the dialect when someone speaks to me in it. I will try my best to reply in Cantonese, peppered with Mandarin of course. For the record, I am an ethnic Chinese with Hokkien ancestry . However, I have no known living relatives in China or the province of Fujian , just to digress a bit from the focus of this blog post. Back to why I love Hong Kong and fin...

Travel Year 2026 has commenced.......  I am a little late with my monthly Travel Bits post for this month because I had been traveling and only just returned home less than a week ago. Then, there were the office work, the home chores and of course, the usual procrastination to deal with before I could actually sit down and start writing this blog post. Truth be told, I am behind in lots of work and chores but I will just have to manage each task as they come! So where have I been traveling to? I started the year with a trip to the airport on 1 January 2026 for my 1.30am flight on 2 January to Hong Kong. I was actually on my way from Singapore to Osaka but transited in Hong Kong to meet my partner at the Hong Kong International Airport before taking the onward flight to Osaka.  It was a really short trip to Japan as we only had 6 days before we need to return to Hong Kong and Singapore respectively. This was because I had a cruise scheduled on 8 January from Singapore to Pena...

After a very good dinner, I was window shopping in Sha Tin's New Town Plaza when I discovered a beautiful rooftop garden. While the rooftop garden is beautiful, I find the view from this vantage point even more awesome. High hills with residential buildings in the background and children playground in the front, both nicely illuminated by man-made neon lights as well as the fading natural light from the dusk sky.  A photo opportunity that I simply could not resist. Rooftop garden with an awesome view, New Town Plaza, Sha Tin, New Territories, Hong Kong, China (2025)

This was my fifth cruise overall on Royal Caribbean's (RCL) ships and my first time cruising onboard Ovation of the Seas . The ship was on its re-positioning cruise from Brisbane and I boarded it in Singapore as it continued on its way to Vietnam , Hong Kong and Okinawa . My cruise was only from Singapore to Hong Kong in April 2025. It was a 5-night cruise with a single stopover in Vietnam's Chân Mây Port . Ovation of the Seas at port,  Chân Mây,  Huế Province, Vietnam (2025) On boarding day in Singapore, we boarded the ship on time at 11am as scheduled. This being my fifth time onboard a RCL ship, I was rather familiar with the embarkation day procedures, including heading straight for the safety briefing before taking the elevator to Deck 14 for my lunch at Windjammer .  Since it was only 11am, Windjammer was still not really crowded. It usually got really crowded around 12pm onwards when one could start to see folks walking around looking for tables. Rooms were usu...

Another month, another weekend trip.....  Just last week, I returned from another weekend trip to Hong Kong . This was my 4th weekend trip to Hong Kong this year and my 5th trip to this southern Chinese city in 2025. The last weekend of November will see me making another weekend trip to Hong Kong again.  Why so many weekend trips? Did I recently strike the lottery? Of course not! I travelled to Hong Kong so frequently recently to visit my partner who is a Hong Kong resident. During each trip, we spent time together. Being a local resident, my partner brought me to places in the city that I had known but never visited. And of course, this place being a foodie's paradise , I have started trying out lots of local food that I had never tried before despite numerous trips over the past years. This colourful building with clear blue sky in the background presents itself as a unique photographic subject, Sha Tin , Hong Kong, China (2025) Visiting and discovering new places and food ...

Busy work schedule impacting travel plans.....  The month of July 2025 and the upcoming month of August 2025 will see my work schedule spiked so high I can hardly find anytime for anything else besides work and more work.  I took a short weekend trip in mid-July to travel to Hong Kong to meet my partner. But even over that short weekend, I was so busy with work that I hardly had time for my partner except for a few moments in the evenings. Teams Meetings, Work Calls and the rush to churn out Project Documents and Reports were the orders of each day, weekends included. As my busy work schedule continues into August 2025, I am looking forward to a less hectic work schedule as the the final four months of 2025 beckon. In the last week of September, I will be travelling to Kuala Lumpur to attend a Pen Show . In-between, I need to plan short weekend trips to Hong Kong to spend time with my partner. Then in December, I am planning a trip to Japan . Hoping my travel plans for the f...

Busy months of work and travel await.....  The month of June and the next couple of months to follow will be busy ones for me, both in terms of work and travel. I will need to be working every day, weekends included. And when I travel, work will definitely be on the agenda every day. Finding the right balance between work and rest during this busy period will be critical to keep myself in peak condition to fulfil both my professional responsibilities and my commitments to my family. One key strategy is to manage situations as they happen, keeping my plans and daily schedule flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances. When this busy period is over, I will be writing in this column  to share how I navigate between a heavy and packed work schedule whilst still being able to travel regularly, at least regionally! 🌏 Latte and scones, Wan Chai , Hong Kong , China

Balancing Work-life in the month of May 2025.....  The month of May 2025 has been a busy month for me. My work-related projects all started getting into high gear. In-between, I managed to squeeze in a short 5-nights trip to Hong Kong . During the trip, I was still working remotely. Having online meetings with my clients and constantly on messaging apps with my colleagues. While I had visited Hong Kong many times before, there were still many things I get to experience for the first time during this trip. More on those experiences in a subsequent article to follow on this blog. My busy work life has translated into being a bit "laggy" when it comes to updating this blog and posting more articles. June and July are likely to be busy working months as well. Beyond these two months, hopefully things cool down a bit. I look forward to more short trips soon, especially in August, September and November.  I am still planning to go to Japan in winter but I cannot confirm this trip ...

Another cruise upcoming.....  My first trip of 2025 was a 8-nights cruise from Singapore to Bali and Lombok and back to Singapore onboard Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas in February and March. My next trip will commence in slightly more than a week from today, and it is another cruise. This time, I will be sailing one-way from Singapore to Hong Kong on a 5-nights cruise with a single Port Day in Vietnam's Chan May . One-way cruise entails a lot more logistics planning, including the booking of one-way air ticket to return home. As we all know, purchasing one-way tickets do not make much economical sense because it is usually a lot more expensive than paying for a pair of return air tickets; based on cost per flight mile. This is when my air miles , accrued over the years from my credit card usage and other flights come into play. When redeeming air miles for flight tickets, airlines typically charge based on per flight. Therefore, if I am to redeem a pair of return ...

For someone who plan and book my own travels every time, I still find it surprising how I can still make the most basic of mistakes; getting the travel dates in my itinerary all mixed up. Yesterday, I decided to book my accommodation for my trip to Hong Kong in April 2025 . I had already been booked on a 5-night cruise that will sail from Singapore to Hong Kong, scheduled to depart on 16th April. However, foolish me happily believed that since it is going to be a 5-night cruise, I will arrive in Hong Kong on 20th April. Nope, its 5-nights and not 5-days. This means I will only arrive in Hong Kong on 21st April. Before this realisation, I had happily booked my accommodation from the 20th April onwards instead of from the 21st onwards. Fortunately, I had chosen the higher-priced package that allows me to modify or cancel without penalty. Otherwise, it will be money down the drain. This mistake had also happened just 2 months prior when I was booking my airline ticket to another desti...

On a recent cruise onboard Royal Caribbean's Spectrum of the Seas , I visited Hong Kong for the first time via a port visit. While I had traveled to Hong Kong many times previously, all these visits were by air via either Cathay Pacific or Singapore Airlines . This was the first time I visited Hong Kong by sea! View of Hong Kong's water from onboard Spectrum of the Seas berthed at the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal , Hong Kong SAR, China (2023) The cruise ship was already berthed at the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal by the time I woke up lazily in my cabin at about 8am. After a quick breakfast at the Windjammer cafe at Deck 14, I disembarked from the ship and was soon onboard the free shuttle bus that ferried cruise passengers from the cruise terminal to different areas of the city. I chose to take the shuttle to Mong Kok and had a great time relaxing over aromatic coffee and delicious waffles whilst people watching at Langham Place . I also found time to shop at the many and varied reta...

Year 2023 Personal Travel Wrap-up......  And so, 2023 is nearing its goodbyes and we are all looking forward to a brand new year in 2024. For travelers, a brand new travel year beckons. Personally, 2023 marks the first year when leisure travel truly resumes, after 2020 and 2021. Yes, I traveled a fair bit in 2022 compared to the two preceding years. But travel in 2022 was tentative, punctuated by the need to handle cumbersome vaccination certifications submissions prior to each trip, downloading official apps from individual countries and registering on these apps before embarkation, masks wearing, expensive travel insurance as well as limitations in where one can travel to. All these requirements were thankfully, slowly peeled away towards the end of 2022. Year 2023 is when we feel like normal again. Truth be told, COVID-19 is still everywhere, endemic. However, a combination of annual vaccinations and naturally acquired immunity from previous infections by previous strains of the...

Month-long Pan-Asia Trip, East and South-Asia Asia This was a major trip which took me months to plan. Because there were many key details to follow such as accommodation, train travel times and inter-city transport connectivities, I had to cancel and re-book many of my hotels and train tickets bookings repeatedly. And also because I was visiting many of the places for the first time, my only source of information was from the internet. Not much of this information was accurate and some of the inaccuracies nearly resulted in me missing my inter-city connections. Lesson learnt and note to self, take information from the internet with a big pinch of salt! But this was a wonderful trip. I am unlikely to be able to go on such a long trip with so many different destinations in one single vacation again anytime soon. Work schedule always dictates that I can go away for at most two weeks at any one time. Thus, I was really glad I...