The Hague - Den Haag - 's-Gravenhage

So while most of the previous blog entries have been about my travels, this one is just a short introduction to where I actually live: The Hague, in Dutch known as Den Haag, although the official name is 's-Gravenhage. Den Haag means "the hedge" and "'s-Gravenhage," an antiquated version of the name means "the count's hedge," harkening back to the "royal" origins of the city. What started as a village hundreds of years ago around an escape for the nobility has now become a city of around half a million people on the North Sea, in between Amsterdam and Rotterdam. It also serves as the functional capital of the Netherlands, home to the parliament and current royal family. Just for clarification purposes, in the past the Netherlands was widely known as Holland. In reality the name Holland refers to two provinces (North and South Holland) on the coast of the Netherlands, while the country itself contains another 10 provinces. Dutch is the official language.

This is a picture a friend took of the downtown/city-center area from his appartment. I'd say it's a decent skyline! The highest building right now is around 30 stories tall, although there are significant plans to build more towers right in the area of the tallest ones you see in this picture above.
This picture shows a bit more of the contrast of old and new in the city center. The building on the pond is actually the parliament building.

This is a picture of my house. I live in the floor above the ground floor. It's maybe a 15 minute walk to the downtown/city-center area from where I am.

This is the view from inside my house towards the house across the street.


This is a view of the rest of the street I live in.

Streets of Bangkok

I was in Bangkok last month and it was my first time in Thailand and my first time in Asia. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and one week is certainly nothing more than a brief introduction. Bangkok itself is a city of 8 million people and has that overwhelming urban feel. Massive new buildings are right along side old. Smog is a big problem and you see many people wearing protective cloth masks over their mouths and noses. New York seems to be condensed into Manhattan, and London sprawls in every direction. Bangkok in that respect is perhaps more like London, also with the river winding through it. Traffic is a major problem, with delays of literally hours if you get stuck in an automobile at the wrong time of day. It's my intention to write a few entries about this trip, covering the river, the temple complex at Wat Po (in Bangkok), the hotel I stayed in, and also my day trip to the ancient capital city of Ayutthaya which is two hours north of Bangkok by train. But for now I just thought some pictures of streetscapes would be a good introduction.This is just one of the many temples in the city. This one struck me because of how it contrasts with the neighborhood around it.

This was a bit more in the Chinatown area.

The markets there were quite incredible to me. SO much for sale! Anything under the sun can be bought there and in bulk, and most of it seems to be VERY cheap.

This picture was taken in an area of one of the markets in Chinatown where things for funerals were sold. I was astounded to see shirts made of paper that were golden, which are meant to be burnt as offerings to the deceased. Many "articles" are available made of paper in golden color for this purpose.

This picture reveals a more modern side of the city. Several years ago the government decided to tackle the traffic problem by building a skytrain (a monorail more or less, with two lines crossing through the city). What struck me about this view was the ability to see the different "layers" of the city: monorail above, elevated shops just below the track but still above, then the street level complete with a garden on the median. On the sidewalks in this neighborhood there was also a street market which was selling clothing, touristy things, etc. Not far away was one of the city's biggest shopping complexes, the MBK plaza, which is a multistory mall which rivaled anything I've seen in New York or London. Overall I was struck by the combination of old and new (what's old seemed very old, but what was new seemed VERY modern), the size of the city, and the "Asian-ness" of it, which I can only elaborate on as the exposure to a non-western alphabet, the way the markets are organized (everything in bulk under awnings), the presence of temples and shrines to ancestors, and just being in a totally different geographic area and climate. It was fascinating, I'd love to go back! I'm also quite curious about the north of the country which I hear is mountainous and has good climbing, and also the beaches in the south.

Wintry Dutch Day

I think this will be my most diary-like blog entry to date! All previous blog entries were about my travels, so far through Scandinavia and East Africa. But on this cold December day I am sitting here at home in Holland and thinking how amazing the light is, unique to this country I'd say (this coming from someone who has lived here 5 and a half years, so not a native!). The picture above is Vermeer's View of Delft. What I find so striking about some of these Dutch masters is how if you go to where they were, they were really just painting exactly what they saw. The light here IS that unique.

I bicycled around today, going to the market and running various errands and i really found the winter sky just incredible. The weather here is usually wet and cloudy. Add a lack of light due to a late sunrise and an early sunset, and you get a remarkable result of pastels and mist. The light can play strange tricks due to the fog and mist and at times it looks as if the daylight is escaping from strange source behind a cloud while not appearing to come from above. Due to the northern lattitude here the hours of sunlight in the winter are indeed limited, reaching it's "darkest" around December 21. What i find bizarre is waking up while it's still dark and by the time the middle of the day is here, the sun appears to be setting already. Yesterday I noticed a street light that went on at approximately 2 PM. And when the clouds do manage to clear for a while, due to the northern latitude again, the sun is at such an angle that it seems to shine directly into your line of vision.

In any case, this leads to higher coffee consumption, stronger desire to sleep. My plan as soon as this is written is to curl up in a ball by a warm spot and take a nap!

I've been making a list of blog entries that I should do, including my recent trip to Thailand, a concert I conducted in, and wrote a piece for, and then also a little photo-tour of my appartment which I moved into last April. Check here again soon for the update!

Shela Village, Lamu

Just wanted to give a small taste of what Shela Village is like on the island of Lamu, off the coast of Kenya.

Most of the streets are really narrow. This one was nice because it had both the floral canopy and the water at the end. The village is a veritable maze of these little alleyways and lanes. Most of the time it seemed fairly empty to me, but at different times you could count on encountering people, like when school gets out. You can always rely on encountering a donkey, with or without human transport on it. Cars are not allowed on the island with two notable exceptions: the mayor's vehicle, and the ambulance vehicle.



Here you can see some of us walking along the sea wall of the village. This is at high tide. Lamu suffered some erosion with the Indian Ocean Tsunami and lost much of its protective sand bars and sand banks. This path wraps around the whole coast side of the village and continues on to Lamu town. The path does more or less disappear at high tide, so trips to Lamu town by foot had to be carefully considered, or at least a water taxi ride home considered.

Just a picture here of some of the village boys, who could usually be seen playing by the water. In general I got the impression the people there were very friendly despite whatever language barrier was in the way.

Just a final picture in the series here of the village mosque. The picture was taken in the middle of the day, when perhaps because of the sun, not many people were to be seen out and about.

Fatuma's Tower, Lamu, Kenya

While visiting the island of Lamu off the coast of Kenya, we stayed at a restored 14 century tower known now as Fatuma's Tower. It's tucked away on the back side of Shela Village, and offered rooms of different sizes, yoga twice a day, and really great meals. Despite it being the rainy season, the weather was surprisingly sunny and hot.








This little pool was tucked against the hill of the sand dunes that bordered the garden. It was great for a quick dip when just coming back from being out. The garden was the social center of the place. Meals would be served here, and people would gather before or after going out into Shela Village or Lamu Town. The trees provided a really pleasant break from the sun.



Here are a few interior shots including a balcony off the library, the library itself, the yoga room, a hallway, and my own room.

Sand Dunes behind Shela Village on Lamu, Kenya

When I first arrived on Lamu and was just getting settled, our host took us on a little tour through the sand dunes to the other side of the island. We headed through some small alleys at the end of the village to a climb through some shrubs and first caught a glimpse of the end of the village where we were staying.


The path continued on, over the crest which must have been the highest elevation of the dunes.


A bit further up off to our left, you could see the inlet to the Indian Ocean and the neighboring island that's mainly tidal mangrove swamps. The clouds were really striking. It's hard to capture their exact quality with a camera (or at least with my camera!)

Heading down on the other side, the Indian Ocean side of the island, the following picture was our view:


It was explained that the castle structure was the home of a rich person and it was only built in the last few years. Although it's hard to assess from the the picture, it was still actually relatively removed from the waterline. But our guide (and host) also pointed out the sandbar to us and said it was possible to swim out to it. Thus began the little adventure of the day, or possibly weekend (that is if the whole trip wasn't an adventure!).

We (five of us) swam out in the direction of the sandbar which didn't seem that far... As we reached it, there was no gradual slope of sand edging up to it, just all of a sudden we came up against it and almost had to climb onto it like climbing out of a pool. We took in the scenery for a while out there, and then decided to head back. After a bit of swimming we realized why there was no gradual slope approaching the sandbar: the flow of water exiting out to the sea washes most of it away. It was this stream of water we had to swim against to get back! Luckily we were all O.K. enough with our swimming skills to get the job done. I later heard this was also shark territory. Yikes! That's enough adventure for me in one day.

We headed back to the tower where we were staying and they had a really wonderful dinner prepared in the garden. There was fish, also calamari, rice cooked with coconut, salad, and no shortage of limes to squeeze juice onto everything, which I found great! I ended my evening in an old wooden bed curtained in by mosquito netting with a smoking ember-type coil underneath to assist in keeping the little blood-suckers away!

Journey To Lamu, Kenya

In April of 2008, my friend Susan who works for the United Nations invited me to come and visit her in Tanzania and play some piano concerts in the area as well. Not going to Africa so frequently, I took the opportunity to travel around a bit as well. For one long weekend of my two week trip we went to the island of Lamu off the coast of Kenya. It was in many ways the highlight of the entire trip and overall just really fascinating and enjoyable. I will write a few entries about Lamu and this one is just about the journey getting there.

We began in Arusha, Tanzania, and had a four hour bus ride north to Nairobi, Kenya for our flight from Nairobi Wilson Airport. Nairobi Wilson is perhaps the only airport I've ever been to where you can arrive 15 minutes before the scheduled departure of your flight and have both you AND your luggage make it onto the plane. Exciting as this may sound, I don't recommend it, we were all pretty stressed! The main reason this is possible is that departures is basically one room.
Here's the airplane we were rushing to catch:



We arrived about an hour later at the Lamu Airport, or landing strip, which I have two pictures of. The first is arrivals. The second is baggage claim. Yes... the one with the people sitting on it!



From there you walk to a pier where you catch a boat that brings you to the island Lamu itself (the airport/landingstrip is actually on a smaller island opposite Lamu). Lamu has two settlements on it, the larger Lamu Town, and the smaller Shela, also known as Shela Village where we stayed. The following pictures are sequential, from the boat ride, the view of Lamu Town from the water, other houses along the way, the arrival at Shela, and our destination, a building called Fatuma's Tower where we stayed and partook in the offered Yoga twice daily during our visit.




The beach along this white wall is the road between Shela and Lamu. It disappears and reappears with the tide.


This picture is Fatuma's Tower, a restored 14th century tower at the very back of the village Shela just where the sand dunes really start. More to follow in coming entries!