Belgium is full of enchanted forests. On this particular day we are driving through one in order to reach the Benedictine abbey at Maredsous. Century old trees and dewy sapplings alike hug the narrow roads, their branches swaying back and forth as if to welcome us into the pages of a fairy tale. It does feel like a fairy tale because from behind the trees you can sometimes see old stone estates resembling castles…
I half expect to see Prince Charming riding across the field on his white horse. Instead, I see white cows sunning:
My friend and I drive in silence, with the windows down, enjoying the fantastic shades of green all around us. It’s easy to get lost in our own thoughts when nature overwhelms us with its beauty. I ask him to stop the car at a bend in the road so I could walk, if only for a few yards, in all this splendor. Birds call to each other from tree tops. Water trickles over stones and pebbles down the creek. A dragonfly flutters over my friend’s shoulder and then disappears. I am lost in my own fairy tale.
We arrive at the abbey just as the bells begin to toll (press button to play the video):
This abbey still operates as a monastery today, also continuing in their business of producing cheese and licensing their name to a beer producer. Maredsous 8 Bruin is quite tasty, even to a non-drinker like me.
When you enter the main building pictured above, there is an information center to the right and a gift shop next to it. But we head straight for the food shop; enchantment makes you hungry. Here you can select your choice of bread, cheese, deli meat, and beverage. Then you slice your own bread,
grab a table outside, and enjoy your lunch (the cheese is quite rich in flavor and very fragrant):
After this simple yet filling lunch I set off to visit the fromagerie as advertised in the sign. I’m giddy, thinking I will get to see how cheese is made and packaged:
But after walking all around the grounds a good 20 minutes I realize that only the front part of the abbey is actually open to the public. Luckily no one flogs me for trespassing. Here are some views of the abbey:
We leave Maredsous and run across this little village with a huge banner. Rail bike sounds like an interesting mode of transportation…
so of course I have to check it out:
When you are on the rail bike, you can pedal as fast or as slow as you want. As you head downhill, you can coast and just enjoy the wind blowing through your hair while snapping pics of the countryside:
The video below captures how loud it is (you can also imagine the discomfort!) on the rail bike. I’m looking behind me to make sure the German tourists won’t overtake us. Eventually they do catch up toward the end of one segment and bump us hard from behind!
This picture is taken near the “train stop” at the end of the ride, and you can see the church spires high above me:
After this little detour, we visit my friend’s uncle’s farm. More Green Acres moments in tomorrow’s blog. We’ll also get to storm a castle then. And eventually, we’ll arrive in Paris! For now, I’ll leave you with a view that still takes my breath away today:
Sometimes transportation takes on a new meaning when you are on the road. But I find the definition for a 4×4 to be all relative. Same same, but different.
For example, before getting on any 4wd you’d want to kick the tires around a little:
And you may need to put up with the sales pitch (Good Lord, did I say this blog is also about fashion? What is that get up I’m wearing? Does the Gucci bag help at all? Yeah, didn’t think so.):
Then you go for a test drive:
Maybe try a high-performance import:
Or there’s always a subcompact domestic:
Or perhaps an upgrade to a gas-guzzler:
Just be careful though. If you see a lot of the same models on the lot, maybe it’s a sign to take a pass:
At the end of the day, you just have to make sure it runs. Because you definitely don’t want to be towing your own truck in the middle of nowhere.
Tags: 4wd, Gucci, transportation
Have I whetted your appetite a bit with the sounds and colors from Sapa? Before I continue that story though, I’m going to first try to finish my European adventures these next few days. Over time you may see that not only am I a poster child for O.C.D., but I also dabble in A.D.D. and am therefore easily distracted. So please ignore my alphabet symptoms and let my photos kindle your imagination instead.
(this windmill is a pet store!)
So today I bring you Delft, a small city in the south of Holland. It is Vermeer country. Jan Vermeer (1632-1675) is most well known for the painting Girl with a Pearl Earring.
This marks his resting place:
Or maybe this is his final home, I’m not sure! But I am sure Vermeer’s spirit is all around lovely Delft:
Besides Vermeer, Delft is also celebrated for its Delftware or tin-glazed pottery that takes on a cobalt blue color, or Delft blue, and resembles fine porcelain that history credits to the Chinese out of heavy trading during the Dutch Golden Age. Here’s a lovely back door of a delftware factory that shows the blue color:
And Delft is proud of its noted association with the House of Orange. No, my dear Hermes fans, not that house of orange, but the house that Willem van Oranje (William of Orange) built. There is a fantastic museum here that chronicles his life:
Inside this museum you will see the mark of the bullets that took his life:
Like many other cities in this part of the world, Delft has a large square to mark its city center…
…and smaller squares that mark the heart of a neighborhood, as seen here during one of the championship soccer matches televised by a restaurant:
As soon as I arrive here, I fall in love with the city. With how cute it is. It is made up of little streets connected by short bridges over canals. There’s no grandeur of Paris or Beijing or Rome. Just charming Dutch architecture and culture brewing quietly over years and years of consistency and efficiency.
I should note in particular that the Dutch have these hofjes (almhouses) that provide housing for the elderly (mostly widowed or unmarried women who need some assistance). A hofje is really a courtyard with shelter built around it. Some of these hofjes have been turned into swanky residences. In one city I walked in on a festive, large barbecue thrown by the residents in the courtyard, and there was definitely no sign of the elderly or downtrodden there!
Here’s the entrance to one:
And here’s how it looks past the gate:
By the end of my day in Delft, I can hardly stand how cute the city is. Do the residents of Delft wake up everyday, step out of their cute houses, look at the cute streets, and say to themselves, “I live in cute town!” ? I know I would!
This is actually a historical building converted into private residence with an art gallery open to the public:
And this is me taking a break behind the church….
…and in front of the church…
…contemplating how I might be able to buy this…
…because it comes with a sweet courtyard like this…
But I know I’d have some trouble with the language living in Delft. How in the world do you curl your tongue enough to pronounce these words, and how many vowels do I need to squish together again??
Tags: Delft, delftware, hofje, Holland, House of Orange, Vermeer
The day gets greyer and greyer as we leave Bac Ha Market. I still have to journey another couple of hours to reach my destination, a reportedly upscale eco paradise/lodge (operated by a Danish hotelier keen on preservation projects around the globe) that relies completely on solar technology for energy and hot water. As we climb the mountain, the clouds knit themselves into a thick blanket overhead. I wonder whether there will be any hot water tonight for a long overdue shower.
It’s now around 4pm and I’m deposited at the lobby of a grand hotel in the middle of downtown Sapa (translation: the two-lane main street that cuts through town). There’s supposed to be a driver from the Lodge waiting for me at this drop-off point, but the shuttle is an hour late so I grab my purse and camera and double back from whence we came. On our way into Sapa I’d spied a bunch of stores and stalls full of curiosities so I’m now definitely happy my ride is late. I want to see the blankets hanging on the walls up close as well.
I get maybe 15 yards out of the hotel lobby when these women appear out of nowhere and swarm around me. They shout “konichiwa” to me, thinking I’m Japanese. When I reply in Vietnamese they break out in a fit of giggles and demand to know how I learned Vietnamese in Japan. After assurances on my part that I’m not Japanese, they proceed to touch my clothes, my hair, my face. I’m starting to feel like a Martian. Personal space doesn’t seem to carry the same meaning in this part of the world. Then they enthusiastically interrogate me about my life in the US. I reply in kind with questions about their daily lives and their traditional dresses. I, too, want to touch their clothes and jewelry but stop myself. There is so much easy laughter here.
When the questioning stops, madcap capitalism kicks in. From the straw baskets on their backs they pull out colorful hemp-dyed blankets and a million other accessories with beautiful embroideries and patterns. I’m overwhelmed. Color me Sapa!
They shout out prices at me, all the while trying to undercut their competitors’ offers. There are two sisters who tell me that if I buy something from one sister, I’d also have to buy something else from the other. Or else they’d be doomed to great disharmony in their family. One young woman keeps showing me her newborn baby. She tells me it was born early and is malnourished. But it looks very chubby and cherubic to me. When I don’t offer to hold the baby, she shows me her other daughter:
I buy. Guilt based marketing works. Gotta love it.
Sadly for me, yours truly who walks around with the word SUCKA tattooed on her forehead, the blanket that I want is in the hands of a very little, old lady. I make the fatal mistake of lingering on her blanket five seconds longer than the others. Worse, we make eye contact. I’ve just violated the number 1 rule in cutthroat haggling: never show you are interested. I am now putty in her hands. She gives me one price and one price only. I cajole and tease her, all in the fun of bargaining, but she sticks to her guns. She walks deliberately slowly behind the other gals who are now drastically reducing their prices and waiving stuff in my face to get my attention. She stays in the background, and each time I look at a new item, she slyly holds up her blanket and flashes me a devious smile. I see her grin every time I look at her blanket that now sits in my home office.
Here’s a clip of the shopping frenzy–push the play button to start the video:
”
An hour after this impromptu shopping in Sapa, I collapse in the shuttle out of sheer exhaustion from the sensory overload thus far. But 40 minutes later as we arrive at the main gate of the Lodge, I literally jump out of my seat and scramble for my camera. The view that greets me now is too rich to not be captured forever on film:
At the main gate, there is a small waiting room for guests. The stone path from this point to the Lodge is not accessible by car (or anything motorized actually) so my luggage is dropped off here, and the staff, which consists of people from the local tribes, carries the heavy suitcases on their backs or heads. The staff is primarily male. Their female counterparts are these women that I see here at the gate. I find out from the driver that they are allowed to come up to the waiting room to try to sell you their wares, but they may not cross the threshold. It is literally a piece of wood that separates the have from the have not. So they may talk to you through the windows or doors to push their sales but they cannot come inside. I can’t tell you the mixed emotions I feel here in this very moment at the gate…joy troubled by guilt, anger, discrimination, sadness, and compassion. Every paradise has a price. Do I dare cross the threshold?
Tags: Bac Ha Market, blankets, Sapa, shopping
Let’s take a break from Europe and gab about textiles today. Late last year I was in Asia for a few weeks. One of the highlights of this trip was trekking through North Vietnam. In this mountainous area near the Chinese border, there are numerous ethnic minority tribes (the H’mong, Tay, Thai, Hoa, and Dao to name a few) identifiable from afar by their distinct colorful traditional dresses, headgear, hairstyle, and jewelry. Up close you can also see some slight physical differences in their faces from tribe to tribe.
I took a midnight train from Hanoi to Lao Cai, arriving around 6am the next day. There I was met by my personal guide, a local 23 year old kid who aspired to move to the big city (Hanoi). Every time he mentioned Hanoi his eyes lit up; it was his El Dorado. His English was good and he told me he was learning French on the side in order to get more tour guide gigs, but by the end of the morning he said it was just better to speak Vietnamese! In my sleep deprived state, I thought his driver did a pretty formidable job on those narrow, winding, hilly roads. Had I been more conscious I suppose I would have been frightened out of my mind. There were hardly any signs and the only road rule was to not run into pedestrians or oncoming cars. How he could see anything through the dense fog was beyond me.
But if you are a textile enthusiast like me, you would risk life and limb to arrive at the Bac Ha Market and indulge your senses in all of this…
Yesss, I shopped:
Bac Ha is a huge open-air market (though parts of the market have a corrugated tin roof over them) that’s held every Sunday. You can find just about anything that you need there, from clothes to dry goods to livestock. It’s a shame that this market has become so commercialized from increased tourism, so as you enter the market you feel like you are at a tourist trap with so many stalls hawking souvenirs. Little kids will come up and enunciate crisply in their best English: “You buy from me?” After buying the same bracelet from the fifth kid, you may get weary. But you have to keep walking, dodging and pressing through the crowds toward the center and back of the market where all the local action happens, and watch life unfold…
Tomorrow, I’ll see you in Sapa.
Tags: Bac Ha Market H'mong, ethnic tribes, Lao Cai, Sapa, textiles, Vietnam
