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

Air Seychelles switched to its current livery in 2011. Today, its fleet consists of one Airbus A330-200, two Airbus A320-200 and six DHC-6 Twin Otter (in a combination of the Otter-300 and Otter-400 Series aircrafts). While waiting for my flight from Hong Kong to Singapore at the Hong Kong International Airport on 22 August 2016, I spotted the Air Seychelles A330-200 at one of the boarding gates. It was the first time I had seen the "new" Air Seychelles livery in person. Definitely one of the most impressive and best livery on any aircraft today. Air Seychelles A330-200 with its impressive livery of bright red, green and blue colours with two white terns, Hong Kong International Airport, Hong Kong SAR, China (2016) Close-up photo of the tail wing of the Air Seychelles A330-200; the two white terns standing out in the burst of red, green and blue colours, Hong Kong International Airport, Hong Kong SAR, China (2016)

The 15th day of the 8th Lunar Month is celebrated by Chinese worldwide as the Mid-Autumn or Mooncake Festival. This traditional festival stretches back thousands of years and has its roots in the worship of the moon. Till this day, it is sometimes celebrated by families who eat mooncakes and drink tea while gazing at the moon. Children will light lanterns made from colourful transparent or translucent paper shaped either in different animals forms or in traditional Chinese lantern designs,. As part of Singapore's multi-cultural heritage, the local Chinese population also celebrated the Mid-Autumn or Mooncake festival. This year, the festival falls on the 15th of September. If you are visiting Singapore during this month, do find some time to visit the Chinatown area. The whole place is wonderfully and colourfully decorated with many large lanterns. Different varieties of mooncakes in all kinds of flavours and colours can also be savoured. However, if you could not find...

Spending those loose change at the end of a trip....... Each time I travel to a different country, I almost always end up with leftover currencies from the country or countries that I had just visited. This is fine for countries which I visit often for work or vacations. But for countries which I am unlikely to visit again in the immediate future, what shall I do with these leftover small changes? Currencies from countries which I visited often such the British Pound, EU Euro, Hong Kong Dollar, Indonesian Rupiah, Japanese Yen, Malaysian Ringgit, Thai Baht and US Dollar, I wouldn't mind holding as I can use them again on my next visits. But for some other countries, my stack of leftover change from these overseas trips has grown quite substantially in the sense that I have a little bit of currencies left over from each country that I had visited. These include the Australian Dollar,  Cambodian Riel, Israeli Shekels, Korean Won, Nepalese Rupee, Seychellois Rupee, Swiss Franc...

Hong Kong is a small city crammed with people and more people. Yet, Hong Kong is a very interesting place with just about anything and everything all packed into a small city with a total land area of about 2750 square kilometres.  In my many visits to Hong Kong, which is just under 4 hours by flight from my home in Singapore, I have almost always make it a point to visit the famed Goldfish Market. The name Goldfish Market is a slight misnomer. Because in the streets that make up this so-called Goldfish Market, shops lining the narrow streets peddled all kinds of tropical and marine fishes, besides the traditional goldfish.  Colourful freshwater shrimps for sale, Goldfish Market, Mong Kok, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China (2016) There are also many shops which sell reptiles including many types of Geckos as well as the occasional Chameleons. Various types of tortoises and turtles are also sold as pets here. These include species such as the Star Tortoises, Leo...

Despite not being a large landmark by size when compared to the surrounding buildings and structures, the Hong Kong Clock Tower in Tsim Sha Tsui is one of the most iconic structures in the area. The lightings that highlighted the Clock Tower during the nights make this age-old icon an extremely photogenic subject. Different lightings illuminating this tower made it seem like a different tower each time I passed by this area whenever I was in Hong Kong. In my most recent visit to the city in August 2016, I happened to chance upon an extremely interesting light display on the Clock Tower. This special display was part of the city's 2016 Summer celebrations called the Pulse 3D Light Show. This picture was taken with my iPhone 6s Plus on 18 August 2016. Compare this to another photograph of the same Clock Tower taken in 2012 which was featured in one of my earlier post in June 2015: Hong Kong - Clock Tower . Pulse 3D Light Displays on the Clock Tower, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloo...

While vacationing in the Maldives in August 2014, I had to take an unplanned domestic flight from the island of Mahibadhoo to Malé to catch an international flight home to Singapore. This was due to bad weather resulting in rough seas which ruled out the usual boat transfer from Mahibadhoo to Male. The nearest domestic airport to Mahibadhoo is Maamgili Airport located in Alifu Dhidhdhoo Atoll (a.k.a. South Ari Atoll). A 25-minute speedboat ride from Mahibadhoo brought our travelling party to Maamgili Airport and we were booked on Villa Air's flyme for the short 30-minute domestic flight to the Malé s International Airport. The relatively low-altitude flight route treated those of us seated in the window seats to exhilarating views of the beautiful atolls of the Maldives. An awesome sight-seeing experience from the air which was totally unplanned. Villa Air's flyme operates the ATR 72-500 twin-engined turboprop aircraft and I was thrilled to take this picture of the ar...

The to-do-list before embarking on a trip....... Fresh from a short trip in early July to nearby Phuket, I am already looking forward to my travel plans for next year. I already have one confirmed trip in the month of May next year where I will travel to Helsinki, Tallinn and London for a 10-day vacation. Only the air tickets have been booked. I will settle the rest of the bookings closer to the travel dates. But before you think that I really truly enjoy myself on my travels, think again. The hectic nature of my job meant that any vacation is never really a vacation. When on vacation, I am still expected to reply to office emails promptly which usually means within an hour or two. Replying to office emails is the easy part. The difficult part is when I have to prepare tender and contractual documents, budgetary quotations etc and the list goes on. The need to handle such tasks and to deliver the output required, usually within a single business day regardless of where I am in t...