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

Indulging in travel  fantasy....... With international travel still greatly restricted, leisure travel is all but impossible. While the body cannot physically travel, surely nothing can stop the mind wandering, even to faraway places. Yes, travel fantasy is an indulgent one must not discard when one needs to stay at home to wait out the Covid pandemic. Instead of slouching on the couch and rue what could have been if there had been no pandemic, one can take the time to read, explore (within the mind, of course) and plan for the next great personal travel adventure if and when this nasty Covid pandemic is eventually over. Go on, don't be shy. Explore the world with your mind through books and other published materials. Who knows, your next opportunity to travel, explore and enjoy the world could be nearer than you think would be possible. Meanwhile, I am taking national health advice seriously and getting myself vaccinated. My small bit in the national and international fight agains...

"Wherever in the World I travel to, The Moon is my constant companion, Whenever I look up at the night sky, I see the same Moon that accompany me in all my journeys."  -  Timothy Tan, author of this blog - tankstraveltales Street Vendors, Hoi An, Quang Nam Province, Vietnam (2018)

Visiting sites of ancient and past civilisations is a fascinating journey into the history of humankind. From these sites and the artefacts found there, we gained insights into how people of the past lived and worked.  In the ancient ruins of Angkor Thom, I came face-to-face, literally, with hundreds of smiling stone faces. Said by some to represent the bodhisattva of compassion Avalokitesvara (or Lokesvara), the 216 stone faces engraved onto the towers of Bayon stood smiling serenely, as they had for more than 700 years, silent witness to the history of humankind. Bayon was built as the Buddhist temple of the Khmer at Angkor Thom. Located near present-day Siem Reap, Angkor Thom was the capital of King Jayavarman VII.  Infused with both historical and mythological wonder, Angkor Thom is one of the most visited sites for visitors to Siem Reap. And when one mentions Angkor Thom, the images of Bayon will undoubtedly flashed through the minds of almost everyone who had visited thi...

Australia, Western Australia, Great Northern Highway I lived in a city state that measures approximately 50km from east to west and 17km from north to south. There are thus no country roads to speak of where I could drive and  drive to enjoy the pleasures of solitude. The longest drive that is geographically near to my city is the neighbouring country of Malaysia where the North-South Highway stretches from the southern state of Johor to the northern state of Kedah, a distance of about 772km. I often embarked on long drives along this route to travel from Singapore to Ipoh (capital city of the Malaysian state of Perak). The distance each way is about 550km (as measured by my car's distance tracker). But the North-South Highway is a relatively busy stretch of road and while the route passed by large swathes of palm tree plantations, this is definitely no country road by my personal definition. The opportunity for me to drive on a lonely country road finally arrived wh...

  "So, this is the place! The crowds,  coming, going, meeting, parting; Friends, strangers, known, unknown. - Translated from poem by  Semimaru (Japanese poet of the early Heian Period, name as recorded in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu ) Circle of Stones, Kamitsushimamachikin, Tsushima, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan (2019)

When international leisure travel is not possible, the next best thing is to go local. To travel locally and enjoy the local sights and sounds that we do not normally indulge ourselves in. As a wrapped up to my rather pathetic travel calendar for 2020, I embarked on a local cable car ride on New Year's eve. This was my own small way to mark the end of 2020 and to celebrate the arrival of 2021.  That this was actually my first time taking a cable car in Singapore was quite surprising to myself. While I had taken countless cable car rides while overseas, I had not actually rode in a cable car in my home city! Well, that was then. I had since clocked my first local cable car ride and was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful night view as the cable car took me from its starting station at Mount Faber to the resort island of Sentosa and back. The drizzling rain made the ride a cosy one and I loved the natural effects of the rain on my photographs.  Where else next? Local attractio...

Sorting out my travel memorabilia ....... As international travel remains curtailed, I decided that it was time to take a weekend to sort out and clear up my study which now also serves as my home office while the new normal of "working from home" (a.k.a. WFH) continues into its second year. Being someone who cherishes a neat and tidy environment, I naturally have all my books, documents and other stuff neatly arranged and displayed on the shelves lining the walls of the small room which is my study. However, with WFH taking its toll on the daily-in-use home office, stuff naturally got built up after 15 months of working from home daily, 7 days a week. The result was small piles of documents, books, magazines, work materials, letters, memos, notes and online purchases stacking up first, at the corners and then the corners-of-the-corners as space around the small room quickly ran out. That was when I decided a day of area-cleaning had become necessary. As I got around sorting ...