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

The Mekong is one of the longest river in the world. From the Tibetan Plateau, the Mekong flows through parts of China before entering Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Finally, ending in the South China Sea in southern Vietnam, the entire distance of the Mekong spans more than 4,300km. In Laos, the Mekong traverse the entire country. The importance of this mighty river in the lives of the people residing in the countries it flows through cannot be overstated. Many local communities depended on the Mekong in their daily lives in areas as diverse as transportation, fishing and agriculture.  While visiting Luang Prabang province of Laos, I had the chance to see the Mekong almost every day of my nearly week-long stay in the country. The photograph here was amongst the many that I took of the river and the activities around and in the river by the local residents. The boats shown in this photograph are used primarily for fishing and to a lesser degree, transportation.

Flea markets are always interesting places to visit when traveling. After all, it is at these markets where all manners of used goods, collectibles and antiques are sold. Flea markets are where old items deemed no longer important or useful by its current owners are given a new lease of life by its new owners. I love to wander through flea markets, sniffing out a collectible or two to be bought and brought home as souvenirs of my travels. It is also at flea markets where I can mingle freely with the local crowd, share a chat or two with new acquittances and given an insight into the culture and lives of the local people. A vendor pedalling used and refurbished electric fans, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia (2019) To me, a flea market is more than just a place to browse or buy used goods or collectibles. It is also a window into the heart and soul of the city which I am visiting. My most recent visit to a flea market was  on a Sunday in Ipoh, the state capital of the Mal

The blue-collar neighbourhood of Sham Shui Po is located in Kowloon. While it is seldom mentioned or considered in travel articles on Hong Kong, Sham Shui Po is actually a particularly vibrant part of what Hong Kong is. Populated by working class folks, the traveler will find in Sham Shui Po the "real" Hong Kong.  Interspersed amongst this densely populated neighbourhood are many shops, street markets and food vendors. Here, one can easily discover that the shopping and food are much more affordable than in the more affluent parts of Hong Kong. The vibrant streets of Sham Shui Po are always crowded with people coming and going, Sham Shui Po, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China (2019) Personally, I always make it a point to drop by Sham Shui Po for its food, especially the freshly baked egg tarts which I really enjoyed. There is also the shopping. Stuffed toys, modelling kits, stationery and clothing are just the few of the many stuff that can be bought here.

The setting sun in the back drop of the sea that extends into the horizon typically evokes a sense of vastness to me. It makes me realise how small I am in the vast expanse of the sea and the world. Since young, I had often stood on a beach or a jetty and stared right out into the horizon as the sun set, contemplating what life was, is and will be like out there. This photograph was taken at Cottesloe Beach in the western suburb of Perth as the sun sets over the sea. The ship in the distance provided perspective to the overall picture. Setting sun over the sea, Cottesloe Beach, Perth, West Australia, Australia (2018)

“Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times” Sculpture at a Temple, Gangnam-gu, Seoul,  South  Korea (2011)

Mixing up the travel bookings....... I must admit that there are times when I got my travel bookings all mixed up. Thankfully, most of these mixups occur on relatively minor details like the number of days of a hotel stay. In my most recent trip to Hong Kong just last week, I had booked myself with the wrong hotel, having made the booking just a couple of days before my trip. Perhaps feeling over-confident in myself, I had happily typed the hotel name into my web browser, clicked on the weblink that I believed would direct me to the hotel's booking website, chose the best value accommodation for my period of stay, keyed in my credit card details and double-clicked on that "confirm" button, all without actually checking a second time. It was only when I printed a soft copy of the hotel's email confirmation of my booking that I realised that the said hotel which I had just booked and paid for, is not the one I had wanted to stay in! And to make matters worse, i

Buildings and their architecture typically tell us much about the history and culture of their cities. In London, I love the many different styles of building architectures that derived from the rich and varied history of the capital city of the United Kingdom. Taking photographs of these beautiful structures as digital mementos of my visits has always been a favourite activity whenever I visited London. During one of my recent visits, I passed by the iconic Harrods Building at Brompton Road. Instead of taking the usual full-frontal photograph of this beautiful building, I decided to add a slightly different  perspective to my photograph and tilted the angle of my shot slightly. The result is a different view of the building and one which I like a lot more compared to the usual front-and-centre composition. Harrods Building, Knightsbridge, London, England, UK (2017)