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

Singapore, Turtle Island Off the southern coast of Singapore lies many small and beautiful islands that one do not normally associate with a high-tech driven city. But herein, havens of tranquility, nature, beautiful beaches, turquoise-coloured waters and wide-opened spaces offer unique escapades from the busy city-life of mainland Singapore. That all these islands can be reached within half an hour by ferry makes traveling there even more appealing. UNESCO World Heritage Sites these islands are not. But they definitely do qualify as  personal Bucket List items . In this blog post, I am featuring one of these island. Kusu Island is where one can find several shrines, nice beaches and yes, many turtles (mostly red-eared sliders,  Trachemys scripta elegans). ****************** Kusu Island, a.k.a. Turtle Island in the local dialect, is also known as Pulau Tembakul in Malay. Lying less than 6 km from mainland Singapore, Kusu I...

  Looking on in envy....... The United States and Europe are slowly opening up for leisure travel while here in Asia, things look almost exactly the same as they were in 2020! While some Asian countries have relatively low Covid-19 infection rates compared to the US and Europe, they are firmly standing their grounds to stay shut. This is reflected in countries like Australia, New Zealand and Japan amongst many others. Australia and New Zealand are now like impregnable fortresses to foreign arrivals. Meanwhile, even though Japan is looking forward to hosting the Olympics next month (July 2021), it is at the same time saying that no foreigners are allowed into the country, wherever you are from. Such "disconnect" in policies is hard to fathom. I am not sure if policy makers are simply being too conservative or too cautious or both. Whatever it is, this continual shutting off from the World is having very damaging effects on their local hospitality and tourism industries. As Asi...