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

From the balcony of my hotel room at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel, I saw Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas leaving port enroute to Thailand's Phuket on the night of 3 December 2024. The colourful lights of the cruise ship and its reflections in the pitch black water of the night was a delightful sight to behold. A rare photo moment that I just could not miss. 📸 Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas leaving port, Georgeotown, Penang, Malaysia (2024)

Ending my travels in 2024 with a stay at a heritage hotel.....  I did not travel much in 2024. I was simply too busy with everything else to go away on  vacations. My last trip for the year was a good one though. It was a relaxing 6-day sojourn to the Malaysian city of Penang where I was booked to spend 5 nights at a heritage hotel. The 135-year old Eastern & Oriental Hotel, also simply known as E&O. Following my stay at the 150-year old Nikko Kanaya, the E&O was the next heritage hotel on my travel bucket list and I was glad that despite a relatively barren year of travel in 2024, I did actually get to stay at both the Nikko Kanaya and E&O during the year. Heritage hotels have a rather nostalgic feel with their rich and storied histories. Staying at these hotels and walking along the same hallways that many historical figures had walked before was a surreal experience. Especially so when some of these historical figures were amongst those we read about in hist...

France,  Toulouse Way back in 2005, I travelled to the southern French city of Toulouse for the first time. I was there to attend an engineering conference and took the opportunity to squeeze a little sight seeing over a single weekend. Capital of France's Occitanie region, Toulouse is one of the largest city in France. I had always wanted to visit Toulouse since I was in school, having read about the city in a magazine when I was a school librarian. I was thus extremely happy when I was nominated by my then-boss to attend a conference that was to be held in the city! I flew from Singapore to Paris and from there, took a connecting domestic flight to Toulouse. A school-hood travel bucket list item came true! ****************** Toulouse, is located in the south-western region of France and is the capital city of Haute-Garrone. It is also known as the Pink City because of the unique architecture of some of the buildings in the city which use pink terracotta bricks. Home to European A...

In May and June of 2024, I had the joy of going on a long train journey from Bangkok to Singapore. This was not a single journey where I simply boarded a train in Bangkok and disembarked from the same train in Singapore. The whole journey was made up of multiple trains rides where I stopped at different cities in Thailand and Malaysia, even spending a night at some of these cities. And there was also an overnight train ride between the Thai cities of Prachuap Khiri Khan and Hat Yai. Throughout the journey, I rode in different cabin class from Class 1 (air-conditioned with sleeper bed in a dedicated cabin) to Class 3 (non-air conditioned with only drafts from the ceiling fans in the cabin and wind from the windows to keep cool). The journey was meant to mimic the train travels of the old days when air travel was not so common and train travel was the norm. Since I was born after those days, I could not experience such travels and could only read about it in books. This train journey, tr...

Returned from a Trip, Preparing for Another......  And just like that, my autumn trip to Japan is completed. During the trip, I had explored parts of Tokyo I had never before visited, drove to Nikko and got to spend some time at the Nikko Toshogu Shrine, had lunch by Lake Chūzenji and explored its surroundings on foot including the Kegon Falls and checked off a Travel Bucket List item by staying at the historic Nikko Kanaya Hotel. As of 2024, the hotel is 150-years old. Historic and famous people including Albert Einstein, Dwight D Eisenhower, Helen Keller and Isabella Bird were some of the previous guests and visitors to this hotel. I had read Ms Isbella Bird's travelogue on her travels in Japan, "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan" and had drawn much inspirations from the book, both for my own travels and writings. From the book, I had also read about her trip to Nikko in the 19th century. Thus, to stay at the same hotel was for me, a Travel Bucket List item.  In my upcoming trip...

UK,  Scotland, Glasgow Time do fly indeed. This article was originally posted in this blog on 17th September 2014 describing my trip to Glasgow even further back by another 3 years, in 2011. This was my one and only trip to Glasgow.  During the trip, I had spent time exploring the city on foot, alone. Without any digital GPS-assisted map to guide me. Why? Because I was neither looking for anything nor going anywhere in particular. Thus, began my love for uncharted and unplanned walking trips around cities I travelled to. I often will spent a day or so, diving straight into parts of a city; walking, sightseeing, discovering and enjoying what the city has to offer. And hopefully, serendipitously chance upon a minor adventure or two that I can translate into a travel tale after the trip. And while on my little "adventures", maybe to tick off an item or two on my travel bucket list. ⛰ ****************** Glasgow..... The name of this famous city i...