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

Prior to the current pandemic and the resultant international border restrictions to combat the spread of infections, my most recent flight was from San Francisco to Singapore via a stopover in Hong Kong. I arrived at the airport early, which was my standard norm to ensure that I had everything in order and plenty of time to navigate through passport control, customs and security screenings. After having completed all the usual administrative matters that were required of all passengers, I finally reached the airside of the airport.  Upon boarding my flight, I looked out of the window from my seat and took this photograph of a United Airlines 787-9 Dreamliner parked at the adjourning Gate to my flight. While I could not really get a clear photograph of the plane because of the glare and not-so-clean window panes next to my seat, I liked this photograph because I could see the port-side engine of the plane that I was in as well as the amount of airport equipment and vehicles on the ...

Review of my travels in 2016... 2016 has been an extremely busy year for me. It also marks a year when many of my planned trips could not proceed as scheduled due to a hectic work schedule. However, there are also a great many unplanned trips which happened during the year. Trips which I have to cancel in 2016 include visits to Osaka (Japan), Barcelona (Spain), San Francisco (California, United States) and Auckland (New Zealand) as well as my annual personal retreat to Bali (Indonesia). Unforeseen projects that crop up along the way as the year progressed lead to these cancellations which I will eventually undertake at a more appropriate time in the foreseeable future. Trips which were not planned but happened in 2016 include visits to Thiruvananthapuram (India) to attend a friend's wedding and to Orlando (Florida, United States) to attend a software conference with my customers. The visit to Thiruvananthapuram and Orlando were my first ever visits to India and the Unite...

Returning from Orlando to Singapore during my recent trip to the United States, I had two transit stops  These transits were at the Denver International Airport in Colorado (IATA: DEN, ICAO: KDEN) and Narita International Airport in Tokyo (IATA: NRT, ICAO: RJAA). I don't usually have the habit of photographing the same plane that I was about to board for my trip probably because I was always busy walking around the airport taking photos of other planes as well as photos of planes taking off and landing at the runways. Thus this photo will probably count as the first time I did take a photograph of the plane I was about to board. This was also only the third time I had flew or about to fly on a Boeing 787 and my very first time on the 787-9 variant of the Dreamliner. My previous two Dreamliner flights were both on the 787-8 base model on All Nippon Airways (a.k.a. ANA) and United Airlines respectively. United Airlines Boeing 787-9 preparing for departure from Gate B32...