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

The Mekong is one of the longest river in the world. From the Tibetan Plateau, the Mekong flows through parts of China before entering Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Finally, ending in the South China Sea in southern Vietnam, the entire distance of the Mekong spans more than 4,300km. In Laos, the Mekong traverse the entire country. The importance of this mighty river in the lives of the people residing in the countries it flows through cannot be overstated. Many local communities depended on the Mekong in their daily lives in areas as diverse as transportation, fishing and agriculture.  While visiting Luang Prabang province of Laos, I had the chance to see the Mekong almost every day of my nearly week-long stay in the country. The photograph here was amongst the many that I took of the river and the activities around and in the river by the local residents. The boats shown in this photograph are used primarily for fishing and to a lesser degree, transportation.

Reading and Travelling....... What has reading got to do with travelling? Plenty of reasons. For me, reading up on the countries and cities I am visiting provide me with lots of information on the sights and sounds that I can expect. It also allows me to better plan my itinerary and help me to decide on where to stay and how much time to spend in a particular place. Other important information like currency exchanges, local culture and customs, potential immigration hurdles and visa applicabilities are also what I look out for when I read up on the places i am about to visit. Most of these information can be found in travel guides or on the internet. Dungeons and Dragons, a wall mural in a former dungeon and now a toilet, in a restaurant housed in a heritage building, Tallinn, Estonia (2017) And of course, reading about the experiences of other travellers provide me with a whole new world of information not usually available in officially published literature. For this r