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

Estonia, Tallinn, Praying at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral This article was originally published in this blog in June 2018. Visiting the Baltic region for the first time in 2017, I was both amazed and impressed by what I experienced. As I travelled around the region, the ticks in my personal Travel Bucket List keep growing. This is a region deep in history and culture. It will take many trips over the coming years to fully appreciate what the region has to offer to travellers like myself. I will surely return for subsequent visits. ****************** Tallinn is both the capital city as well as cultural heart of Estonia. Located on the shores of the Baltic Sea, the city of Tallinn is both a reflection of new and old. The recent economic growth of Estonia has transformed the country greatly. Evident of this is everywhere including in Tallinn itself, mostly represented by gleaming, neat and artfully designed office towers. Yet, with its UNESCO World Heritage Site-inscribed Old Town, the

This morning, I received an email from the airline that I was booked with for my travel to a neighbouring country next month.  The email was a kind and helpful gesture from the airline as it provides a checklist of the pre-travel actions that I need to take prior to the trip, the various documentations required and getting all paperwork in order before the trip starts. Besides serving as a checklist on the  tasks I have to complete for a smooth trip, it also serves as a reminder to me that traveling again after more than 24 months will be a vastly different experience. Things are just no longer the same as pre-COVID.  The onerous tasks required to ensure COVID vaccinations certificates and pre-trip COVID test results are validated and submitted on time, ensuring that travel insurance covers COVID-related medical expenses up to an amount dictated by the host country, getting both hard and soft copies of all documents in order and bringing them along with me to the airport just to ensure

Getting back into the groove....... As countries slowly but cautiously peel back border restrictions in an attempt to revive battered economies and move to live with COVID-19 in the so-called endemic state, things are starting to look a lot brighter. While a few countries are still trying to beat COVID-19 with zero infection strategies, the rest of the world is finally coming together again and re-opening to each other. The hermit-like style that has defined my life since March 2020 has also slowly taken a back seat. I have been going out of my home a little more, cautiously but surely. Work and social life have both taken on a more physical and personal approach as opposed to being just a small screen on those online meeting places. All said, I still take personal precautions such as being fully masked whenever I am out and about, even keeping my mask on at all times while attending work meetings. Additionally, I also avoid crowded places as much as possible and try to time my journey

Visiting the S.E.A. Aquarium at Singapore's Sentosa resort island left me both amazed and bewildered at the amount of sea life on display. What impressed me most are the efforts of the Aquarium to (as close as possible) present the animals in their natural environments and their efforts at encouraging conservation of our global marine life and environments. This was my first visit to the aquarium and it was time and effort well spent for me. I got to observe marine life in their natural aquatic environments in a way that no video or photographs can ever replicate. I will certainly be back for repeat visits in the near future. Moray Eels, S.E.A. Aquarium, Sentosa, Singapore (2022)

"Do not be afraid to get lost on your travels, You will only find yourself after you got lost." -  Anonymous Street Art, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia (2017)

One of the joys of travelling is to be able to enjoy local food the way the locals enjoy it. Whenever I travelled to Taipei, I always enjoyed its vibrant street food scene and of course, the food. Nothing beats the ambience of tucking into the delicious street food in Taipei, right there in the streets whilst jostling with the crowds. I do not have any trips to Taipei planned in my current travel list. But this is because of border restrictions due to the pandemic. As soon as these restrictions are lifted, I will be travelling to Taipei. I simply love this vibrant city, the local culture and of course, the street food! While I am unable to physically travel to Taiwan for now, I keep in touch with its cultural happenings through frequent text messagings with my Taiwanese friends as well as the free English-language streaming service called TaiwanPlus (a.k.a. Taiwan+) .  Beef noodles in clear soup, Beitou, Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan (2018) Mixed pork soup, Ximending, Wanhua District

Recently, I have been toying with the idea of going on a cruise. Due to pandemic-related restrictions in my part of the world, the only cruise trips that are considered doable and hassle-free currently are short cruises to nowhere. These typically entail between 3 to 5 nights stay on a cruise ship which will leave port, sail into the nearby international waters and then returning to the same port. Voila , no quarantine measures required after returning back to shore! Okay, I must admit that I had been swayed by the many photographs posted by friends on social media who had went on such cruises and they all seemed to be having lots of fun. Truth be told, I had not been on a cruise before. While I had sailed across the Baltic Sea from Helsinki to Tallinn and back, those 2-hour plus trips do not qualify as "cruise experiences". Maybe, just maybe, I will soon book a short 4-day, 3-night cruise to nowhere. Just to keep up with the proverbial Joneses. 😇 Update #1 (25th January 202