Gentse Feesten 2013

I read that a huge outdoor festival was happening in Ghent while we were going to be in Belgium. There wasn’t a lot of information about Gentse Feesten online. Wikipedia does list it as the third largest city festival in Europe after Oktoberfest in Munich and Fallas in Valencia, and I saw some claims that it is Europe’s largest outdoor cultural festival, but there weren’t many specifics. From what I read, I knew that the main festival was free. I knew there were many music stages. And because it’s Belgium, I knew there would be some great beers. And that’s all I needed to know. 

On our second day in Belgium, we weren’t sure if we were going to head out to Ghent that afternoon or wait until Monday. After spending a sunny Sunday morning at some markets in Brussels, we decided we couldn’t pass up the opportunity for that perfect weather day to also include an array of outdoor concerts and festivaling. So we took the train to Ghent. 

A quick search showed the many unique posters and themes of the festival. This is the poster for 2013.

The festival is in the center of the city, so it’s a 10 minute tram ride from the main train station. As soon as we got off of the tram, we immediately entered the land of festival. There were music and theatre stages everywhere, party boats of festival goers floating down the canals and beer and fries booths every few feet. It was full of energy without being overcrowded. The festival was great, and the weather was amazing (80 and sunny all day). We wandered around for hours. The main music stage sits over one of the canals which really impressed us. In the month or so since Gentse Feesten, when Andy and I talk about live, outdoor music, we bring up how great that stage was there. We’re going to have to lower those high standards if we ever plan to enjoy outdoor music again. 

Being a beer lover can be a pain when traveling or going out to the bars, because it means many trips to the bathroom. And as any frequent traveler can testify, being on constant look out for toilets can be a challenge. Festivals and gross porta pottys go hand-in-hand most of the time. So it was a pleasant surprise that there were toilet trailers that had flushing toilets with attendants who cleaned them after each person’s use. It was amazing. It did cost 0.35, but it was a small price to pay to quickly be able to use a clean toilet whenever it was necessary. The only annoying part is that there were public portable urinals everywhere throughout the festival so men were peeing on every corner for free. It made the pay toilet lines much shorter, though, so I was grateful for that.

I consider myself somewhat of an expert on outdoor festivals. I have earned that knowledge from spending many summers in Chicago, the king of summer festival cities. My experience with festivals makes me somewhat of a festival snob, as well. I have really high standards, and am not simply won over by sun and beer (although it is a good start). Length of lines to get beer and food, atmosphere, music, etc. all play a role in my overall festival satisfaction. And Gentse Feesten was a great festival by all standards. I can’t think of a better way in the entire world to spend a sunny Sunday. 

This day was also our 3rd year wedding anniversary. Proost!

Brussels: Waffles, Fries, Chocolate, and A Lot of Beer

We started our Belgium/Amsterdam trip in Brussels the last week of July 2013. The train from the airport to the city runs often, and it was easy to buy tickets at the ticket window there. We stayed at Hotel Villa Royale which was a great budget option about a 15 minute walk from the Brussels-Nord station. We had some time to wait before we could check-in, so we set out to find a place to get some lunch and have the first of many delicious Belgian beers. We spent the rest of that first day walking around, enjoying the Grand Place, eating some chocolate and, of course, drinking more beer. 

The beautiful Grand Place. Pictures do not do it justice. It really is quite grand.

Gare du Midi Market in Brussels

Our second day in Brussels was a Sunday so we took the subway to the Brussels-Midi station for the Gare du Midi Sunday market. It was a huge, colorful, wonderful market. We had some amazing chocolate croissants for breakfast and bought some nectarines from a fruit stand. We were glad we were there on a Sunday! We weren’t quite marketed out yet after leaving there so we headed over to the Jeu-de-Balle flea market: the most eclectic collection of things I have ever seen. We had lunch at a café on the Rue des Renard before wandering through the Marolles neighborhood, which we really enjoyed. The rest of that Sunday was spent in Ghent for the Gentse Feesten, but that awesome afternoon deserves a post all its own. 

Jeu de Balle flea market

 

A nice place for lunch at the top of Rue des Renard.

Our last day in Brussels, we did a lot of walking, but we also took a lot of breaks. And by “breaks,” I mean stopping to have beers. Being in Belgium is like being on a constant beer tasting adventure. The historic buildings, bustling squares, and beautiful parks are an amazing bonus. 

I haven't been able to find an accurate number, but there are hundreds of different beers in Belgium (around 200 breweries), and they take their beer very seriously. This makes sense because it is delicious.

Many Belgian beers have specially designed stemware.

We went to the Parc du Cinquantenaire and had a nice picnic lunch and some coffees. We walked through Parc Léopold to the EU Parliament building. The open courtyard of the Parliament building had pictures of Croatia displayed to commemorate its entry into the EU. It was fun for us to look at those pictures because if everything goes according to plan (it rarely does), Croatia is the next trip we'll take in September.

Parc du Cinquantenaire. The arch was designed after the Arch de Triomphe in Paris and was meant for the 50th anniversary of Brussels in 1880, but it wasn't finished until 1905, 25 years later. 

 

 

 

 We did walk by the Manneken Pis late in the afternoon on our last day in Brussels. The best part about seeing that weird little statue is that we got some great waffles nearby for 1 Euro. Brussels was a great first stop on what ended up being an unforgettable 10 days. 

This is a good picture of Manneken Pis because of the perspective. It is a tiny statue. There are many different stories explaining the historical reason to design a statue of a little boy peeing and they're all kind of silly. I like the story about the boy's urine helping to prevent the king's castle from burning down in a fire. Often the statue is dressed but not on our visit. There is a female counterpart statue but we got distracted by some waffles and didn't walk over to see it.

A Whirlwind 8 hours in Singapore

We arrived in Singapore from Phuket on Tiger Airways around noon, left our bags at the left luggage counter and headed out to explore Singapore. We planned on trying to catch a midnight flight home that night, and if that didn’t work, we were aiming for flights that left Singapore at 6am the next morning. Paying for a hotel room in Singapore didn’t make sense. By the time we left the airport, we had eight hours to explore the city. We bought day passes for the train with unlimited rides for 10 Singapore Dollars. There was also a $10 deposit with each day pass so we had $20 returned to us when we turned in the passes at the end of the day. 

Chinatown

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple in Chinatown

The trains are air-conditioned, easy to navigate and very clean. Chinatown was our first stop. We wandered around and ate lunch at a hawker center nearby. Hawker centers are essentially open air food courts with many different food stalls selling delicious, inexpensive food and they're all over Singapore. An hour or so later we stopped for some tea/coffee in order to take cover during a late afternoon rain storm and then headed back to the train to get to Little India. Singapore is a very clean, gorgeous city. There are many beautiful Islamic mosques, Buddhist temples, Hindu temples and Christian churches throughout Singapore, and the diversity adds to the magnificence of the city. 

Hawker center near Chinatown

Hindu Temple

The architecture in Singapore is impressive. This is the LaSalle College of the Arts.

The Little India neighborhood is colorful, and we enjoyed walking around there before making the long walk to the Colonial district. We didn’t make the “must-do” stop at the famous Raffles Hotel for a Singapore Sling. We did take a picture in front of it pretending to drink one, and we decided that was good enough and $40 cheaper, too. It was hot in Singapore. The temperature may have even been hotter than Bangkok, but there is a ton of green space in the city and plenty of shade, so it felt 20 degrees cooler. Much of the reason Singapore is so clean has to do with the huge penalties assessed for littering/vandalism. Also, it is very expensive to purchase the rights to own a car, so traffic isn’t a problem. These things make Singapore an amazing place to visit, but it would be difficult to adjust to living there. 

Little India

The famous Raffles Hotel

We took the train back to the airport around 9pm. We’d planned on using the showers that can be rented inside of security and maybe even renting a bed for a few hours if we were going to end up on the 6am flight. That didn’t exactly work out as we planned, and we spent a terrible night in the Singapore airport on the outside of security (nothing close to the nice amenities that the airport has to offer inside security). We  had to frantically figure out how we were going to get home. We did make it on one of the 6am flights and through another city in Asia before eventually getting back to the U.S. I think we went more than 70 hours without showers or beds, so even though it was a fantastic trip, we had never been so happy to be home. 

Phuket and a day exploring Phang Nga Bay

We took the ferry from Ao Nang to Phuket. It left late in the afternoon, took about two hours and arrived in Phuket at 5:30pm. Phuket was not our first choice of destinations in Thailand. We had really wanted to get to Ko Samui,  Ko Pha Ngan, Ko Lanta, etc., but  due to our time constraints,  the fact that airplane tickets out of Phuket were much cheaper than from other places, and we didn’t end up with enough time to take the train/ferry, we decided on Phuket. We’d heard some really great things and some not so great things. But it’s a beautiful Thai island, albeit a huge one, so we were still excited to spend time on the beach and take in the amazing scenery. 

Our first impression was total chaos. We rode in a van from the ferry to Karon through, or near, Phuket Town during rush hour, and everything seemed to move very fast, except for the traffic, which moved incredibly slowly. Motorcycles and scooters are everywhere in Phuket, more so even than what we witnessed in Bangkok or Ao Nang. We saw a baby elephant in the back of a pickup truck. Not a sight we see every day at home. It took us a second to realize that it was, in fact, an elephant in the back of the truck. Unfortunately we didn’t get a picture. It took about an hour to get to our hotel in Karon. We chose Karon mainly because we read the beach was amazing and that it was quieter and less crazy than Patong. 

The view of Karon from our hotel balcony

We wandered around and found a good place for dinner the first night near our hotel. We spent the entire second day on Karon’s beautiful beach. Since we were still in Thailand in April, it was still unbearably hot. The beach has beach chairs with umbrellas that line the entire length of the beach. An umbrella was necessary with the sun beating down on the sand, as were shoes unless in the water because I think the hot sand might have seared the skin off the bottom of our feet if we’d have tried it barefoot. We knew it cost money to rent the chairs but didn’t know who or how to pay for them. We walked up to a set of chairs and put our stuff down and immediately there was a young guy there to take our money. It wasn’t very much, maybe a dollar or two for the day and again, totally necessary. We lounged on the beach all day only leaving for a quick lunch break. Being in the shade of the umbrella made it possible to read our books for 20 minutes at a time before taking solace in the water. The water off of Karon Beach was much cooler than it had been in Railay. It was actually refreshing. The waves were mild, consistent and relaxing. It was like sitting in a giant wave pool except it was the ocean, and we had the amazing coast of Thailand as our view. (I have read other blog posts/articles about the dangerous rip tides than can be present at Karon Beach, making it very dangerous for swimming. The one day we were on the beach, there were yellow flags and just being cautious and not swimming far out was enough to be safe, though following all flag warnings is a must.) It was the best beach day for us in Thailand and made the entire trip to Phuket worth it. 

Karon Beach is very long and spacious, and it never felt crowded.

Sunset on Karon Beach

 

Big Buddha from Karon Beach

That night we took a cab to Patong. The cabs and tuk-tuks are very expensive in Phuket, unlike the rest of the Thailand where they are incredibly cheap. They call it the “taxi mafia,” and because of this organized group of drivers, metered rides are almost nonexistent, especially if you don’t speak Thai. The rates are pretty pricey. We did not want to pay the roundtrip cost to go to Patong but we felt like going to Phuket and not getting a glance of Patong was like going to Vegas and not seeing the strip. So we paid the money (can’t remember exactly how much it was, maybe $15 one way? And it’s only a 10 minute ride) and spent a few hours taking in the Patong nightlife. It is as crazy as I expected it to be. I would never want to stay in Patong, it’s dirtier and much louder than Karon, but if partying is the main reason for the visit to Phuket, Patong is the place to stay. 

A glimpse of Patong nightlife

We enjoyed staying in Karon and loved our hotel there as well.

The next day we did an all day tour to Phang Nga Bay. The Tour included a pick up from the hotel and then it was about an hour drive to the place where the boats are docked. The group tour (there were about 15-20 people for each of two boats) included visits to a number of islands in the bay. We stopped at Panak Island, toured the Ice Cream Cave, and visited Hong Island. We were able to stop and get off the boat a few times including the visit to James Bond Island and Khao Ping Kan. It was very beautiful, but there were hoards of people trying to walk both directions on the very narrow trail around the island, so this was by far my least favorite stop. We canoed at Talu Island. Each canoe had a guide, which was nice since he knew exactly where he was going and we were able to focus on taking pictures. Our guide was extremely bossy and made us take a million cheesy posed pictures such as putting our hands together to make a heart and making us pretend to do the canoeing. Although nice, he was very insistent and clearly fishing for a big tip and could not understand that not all couples would love his picture poses. We did most of what he told us to do just to appease him and tipped him well anyway. At least it makes for a good story. We had lunch at the floating Panyee Island. It is incredibly picturesque there. At the end of the day, we had an hour to relax at Lawa Island. It was a long and mercilessly hot day, but we enjoyed the tour and would recommend it as a way to explore Phang-Nga Bay, which really was gorgeous. Since we’d wanted to see many more of the Andaman coast islands than we were able to, this outing gave us a chance to explore a little, and that made the tour more than worth it. 

Lawa Island was peaceful, private and, since I’m running out of words to describe the landscape, simply beautiful.

The area where the villagers live in Koh Panyee is held above the sea by stilts.

Phang-Nga Bay was gorgeous from every viewpoint.

The next day, we took a taxi to the airport (1200 Baht), which took an hour from Karon, and flew on Tiger Airways to Singapore. The world is full of so many amazing places that we’ve not yet been, but hopefully we can get back to Thailand to be able to explore the many islands we missed and take a trip to Chiang Mai, which we heard was a little cooler, calmer and more scenic than Bangkok. We’re looking forward to our next visit!