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

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...

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...