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

Month-long Pan-Asia Trip, East and South-Asia Asia This was a major trip which took me months to plan. Because there were many key details to follow such as accommodation, train travel times and inter-city transport connectivities, I had to cancel and re-book many of my hotels and train tickets bookings repeatedly. And also because I was visiting many of the places for the first time, my only source of information was from the internet. Not much of this information was accurate and some of the inaccuracies nearly resulted in me missing my inter-city connections. Lesson learnt and note to self, take information from the internet with a big pinch of salt! But this was a wonderful trip. I am unlikely to be able to go on such a long trip with so many different destinations in one single vacation again anytime soon. Work schedule always dictates that I can go away for at most two weeks at any one time. Thus, I was really glad I...

Unless one works in a port or have a long telephoto lens, taking closeups photographs of Quay Cranes are not always possible. Not that there are anything very interesting about the mechanics of these industrial cranes. Neither are these gigantic machines usually considered as photogenic subjects. But taken at the right angles and perspectives, they do make for interesting photographs that one do not usually encounter. Here, I tried to be artistic (yes, I tried) when I took this photograph of a couple of Quay Cranes at Phú Mỹ from the top deck of the cruise ship that I was on before we set sail from the port. The lightning from the cranes and also from the ship somehow lit up the arms of these cranes in a manner that captivated me. Using my mobile phone, I snapped this photograph. For me, this was one of those interesting photo moments in my travels.  Travel allow me to see things, including everyday objects, in a different way. This is why I love travelling. Quay Cranes,  Phú ...

A short stopover on my cruise in August 2023 saw me visiting Nha Trang for the first time. Because of the relatively short time we had before we need to return to the ship, I did not venture into the city itself. Viewed from offshore onboard the ship, the city seems huge with lots of sprawling skyscrapers. Unfortunately, I did not get to explore the city to experience its hustle and bustle. My brief few hours on shore was really nothing to shout about. Going ashore on tender boats, we landed in a rather obscure location with only a few local shops in the area. Getting to the city will require a taxi ride and I figured that was not going to be worth the effort and hassle because I had less than 4 hours onshore. This was partly due to my own fault because while the first tender boats started bringing passengers from ship to shore at 8.30am, I had chose to go ashore only around 11am. The last tender boat was scheduled to depart for the cruise ship at 3.15pm. Thus, my brief couple of hours...

Slightly more than two decades after my first visit to Ho Chi Minh City, I finally returned for a second visit when my cruise ship made a port call at nearby Phú Mỹ in August 2023.  Vibrant as usual, the city has certainly grown a lot since my first visit. There are now a lot more large towering office complexes and modern residential homes. More importantly for visitors like myself, delicious food are everywhere. During my short few hours onshore, I managed to dine on my favourite Pho noodles, sight-see, took selfies to commemorate my trip and enjoyed a quick ride through Chinatown on my tour coach. I also visited favourite touristy sites like the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Saigon Central Post Office and the Reunification Palace (a.k.a. Independence Palace, Reunification Convention Hall). Skyscrapers, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2023) Pho, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2023) Pho side dish, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2023) Vietnamese Coffee, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2023)

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...

Chanced and unplanned encounters during our travels....... For most of our trips, we usually knew in advance where we were going and what we would be doing. But often, it would be the chanced and unplanned encounters that would come to define our travels turning these trips into unique ones that we would remember for years to come. These would also be the trips that we would recall fondly to share with family and friends. They are the travel tales of our own little adventures. Whether it was that friendly chat with a fellow traveller or a local, that chanced meeting that would turned a stranger into a friend. Or that moment in time captured in our cameras that would remained not just as mere digital mementos but lasting memories of our life. What were those travel moments of your's? I have had many. Starting when I was first bitten by the travel bug as a twenty-something youngster, I had travelled to Japan on my first ever trip outside my home country on a work ass...

Note from the Author: This article was originally written in February 2000 based on my first ever visit to Ho Chi Minh City. Many years have passed since and I am quite sure many of the places mentioned herein have changed. The currency exchange rates mentioned in this article were based on the prevailing rates at the time of my visit. The photographs that accompanied this article were taken by myself using 35mm films and scanned into digital format simply because digital photography in the year 2000 was still in its infancy! Thus, I apologize for the relatively "low quality" of these photos. Time flies and it has been 14 years since that visit. This reminds me to make another visit to this awesome city to see for myself how much things have changed since! - Timothy, Sep 2014       Saigon was the former capital of South Vietnam prior to the official reunification of the country in 1976. After reunification, Saigon was renamed as Ho Chi Minh City. Today, Ho Chi Minh C...