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

Visiting Japan in Autumn......  Two months ago, I was writing in my Travel Bits series about travels becoming more expensive by the day, week, month and year. I also wrote about constantly scouring the internet for deals on air tickets and accommodation.  During one of these searches, I managed to score a good deal on a return-air ticket from Singapore to Tokyo. And because I had been on the lookout for such deals for the past half year, I knew a good deal when I saw one. Without any hesitation, I booked and paid for my air ticket. A day later, that same return air ticket to the same destination on the same outbound and inbound flight dates and times, had changed, It was 15% more expensive than what I had just paid a day ago. Today, two weeks later, I checked again for the same flights and the prices have now gone up  by close to 30% from what I had paid. For folks like myself with a limited travel budget to work on, the 30% price difference can make or break a trip.  With my air ticke

Gearing up for my next trip......  In less than a week's time, I will be going on my planned vacation. This will be my second trip of the year. After this, I have no other trips either planned or confirmed for 2024. I am still trying to come to grips with the astronomical increase in travel costs. Thus, I have been searching and waiting for discount deals on flight tickets and accommodations, but no luck so far. And so, the search and wait continue. The coming trip is a relatively short and unadventurous 5 days/4 nights return cruise from Singapore to Penang and Phuket. I had booked this cruise sometime in the middle of last year, paying a lot less than what I would need to pay if I am to book a similar cruise itinerary today. And, I love the ship, Spectrum of the Seas. Sadly for me, this ship will leave Singapore next month (April 2024) for its new home ports in China. Thus, this will very likely be the last time I cruise on Spectrum unless it returns to be home ported in Singapor

Travel is getting expensive......  While working on my travel plans for 2024, I realised that travel is becoming really expensive. While I expect the usual price increases due to inflation, but the astronomical increase in ticket and accommodation prices far out-strip the percentage rises in inflation, at least based on my searches when checking out airline tickets and hotel accommodations. How this is so, I have no explanations. Add the fact that I am not traveling in luxury classes or staying in 5-star accommodations, the exponential increase in prices year-on-year is even more baffling. Admittedly, I am not backpacking or the like but still, middle-class travel is getting a bit out-of-reach and out-of-hand, pun intended. Thus, while I will still travel, I am cutting back on the number of trips and also on my discretionary expenses when traveling. No more souvenir hunting, no more buying something nice but my travels henceforth will focus merely on taking in the sights and experience

New Year and new Travel Plans......  2024 is in full swing and January is always the time when I map out my travel plans for the year.  What's been cooking in my travel plans pot? Nothing much really! At least not for the time being. Between the last week of January and first week of February, I am likely to embark on my annual road trip to Ipoh to spend Chinese New Year (a.k.a. Lunar New Year). This year's Chinese New Year falls on 10th and 11th February. I usually will start my trip before or after the festive period. This is to avoid the traffic jams at the border crossings between Singapore and Malaysia. This year will be similar, I will travel early to avoid the peak travel season chaos. Photographs of my trip to Ipoh in February last year, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia (2023) Next up will be a 4-nights round-trip cruise onboard the Royal Caribbean's Spectrum of the Seas from Singapore to Penang and Phuket. This will be my fourth time cruising on the same ship and probably the

Year 2023 Personal Travel Wrap-up......  And so, 2023 is nearing its goodbyes and we are all looking forward to a brand new year in 2024. For travelers, a brand new travel year beckons. Personally, 2023 marks the first year when leisure travel truly resumes, after 2020 and 2021. Yes, I traveled a fair bit in 2022 compared to the two preceding years. But travel in 2022 was tentative, punctuated by the need to handle cumbersome vaccination certifications submissions prior to each trip, downloading official apps from individual countries and registering on these apps before embarkation, masks wearing, expensive travel insurance as well as limitations in where one can travel to. All these requirements were thankfully, slowly peeled away towards the end of 2022. Year 2023 is when we feel like normal again. Truth be told, COVID-19 is still everywhere, endemic. However, a combination of annual vaccinations and naturally acquired immunity from previous infections by previous strains of the vir

Spontaneous Trip......  With the year-end festivity mood taking over, I decided to book a spontaneous trip to nearby Kuala Lumpur next week. Nothing fanciful, just a simple trip to eat, shop and relax. Since I returned from my month-long pan-Asia trip in August, I have been hard at work for the months of September, October and November, including working every weekend. With office schedule finally, and hopefully, clearing up a bit after those intense months of working almost non-strop, I decided to reward myself a bit with a short trip. Redeeming my air miles for the short 1-hour flight and booking a 4-night accommodation right in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, I am all ready to spend a few days sipping coffee at cafes, dining on delicious food and doing a little bit of shopping. I also plan to take some time off my mind to write. And of course, for the bookworm in me, I am definitely visiting bookstores to enjoy the ambience of being amongst books and will most probably buy a good read or

Journaling......  Journaling is my way of keeping memories. Journaling on the move, both overseas and local, helps me record experiences, events and notes as they happen. While there are many ways to journal, I personally prefer to journal the "old-fashioned and analog way". I write, with pens and notebooks.  I keep several journals all at once. The first is my personal journal. This notebook never leaves my desk. I use it to write about my days, not every day, but on days when I feel like writing.  On some days, there may be more than one entries. This is the beauty of journaling. There is no pressure to write. I only write when I feel like writing. It is a conversation with myself. What I wrote in this journal are meant for my eyes only. Next, I have a travel journal. This is another notebook which I only write in when I travel. Being a travel journal, I use this to record my experiences during my trips. Unlike the personal journal, this travel journal is usually not just a

Back from a month-long trip......  Home, from a fresh trip that lasted close to a month, I am currently buried up to my nose in work! Ah, the payments for my wanderlust. To be honest, even though I spent a small fortune on my month-long trip across Asia, these are funds that I had already budgeted and put away as spare money since last year. All my credit cards had been paid in full, maintaining my good credit score. That is how I can enjoy my vacations without having to worry about finances. Money matters aside now, in order not to digest from this month's edition of Travel Bits. 😆 After my long trip with many individual travel bucket list items fulfilled, I no longer have any major trips planned or booked. Apart from the yearly sojourns to nearby destinations such as Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and Bali, no major trips are in the horizon on my calendars. Ok, I do have an 8-nights cruise to Bali and Lombok booked. But that trip will only happen in February 2025. Who knows what the world w

In the midst of my Pan-Asia Trip 2023......  I am currently in the midst of my Pan-Asia Trip 2023. Today is Day 20 of my 27-day long journey across multiple countries and cities in Asia. As I sat in the cabin of my cruise ship writing this blog entry somewhere in the East China Sea heading towards the Taiwan Strait, I am still surprised that I am able to go on this trip despite my busy work schedule. If I had not pushed ahead with my travel plans, I will probably be back at home and office working. For the record, I still worked while traveling for the past 20 days. I took calls, answered work messages, replied to emails, conducted technical analyses and even managed to continue working on my next upcoming book. Thus, it had not been all fun and laughter for the past 20 days. I was heavily engaged in work and travelling at the same time. My point? Do not let your everyday affairs stopped you from traveling. Busy schedule? Try a work-around solution. Postpone the trip if you have to but

Gearing up for my vacation......  As I gear up for my upcoming month-long trip, I am busy trying to get as much work done as possible before I travel. While I will always have to work on-the-go, I at least try to keep that to a minimum because I wanted to use my "free" periods in the nights during the trip to write my book. Yes, I am writing a book of short stories.  In-between the sight-seeing and partaking in local festivities like a good old-fashioned tourist, I also intend to explore some other parts of the cities that I am visiting which are not considered "touristy". These will include the Yanaka and Kanda areas of Tokyo as well as some of the often over-looked towns in Niigata and Yamagata Prefectures of western Japan. In Vietnam, I intend to explore Nha Trang on foot. For shopping, of course I would be visiting Tsutaya and Itoya for stationery, Montblanc for pens and Isetan for all kinds of other stuffs that one can only find in Japan. I am not sure what I w

Spontaneous vacation......  Due to my fast expiring air miles which had already been repeatedly extended out of goodwill by the airline company because of the COVID pandemic from 2020 to 2022, I realised I have to quickly book a trip by this month or I will lose those previous air miles. I don't actually have to travel within the month but need to get the booking confirmed. And because I am no big spender or frequent flyer, I only have enough air miles for a regional return-flight ticket. Best option? Bali, of course! I have two travel windows available for the trip. December 2023 or April 2024. Debating with myself, I argued that traveling in December will be expensive due to the year-end peak travel season and local school holidays. So, I checked out several hotel websites on accommodation prices for both December 2023 and April 2024. To my surprise, the accommodation prices are similar for both periods and still reasonable, at least in my economic context. Just for the record, I

Fresh from a trip and looking forward to another......  I had just returned home recently from a short 4-days trip to Hong Kong. Looking at my travel calendar, I have no other trips for the year except for an almost month-long trip to multiple cities in Asia in August. So, while I settle myself down at home to get use to my daily work-routine, I have nothing to look forward to in terms of travel. Except for August, no other travels are in store for me in 2023, no other leisure and no work trips. Perhaps that's good. It will make me appreciate and enjoy my upcoming month-long Asian cities grand-trip a lot more. More time for planning and anticipation. 1/200 scale Airbus A380 model planes on display, Narita Airport, Narita, Chiba Prefecture, Japan (2019)

Changing tastes......  As time passes, we all grow older and hopefully wiser and richer. But that's not the topic for this month's Travel Bits. Rather, the topic I am writing about is about changing tastes. Now, tastes can mean anything from the food we eat to analogies of our take on other aspects of life, from culture to the arts. And also the mundane like personal hobbies. So, how do all these changes in tastes connect to travel? Plenty! Even if we travel back to the same city and same town every year, our change in tastes such as the food we like, the hobbies we take on and so forth, will likely lead us to discover "new" things in the same old city or town that we think we know so much about just because we have been visiting for the umpteen time. In my case, my recent interest in fountain pens has led me to look for shops to view and purchase pens to add to my collection when I travel. I have been to Hong Kong numerous times and each time on my visit, I will alwa

Travel Trip Plannings......  Much has been said regarding how the anticipation and planning of a leisure trip are the most enjoyable parts of a trip, any trips. From my personal perspective, I would say the finalisation of the major components of trip planning comes with an exhilaration that is most satisfying. With most pandemic-related travel curbs removed and revenge travelling reaching a crescendo, securing those previous seats on flights to popular destinations can be a challenge. This is more so for those of us like myself trying to make every travel dollar stretched. I had personally witnessed air tickets and accommodations prices rose like a bull rally on the stock markets. Each day I login in to the airline and hotels websites, I saw prices climb until they were out of reach of my limited travel budget. Thus, it was with much relief when I managed to finally secured my air tickets to Tokyo in end-July this year. The peak summer travel period! I need to get to Japan in August f

First personal trip of 2023.......  This February, I kicked off my personal travel year of 2023. Nothing fanciful, just a drive up north to Malaysia to visit the city of Ipoh. A total driving distance about 550km, one way. Including the return trip and other drives around Ipoh, I will typically clock more than 1,200km each trip.  I usually drive to Ipoh during the Chinese New Year (CNY) period for a short break. This year, CNY was in January. But I could not make the trip due to work commitments. However, in many ways, driving to Malaysia from Singapore during the so-called off-peak periods has many advantages. The main perk, less traffic congestions at the land border crossing. There will also be less traffic along the way, which makes the drive a lot more enjoyable. And in Ipoh, less crowd everywhere, from the restaurants to the cafes.  Looking forward to enjoying my annual road trip and the delicious food in Ipoh. And also, my favourite fruit, Durians! 😀😁  Durians, certainly not a

Revisiting places.......  I have a habit of re-visiting the same countries, same cities and same towns when I travelled on vacations. My creature-of-habit style even extends to the accommodations that I stay at, the places I dine in and even the stores that I shop with during trips. I always believe that on any first visits, we only have sufficient time to mentally decide whether we like a place, whether this place somehow struck a chord with us deep within and so on. On a second visit, we start to get to know the place as it grows on us. And from the third and subsequent visits onwards, we start to appreciate the place at a deeper level as we discover more and more about it, especially those proverbial off-the-beaten-track aspects of it. I start to make friends with the locals, true friendships that continue even after I returned home. We kept touch through social media, phone messages, phone calls and of course, in-person when I return for another visit. And these are the reasons why

Travel Plans for 2023 .......  With the completion of a cruise trip on 31 October, I wrapped up my leisure travels for 2022. Following the pandemic-induced stay-within-home-city period which for me stretched from February 2020 to April 2022, I had the luxury to go on six trips in 2022. A trip to Ipoh and Cameron Highlands in mid-May was followed quickly by an escapade to  Siem Reap in the last week of that same month. My first ever cruise experience happened in July when I sailed with Royal Caribbean onboard its Spectrum of the Seas ship from Singapore to Penang and back to Singapore on a 3-night trip. In August, I visited Kuala Lumpur, the city I visited in January 2020 just before the worldwide pandemic struck.  A repeatedly postponed trip to Bali, no thanks to the pandemic, finally happened in the first week of October. In the last week of that month, I went on my second cruise trip. Again on Spectrum of the Seas, I sailed from Singapore to Port Klang, Penang and Phuket. And so, tho

Wrapping up my personal Travel Calendar for 2022......  As I wrote this blog post, I had just returned fresh from a long-postponed trip to Bali. I had booked and paid for my accommodation back in September 2019 for the trip that was originally planned for April 2020. But for reasons that were beyond anyone's control, I had to repeatedly reschedule the trip until this month when I could finally enjoy my beach vacation at my favourite beach destination! This Bali trip marked my fifth overseas leisure trip of 2022. I have another trip coming up in the last week of October. This is a cruise from Singapore to Klang and Penang (Malaysia) and also Phuket (Thailand). I had booked the cruise back in January when prices were still low because of continuing travel restrictions. It will be my last vacation trip of the year and I am looking forward to enjoy the upcoming cruise. I am likely to be spending most of my cruise time onboard the ship, only intending to disembark at Penang. I had just

Travel parsimony......  After having all forms of leisure travel curtailed for the past thirty months or so, taking four overseas leisure trips was a luxury for me. And that luxury comes with a cost. Totalling up my travel spendings for these four trips, I realised that I had spent quite a lot of cash. Considering that all my travels this year were short regional trips, nothing fanciful, certainly not once-in-a-lifetime bucket list items, how did I end up spending so much? I bought nothing expensive, fanciful or branded during any of these trips. Truth is, compared to my previous trips, pre-2020, I had actually bought nothing on my trips this year. The question "what did I spent on?" repeatedly comes to mind again as I kept asking myself how did I spend so much for what were supposed to be low cost and low expense trips. Now, I don't have a habit of writing down everything I spent on because I am certainly no miser. Thus, the only brief records I had of my travel spending

Getting in the travel groove......  Travel wise, things are slowly but surely getting back in the groove. Having completed four trips this year compared to just one in 2020 and zero for 2021, I can say that my travel experiences are beginning to look "normal" again. Normal when compared to 2019 and earlier. I have two more trips planned for this year, both in the months of October. After which, I am taking a short break from travel for the rest of 2022. My travel budget has its limits! For next year, I have nothing concrete planned for now. But I should at the very least, be able to go on at least three trips. Hopefully, one of these will be to Japan in August to watch the famous fireworks festival in Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture. Whether Japan will be opened to leisure travellers by this time next year remains to be seen. Despite talks about being in the forefront of opening up, together with the rest of the G7 nations, Japan's doors remain shut tightly to foreigners. I