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

Finland & Estonia, Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea The ocean has more often than not, invoked a sense of romance (travel-wise) for me. And for someone who was born and grew up in a part of the world near the equator and in South-East Asia, the northern seas of Europe are often seen as exotic and exciting. Thus, when I was planning a trip to Finland for spring of 2017, I just could not resist including a short sailing trip across the Baltic Sea, just for that personal vanity of checking off another item on my travel bucket list. Besides the bucket list tick, of course I did get to visit Estonia as well and walked on the famed cobblestone streets of Tallinn's Old Town, another item on my bucket list! To be honest, I did not actually get to sail right across a large swathe of the Baltic Sea, but only that tiny fraction from Helsinki to Tallinn across the Gulf of Finland to be be exact. But because the Gulf of Finland is technically classified as the easternmost part of the Baltic Sea,...

Keeping track of continuous changes in travel plans ....... One year into internal border restrictions due to the pandemic and there is still none of the proverbial light at the end of the dark tunnel of cancelled and disrupted travel plans. While previously the rollout of vaccines have been touted as the silver bullet in the fight against the pandemic, the now often-touted phrase is "vaccines ain't silver bullets in the fight against the pandemic". Meanwhile, international travel remains an impossible task. Like many travellers who previously had trips booked in advance and had to rescheduled and then further rescheduled these trips or even cancelled them, I have had my own share of dealing with the logistics and administrative hurdles of doing so and seeking refunds. Thankfully, most of my trips had now been cancelled and in most cases, I have had refunds being credited back to my bank accounts. However, I still have a hotel booking in Bali which was originally booked f...

"The Journey Is the Reward "  - Steve Jobs Jizo statue, Itsukushima, Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan (2019)

Time flies....... TanksTravelTales has been hosted on Blogger since Sep 2014. It has been more than 6 years and counting as of today! Blogger is a great site for blogs. I have no doubt many who have used or are still using its services will agree. It's free, it's easy to use and it's a really fun way to explore having your own space in the internet world. But with the growing content development of  TanksTravelTales , we feel that this blog has grown sufficiently to move to its next stage of development, including having its own domain name, more control of its blog and other contents and the ability to better harness SEO to be visible to a wider audience base. With that, we will be gradually migrating from our current Blogger sub-domain to our own domain within the next few months. As visitors to the site, the initial migration will be transparent to you. All articles and posts on this blog will continue to remain active and available and new posts will continue to be pos...

Japan, Shizuoka Prefecture, Izu Peninsula Geopark - UNESCO Global Geopark After a sumptuous breakfast at a local Ryokan in the hot spring resort town of Ito, we packed our stuff, checked out of our accommodation and drove to our next intended destination, the Izu Peninsula Geopark.    Visitors to the Geopark crossing the Kadowaki Cape Suspension Bridge, Izu Peninsula Geopark, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan (2017)   Designated as a UNESCO Global Geopark, the Izu Peninsula Geopark spreads over a large area on this peninsula located in the south-eastern of the main island of Honshu. The Izu Peninsula is the only part of Honshu that geographically sits on the Philippine Sea Tectonic Plate. The peninsula itself has been constantly shaped and re-shaped due to the geographical shifting of the tectonic plate on which it sits on. These constant volcanic activities and tectonic plate movements account for the abundance of natural hot springs that are found in the peninsul...

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 ...

Travel plans for 2021 ....... When the pandemic first started rearing its ugly head in the early months of 2020 and governments worldwide started to announce local lock-downs followed by restricted borders, many travellers (myself included) soon started to realise that leisure travel for the year would not be possible. The hope then was the following year that will be 2021 is the likely timeline when we could all resume travel again. But as we head into the final week of January 2021 and are soon to bid farewell to the first month of the year, it seems highly likely that leisure travel this year is also not going to be possible. The pandemic is still raging and while there are bright spots in humanity's fight against the virus, the so-called and often touted vaccination bullet is still very much in its infancy stage. While many developed countries have started to vaccinate their population, for large swathes of the world's population, vaccination and hopes of an end to the pand...