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

Switzerland, Lucerne, Magic of Lucerne This article was originally published in this blog in December 2016. While this article was not generally written in the style of the first-person narrative, it nevertheless reflects my experiences and thoughts during my visit way back in 2009. Excerpt from this blog post: "Stroll around the city and take in the sights and sounds. Be awed by this beautiful city. I took a relaxed walking tour of the city on my own and the walk "connected" me to the heartbeat that is Lucerne." ****************** The city of Lucerne is located in central Switzerland and is the capital of the Canton of Lucerne. The people in Lucerne speaks mostly German since it is located in the German speaking part of Switzerland. History and Geography Sometime in the year AD 1290, Lucerne became self-sufficient as a functioning city with a sustainable population size. Together with three other neighbouring cantons, Lucerne formed the Swiss Confederacy in the yea...

Changing tastes......  As time passes, we all grow older and hopefully wiser and richer. But that's not the topic for this month's Travel Bits. Rather, the topic I am writing about is about changing tastes. Now, tastes can mean anything from the food we eat to analogies of our take on other aspects of life, from culture to the arts. And also the mundane like personal hobbies. So, how do all these changes in tastes connect to travel? Plenty! Even if we travel back to the same city and same town every year, our change in tastes such as the food we like, the hobbies we take on and so forth, will likely lead us to discover "new" things in the same old city or town that we think we know so much about just because we have been visiting for the umpteen time. In my case, my recent interest in fountain pens has led me to look for shops to view and purchase pens to add to my collection when I travel. I have been to Hong Kong numerous times and each time on my visit, I will alwa...

  " To travel is not to escape life, But to learn about life." -  Anonymous  Snapshots from Old Town, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia (2023)

I usually do not have a detailed to-do list prepared for any of my trips. I am a traveller who prefers to take things easy and enjoy the unplanned chanced encounters; whether it is a trip experience or making a new friend during my travels. The only planned items in my leisure travel are hotel accommodations and airplane, train or bus tickets, especially if my itinerary includes commuting between cities. Anything else is left to chance. For my upcoming trip to Hong Kong next month in the first week of May, I do have a couple of to-do items lined up though. In a dinner conversation with friends over the weekend, I was reminded that there have been some new places of interests in the city. And one among these certainly raised my interest. This is the new Hong Kong Palace Museum. Only officially opened in July 2022, the museum is located in the West Kowloon district and showcase artefacts from the National Palace Museum in Beijing's Forbidden City. Having never visited Beijing before,...

Singapore, Tanglin, Singapore Botanic Gardens -  UNESCO World Heritage Site Singapore is a small city-state where land scarcity is a perpetual issue. However, in the midsts of all the buildings and structures of concrete and glass, city planners somehow managed to find space for beautiful gardens and reserved primary and secondary forests. The Singapore Botanic Gardens is one such place and is amazingly located right in the fringe of town. Flanked by foreign embassies on one side, a busy and world renowned shopping stretch on the other, a hospital on another side and private landed bungalows along much of its perimeter, this tropical oasis of a garden took pride of place right next to a bustling world city. Swan Sculpture in the middle of a lake within the Gardens' grounds, Singapore Botanic Gardens, Tanglin, Singapore (2023) Growing up, visiting the Gardens were a fairly regular activity for me, from school excursions to family outings during festive periods. I always loved these ...

  " It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves." -  André Paul Guillaume Gide, French Author and Nobel Prize laureate Tree-lined Boulevard, Toulouse, France (2004)

When I traveled to Siem Reap in May 2022 to visit the famous archeological and historical sites at the Angkor National Park, I found the place fairly deserted of international tourists. This was in start contrasts to my first trip there in 2015 where the whole area were basically swarming with lots of visitors, most of whom had travelled there internationally. Seizing upon this rare opportunity, I had a great time photographing the temples at the sites, including closeups photographs of the many intricate and stunning wall carvings, paintings and sculptures that had stood for centuries. For me, one of the most impressive sites at the Angkor National Park is the Baphuon Temple. Built sometime in the 11th century by Suryavarman I, Baphuon was originally dedicated to the Hindu God Shiva. If one exits the temple at its west side and goes further back, an impressive sculpture of a reclining Buddha measuring approximately 9 metres by 70 metres can be seen. According to historians, this recli...