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

  "Change is ever-present, we never get to visit the same place twice."  - Timothy Tan, author of this travel blog, tankstraveltales Torrii Gate, Nara, Nara Prefecture, Japan (2018)

Located in Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture, the original Iwakuni Castle was built in the year 1608. Sited at the top of Mount Shiroyama, the castle must had looked a formidable obstacle to any attackers in the 17th century. However, merely seven years after the building of the castle was completed, it was torn down based on a decree ( Ikkoku-ichijo ) from the Shogun Tokugawa leyasu.  The present castle at the site was a re-constructed structure in 1962. As in most castles in Japan of today, the Iwakuni Castle is more akin to a museum than a place of residence. Inside the castle are displays of artefacts from the Edo period including samurai body amor and swords. Iwakuni Castle, Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan (2019) At the top of the castle, which is four storeys high, one can get a bird's eye view of the famous Kintai-kyo Bridge. The castle is accessible via a ropeway cable car. The station is a mere five minutes walk from the Kintai-kyo Bridge. From the upper station, a joyf

Traditional-styled watercraft are unique and defined the people whom the designs of these crafts originated. They are also extremely photogenic subjects even when framed against simple and common backgrounds like the beach or just the sea. When I first visited Lombok in 2014, I had no lack of subjects to photograph while walking along the beach looking for watercraft. The photograph in this blog post shows a fleet of jukung on the beach at sunset. These small outriggers are traditionally used for fishing. More modern usage includes ferrying scuba divers to their favourite dive sites around the many islands of Indonesia.  Fleet of Jukung on the beach at sunset, Senggigi Beach, Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia (2014)

For medium and short haul flights as well as flying in the premium cabins on long haul flights, I typically prefer to have a window seat. The reason being that I could have great views of the sky from the sky! And this totally beat the inconveniences usually associated with a window seat such when having to leave your seat for the washroom or when there was a need to stretch the legs during those long flights. Like most avid travelers, I am currently grounded due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Border closures being the primary culprit for me being stuck in my home city. But being grounded also gave me the time to go through many of the photographs I took on my past trips. While digitally archiving the photographs of my previous trips, I came across these photographs I took from my window seat while flying over the Western Australian region of Gascoyne on my way home from Perth to Singapore during a trip in 2018. From the real-time flight route map, I had recorded in my journal that these ph

Mount Bromo, Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, East Java, Indonesia This was a previous article written by myself and posted in this travelogue blog in Dec 2014. Mount Bromo was the first active volcano which I had climbed during my travels. A planned trip to climb Japan's much revered Mount Fuji in 2020, also an active volcano, was postponed indefinitely due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. ****************** Located in the eastern part of the island of Java in Indonesia, Mount Bromo is an active volcano. Its local name is Gunung Bromo. At an altitude of about 2,329 meters (about 7640 ft), Mount Bromo is not a particularly high peak and is actually quite accessible to the average tourists. Smoke rising from the crater of Mount Bromo,  Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park,  East Java, Indonesia (2002) Mount Bromo,  Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park,  East Java, Indonesia (2002) I climbed the peak of Bromo during a visit in 2002 when I was visiting Surabaya, the second lar

When will we travel again....... As international border closures and restrictions continue to remain in force due to the ongoing pandemic, the question on the minds of most travellers must be "when will we travel again"? Some may think that the more appropriate question  should be "when will we be allowed to travel again"? Because for them, the question is not the the fear of the virus preventing them from travelling but border closures and restrictions. For me, it is the latter. As a healthy adult with no underlying medical conditions, I am not really afraid of catching the virus. In addition, my usual practices and habits of conforming to rules and regulations such as frequent hand sanitising, wearing of proper face masks when in public places; both indoors and outdoors and observations of social distancing advices meant that I have a lower chance of getting infected though the off-chance. Instead, it is the border closures and restrictions that meant I have to k

For me, travelling is a holistic experience. I do not travel to a place just to visit its most famous tourist attractions or world-renowned sites. Of course, I do love visiting those much-talked about attractions and sites. However, I usually prefer to keep a day or two of my trips free of any plans. On these days, I would simply wander around without any fixed plans. Taking in the sights, sounds and experiences that I serendipitously chanced upon. And these were often the moments when I felt that I had truly visited the destinations. Some of my friends said I was wasting precious vacation time and limited trip days doing just nothing. But for me, these moments of wandering around without fixed plans were reflective of the wanderlust in me, the travel bug. A cute poster interspersing a pig's head with the Chinese character for Fu (good fortune) on a noticeboard inside South Horizons Station of the South Island Line, Ap Lei Chau, Hong Kong SAR, China (2019) Despite having visited Ho