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

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 destinatio...

I had previously posted articles about going analogue and using physical notebooks for my daily and travel journaling. While it can be cumbersome to bring along physical writing materials as I go about my daily schedule or during my travels, nothing beats having physical pens, pencils and notebooks to write with. Physical writing helps me relax and unlocks my mind as I pen down my thoughts and experiences. Most people I know maintain just one physical journal for everything. I like this concept but for me, I prefer to compartmentalise my writings separately in different journals. The burden of bringing more notebooks in my bag is "lightened" by using simple minimalist-designed notebooks. I thus have a combination of standard A5-sized notebooks, the slim A5-height Traveler's Notebook (TN) in their so-called Regular Size and of course, smaller TNs in their Passport Size editions. I usually don't carry with me any physical notebooks bigger than A5 in size due to weight a...

As digital technologies and devices continue to take over our daily lives and habits, I now try to "digitally detox" myself whenever I travel. While my work dictates that I cannot fully rid myself of my digital communications channels even when I am on vacations, I have tried to limit time spent on my digital devices in my recent trips. And I will continue to do so in the future. Work aside, I believe we had all spent a fair bit of time reading news, checking in on social media and even doing some online shopping while we were traveling. Besides, what was there to do if we happened to be chilling out in a cafe in a nice Tokyo suburb or dining at an eatery by a picturesque riverside along the Mekong River? Enough of that, for me at least. I have decided that books and journals are the way to go when I travel. Conversations with people around me; with my travel partners, fellow travelers, folks working at the cafes or the locals. Through conversations, I discovered whole new wo...

These days, I realised I have become more conservative in my dressings when I travel. I had always dressed conservatively back at home and at work due to the nature of my profession and the industry that I am in. That has not changed and will likely remain unchanged. But, whenever I travelled on vacation, I tended to let my hair down a fair bit when it came to choice of clothing. I had written all that in the past tense because I realised, those days of past were indeed that, the past! Not that I am consciously doing that, as in dressing more conservatively when I travel. But somehow, that change just crept in without me realising it. Until, I started to look at the photos of myself in my recent trips. Is it because of age? Or is it because I have somehow got brain-washed by the mainstream media that everything nowadays have to be politically correct, freedom of choice and thoughts be damned? Maybe yes, may not. I don't know for sure. But dressed conservatively I did. Browsing thro...

As I geared up for my upcoming month-long multi cities trip across several counties in Asia, I am starting to wonder if I have missed out anything. Travel documentations, accommodation bookings, inter-city transportations, air tickets, travel insurance and more are all in order. At home, I have made arrangements for my pets to be taken care of and my plants to be watered at regular intervals. Pre-travel, I have done all the laundry, paid all my upcoming bills, make sure my phone apps are all updated and decided on which work laptop to bring along for the trip. Yes, I am never far from my work, thanks to the wonders of modern technologies!  But, there is always this nagging feeling that I have missed out something, only to find out when I am abroad! Well, I will only know when the time comes. Meanwhile, I am only left with my luggage to pack, to decide what clothes to bring along and of course, my writing instruments (pens and pencils) and materials (inks, refills and notebooks) to ...

With world travel, both business and leisure, now firmly back on track in most parts of the world and the need for cumbersome documentations and proof of medical vaccinations on the back burner, many around the world have rediscovered the magic of travel again. For businesses, nothing beats an in person meeting as opposed to speaking through the camera and microphone of a laptop computer. For leisure travellers, nothing beats seeing another city and its landmarks in person than through photographs, whether these are printed or digital. Personally, I had been on six trips in 2022 compared to just a single trip in 2020 (pre-COVID) and zero in 2021. This year, I had already been on two short trips and have a long month-long pan-Asian trip  confirmed for August. My travel year for 2023 will be rounded up by a year-end retreat at a beach and mountain location. Physical trips aside, I had also recently purchased some writing instruments with travel themes serving as inspirations to their...

While I have made plans and confirmed my air tickets and hotel accommodation for my upcoming short trip to Hong Kong in the later part of this week, I just couldn't resist clicking on the "Buy" buttons of some online web-stores due to the amazing promotional prices on offer.  Seeing that their "promised" delivery dates will be just-in-time for me to receive these items right before I jet off to enjoy Hong Kong's delicious food, the "scheduled" delivery dates for the same items after I made my payments had quickly "shifted" to a few days, later! Now, this is going to be a problem. If the said deliveries are going to be happening when I am away, then there is no way either myself or anyone else can be at home to receive the parcels because I don't stay with family. Moral of the story? Always assume the "promised" delivery dates of online platforms as "expected" or "estimated" dates rather than dates cast in...

I usually do not have a detailed to-do list prepared for any of my trips. I am a traveller who prefers to take things easy and enjoy the unplanned chanced encounters; whether it is a trip experience or making a new friend during my travels. The only planned items in my leisure travel are hotel accommodations and airplane, train or bus tickets, especially if my itinerary includes commuting between cities. Anything else is left to chance. For my upcoming trip to Hong Kong next month in the first week of May, I do have a couple of to-do items lined up though. In a dinner conversation with friends over the weekend, I was reminded that there have been some new places of interests in the city. And one among these certainly raised my interest. This is the new Hong Kong Palace Museum. Only officially opened in July 2022, the museum is located in the West Kowloon district and showcase artefacts from the National Palace Museum in Beijing's Forbidden City. Having never visited Beijing before,...

With the blink of an eye, the year 2022 is history, 2023 is the present and 2024 is the immediate beyond.  2022 will be remembered as the year when international travel was allowed to resume, the year when supply chains were the main talking points of economists, logisticians and politicians alike, and also the year when the world suddenly becomes a lot more unfriendly. On a more personal note, I started leisure travel again in  May 2022 and completed a total of six trips for the year. Not revenge travel to compensate for my hermit lifestyle in 2020 and 2021 but merely seizing the chance to explore the world again and reconnect with relatives and friends living in other parts of the world. The last two months of the year had been tough for me. In the middle of October, I had stupidly took on a full-time appointment. Saddled with sisyphean tasks that even the legendary Hercules himself will be hard pressed to fulfil, I decide to throw in the towel, raise the white flag and retu...

A recent trend on social media is to have one's selfies being digitally transformed into anime renditions of oneself. For those who are not familiar with the term anime, it is basically animations of hand or digitally drawn stylised characters that originated from Japan. Because I am currently unable to travel due to heavy work commitments, I decided to "travel" digitally into the world of anime using selfies of myself taken during my travels.  Travel is after all not just physical journeys but also journeys of the creative mind! Here are some of my photos, transformed into anime character(s) of myself. Digitally generated characters of what I would possibly look like if I live in an anime world! 😂 The original photo from which this digitally generated picture of Anime Timothy was taken in Busan, South Korea (2019)  A semi-accurate rendition of myself in anime-style. The original photograph was that of myself taken in the balcony of a cruise ship somewhere along the Stra...

After the boredom of 2020 and 2021 that is synonymous with stay-at-home, work-from-home and what have you, 2022 has seen leisure travel resuming; a little at  first and then gradually creeping back more and more as pandemic-related border restrictions were lifted.  Personally, I have joined in the worldwide phenomenon in releasing the pent-up demand for leisure travel even though I am currently only travelling regionally. Why so? Cost is the main driver in my choice of travel destinations. I do not have a large travel budget. Thus, I decided that several short regional trips beats one single distant trip. The resumption of leisure travel and the demand that comes with it seems to have caught many airport authorities and airlines by surprise. We have all read about the long queues at airports, the missed connections, flight cancellations and lost baggages hobbling travellers. However, such travel chaos are affecting different regions of the world differently. In my part of the ...

After more than two and a half years, I finally resumed leisure travel again in May 2022. My first time travelling overseas for leisure in almost 30 months seemed like a dream came true. While I did not travel far, only taking a road trip from Singapore to neighbouring Malaysia, it was still a joy to finally be able to travel again. While there are a number of "new" procedures that I had to follow as part of the so-called new normal post-pandemic, I was glad that I still managed to successfully followed all these procedures and proceeded with my recent travels without any hiccups. Yes, new procedures meant extra cost and also more pre-travel administrative tasks unlike pre-pandemic leisure travel. But I was nevertheless thankful that leisure travel has now been made possible in many countries and regions of the world. As I look forward to a few more overseas leisure trips this year, I hope that most of my readers have also began to travel again, or at least start to make plan...

Having lived marooned in my city for the past 30 months, I had in the last three weeks completed two overseas trips; the first was a driving trip from Singapore to Ipoh and Cameron Highlands in Malaysia and the second was a flight to Cambodia's Siem Reap. With no trips scheduled in the month of June, I was planning on catching up on work, writings and readings while waiting for my upcoming first ever cruise experience. I had booked the 4-day, 3-night cruise to nowhere in the last week of April; intending to savour the experience of cruise life for the first time since I have never been on a cruise before. Even though it was a cruise to nowhere where the cruise embark and disembark at the same port in Singapore without stopovers in any other ports, I reckoned back then that it was something worth paying for because one never knows when some nasty pandemic surprises may rear their ugly heads again to put all travels back to a standstill. This morning, I woke up to emails in my inbox ...

A couple of articles back in this blog, in the April 2022 edition of Travel Bits , I wrote about my envy of friends who were all already embarking on their long awaited travels, visiting faraway and beautiful places in Africa, Europe and the United States. In that blog post, I also complained about my inability to embark on any travel plans so far because of a perfect storm of relatively high travel costs, the hassles of overcoming COVID-related border measures and restrictions and also schedule conflicts and procrastinations on my part. Well, complaints no more. In the short span of just an April week, I had booked 2 additional trips for this year. But as I remained firmly as a traveller who abjures onerous travel-related hurdles, these 2 trips were chosen mainly because they present the least restrictions and requirements. No pre-trip testings, no pre-trip submission of lots of paperwork, no pre-trip loading and seeking approval on poorly-designed apps and the likes of these. The fir...

So, here I am. On a Saturday afternoon and still sitting in my work chair at my home office working away on my laptop, having just downloaded a bunch of work emails from my clients with lots of pending-to-do stuff requests. With borders thrown open, albeit with some rules and the usual terms and conditions attached, why am I not travelling the world but still stuck in my little man-cave working away? The simple answers are rules (and more rules) and budget. Let's first get to the "rules" part. Many moons ago, I had mentioned in more than just a few posts on this blog about travelling to a neighbouring country now that travel rules are more or less more relaxed for leisure travel. Well, rules have certainly been a lot more relaxed than say, a couple of months back. But still, there are red tapes to cross and bureaucracy to navigate. Ever sine the dawn of the Covid era in March 2020, almost every country and territories in the world have their own version of a mobile app me...

It is looking increasingly likely my upcoming trip to Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh later this month will need to be postponed. Work-related deadlines being brought forward translates to a need for me to be in town. Thus, travelling during this period seems to be a no-go. Looks like I will continue to be stuck in my Fortress of Solitude for the foreseeable future. 😅 For now, I can only flip through the travel photographs posted by my friends on social media as consolation. Bummer....... On a brighter note, I hope travel-related restrictions and requirements will be further relaxed in a couple of months when I can finally embark on my long and eagerly awaited cross-border trips. Personal Fortress of Solitude a.k.a. the town that is my home, Bukit Panjang, Singapore (2017)

This morning, I received an email from the airline that I was booked with for my travel to a neighbouring country next month.  The email was a kind and helpful gesture from the airline as it provides a checklist of the pre-travel actions that I need to take prior to the trip, the various documentations required and getting all paperwork in order before the trip starts. Besides serving as a checklist on the  tasks I have to complete for a smooth trip, it also serves as a reminder to me that traveling again after more than 24 months will be a vastly different experience. Things are just no longer the same as pre-COVID.  The onerous tasks required to ensure COVID vaccinations certificates and pre-trip COVID test results are validated and submitted on time, ensuring that travel insurance covers COVID-related medical expenses up to an amount dictated by the host country, getting both hard and soft copies of all documents in order and bringing them along with me to the airport ...

Recently, I have been toying with the idea of going on a cruise. Due to pandemic-related restrictions in my part of the world, the only cruise trips that are considered doable and hassle-free currently are short cruises to nowhere. These typically entail between 3 to 5 nights stay on a cruise ship which will leave port, sail into the nearby international waters and then returning to the same port. Voila , no quarantine measures required after returning back to shore! Okay, I must admit that I had been swayed by the many photographs posted by friends on social media who had went on such cruises and they all seemed to be having lots of fun. Truth be told, I had not been on a cruise before. While I had sailed across the Baltic Sea from Helsinki to Tallinn and back, those 2-hour plus trips do not qualify as "cruise experiences". Maybe, just maybe, I will soon book a short 4-day, 3-night cruise to nowhere. Just to keep up with the proverbial Joneses. 😇 Update #1 (25th January 202...

Christmas is almost upon us again. This is usually the time of the year when life slowed down and working folks like myself take a well-deserve break to unwind, gather with family and friends to celebrate the end of another year and also to take some time to review the happenings of the year and plan ahead for the new year. In "normal" times, I would typically had already planned a trip to enjoy winter and the Chirstmas-ty festivities in North America or Europe. But this year, just like the year before, is not "normal" times. So no leisure travel for me. Instead of visiting Christmas markets in winter, I have to contend myself with celebrating a tropical Christmas at home right here in South-East Asia. For the past 2 years, I had saved much on travel and those savings had been wisely, poured into long-term investments. But given a choice, I would rather spend some money on travel now instead of trying to save more for that proverbial rainy day. I am no spendthrift b...

So here we are, almost heading into the third year of a worldwide pandemic and counting. The past couple of days were marked by the news of the discovery of a new and potentially more nasty COVID-19 variant, named Omicron. That news had triggered panic and resulted in routs on stock markets worldwide from Asia to Europe.  Countries hastened to protect their citizenry and started to issue travel restrictions on areas where this new virus variant had surfaced. This confirmed that my decision not to jump on the bandwagon of leisure travel from the recent loosening of travel restrictions to be a correct one. Imagine having my trips all booked and paid and now having to deal with the hassle of untangling the administrative mess with multiple parties involving trip re-bookings, postponements and cancellations. Indeed, now is really not the time to embark on leisure travel. With these uncertainties hovering over my potential travel plans like the proverbial Sword of Damocles, my pass...