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

Travel Reminiscing....... In a period where worldwide business and leisure travels are heavily curtailed due to a pandemic, the next best thing to satisfying the travel bug in all of us is to reminisce past trips.  Boat waiting to board passengers, Mal é , Maldives (2014) As part of my travel reminiscence, I started a 30-day Travel Reminiscing series of posts on my Instagram account (timothytanks) for the month of May 2020. For this series, I set a self-imposed limit of one post per country/territory/city. This is to allow me to recap and share 30 different destinations over the course of one month. The featured country/territory/city over the 30-days in chronological order were: Post 1.   Helsinki/Finland Post 2.   Nazareth/Israel Post 3.   Jiufen/Taiwan Post 4.   New Norcia/Australia Post 5.   Siem Reap/Cambodia Post 6.   Loch Ness/Scotland Post 7.   Kanchanaburi/Thailand Post 8.   Rome/Italy Post 9. ...

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore "  - Andre Paul Guillaume Gide Sandbank at low tide, Mahibadhoo, Maldives (2014)

Being environmentally-conscious during our travels....... We all know it from the well-publicised facts that the human race is causing huge changes and damage to the environment as our civilisation progresses. Yes, we cause damage to Mother Earth whether we are at home or traveling. But more so when we travel. Why is this so? Clear waters are a joy to look at and behold when we avoid pollution of our waterways , Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia (2016) Air travel contributes to many kinds of damage to the environment including carbon emission. As I am no environmental scientist or professional, I am unable to go into the details of all the damages, their causes and effects. What I know as a layperson is that whenever I fly, I contribute to environmental damage and degradation. While there is nothing much I can do about this, I can certainly help to be kind to the environment by generating less wastes in situations more controllable at the personal level. Plastics are a major...

To date, my one and only visit to the Maldives had been in August 2014. During that trip, I had stayed in one of the locally inhabited island of Mahibadhoo. Accommodation was booked via AirBnB and everything about the stay was no frills right down to the prices. It was a great experience to be able to live amongst and to interact with the local people on a day-to-day basis, even if this is only for that few days of a short vacation trip. Such experiences can not be replicated if one chose to stay cocooned in an expensive and sanitized tourist island in the Maldives. During my visit, I was not confined to just the island of Mahibadhoo. I also got to experience visiting other smaller islands as well, both inhabited and uninhabited. Getting to some of the sand banks that appeared or disappeared with the coming and going of the tides were extremely awesome experiences. I will return to the Maldives again because I generally love the sea and everything about the Maldives has to...

Pros and cons of group and solo trips....... I don't usually travel with friends not because I am an introvert But I personally prefer a more easy going style of travel where visiting each and every tourist attraction is not a must-do item for every location or city I travel to. I also enjoy a more laid back attitude when it comes to travelling where I take my time to enjoy the place, the culture and the locals instead of basing my daily plans on lists compiled from travel guides and magazines. Traveling with friends or in a group require that we put aside these personal preferences and go with the majority decision where itineraries are concern.  The Author, Timothy on a solo hike in the mountains, Takayama, Gifu Prefecture, Japan (2014) However, I do travel with friends whenever the opportunity present itself. And I do enjoy these trips. In short, traveling solo or with friends both have their pros and cons. And for certain trips, traveling with friends or in a group...

While vacationing in the Maldives in August 2014, I had to take an unplanned domestic flight from the island of Mahibadhoo to Malé to catch an international flight home to Singapore. This was due to bad weather resulting in rough seas which ruled out the usual boat transfer from Mahibadhoo to Male. The nearest domestic airport to Mahibadhoo is Maamgili Airport located in Alifu Dhidhdhoo Atoll (a.k.a. South Ari Atoll). A 25-minute speedboat ride from Mahibadhoo brought our travelling party to Maamgili Airport and we were booked on Villa Air's flyme for the short 30-minute domestic flight to the Malé s International Airport. The relatively low-altitude flight route treated those of us seated in the window seats to exhilarating views of the beautiful atolls of the Maldives. An awesome sight-seeing experience from the air which was totally unplanned. Villa Air's flyme operates the ATR 72-500 twin-engined turboprop aircraft and I was thrilled to take this picture of the ar...