Pasar Malam Besar 2008

Pasar Malam Besar

The annual Pasar Malam Besar is held in the Hague from 21 May to 1 June 2008. This is supposed to be the biggest Indo (European-Indonesian) festival in Europe and one of the oldest in Netherlands. The main theme of the event is celebrating the music, dance, food, handicraft and culture from Indonesia.

The fairground where the Pasar Malam is being held is near the central station and quite close to where i live. Despite this, i have not yet visited the Pasar Malam all these years, mainly because i think it's too commercialised when compared to the fairs back home in Malaysia / Asia. Over here an entrance fee is charged (Euro11 for weekdays and Euro14 on weekends) and i hear that the price of goods sold is also rather expensive.

Some photos as below taken by a friend who visited the fair over the weekend.

****Durians at Euro 15.50 for 5-6 pieces.

****Looks like duku langsat..

****Bananas at Euro 10 per kilo

****special papaya?

****Mangosteens




****~ 10 biji Rambutans for Euro 5

The Pasar Malam operators must make a lot of money from this annual event. Think i will stick to apples and strawberries and reserve my Pasar Malam visits when i'm back home in Malaysia/Asia. For the price of a pack of durians here, i can probably buy a small lorry-full of fruits from the Chatuchak market in Bangkok... haha!

Afternoon at the Opera (18 May 2008)

Amsterdam

We took a train to Amsterdam last Sunday to watch an opera at the Amsterdam Muziektheater. It was Tristan & Isolde by Richard Wagner, a very famous piece of work which premiered more than 140 years ago.

A friend who is very interested in music and performing arts recommended this opera since it is not often performed outside Germany. Sure enough, many performances were sold out especially the weekend ones. We managed to get some tickets on-line from the secondary market.

It was a very lengthy performance - almost 5.5 hours, including 2 breaks in between the 3 acts. Apparently it is also among the most challenging for performers and conductors. The first Tristan - Ludwig Carolsfeld died within 3 weeks of his performance and apparently the stress also claimed the lives of 2 conductors in 1911 and 1968 who collapsed during the second act of the opera. Thankfully, there were no such incidences last Sunday.

The opera was sung in German with Dutch subtitles on screen visible to audience on the upper floors. The performers were excellent, am particularly impressed with the beautiful and powerful vocals of the soprano Linda Watson (Isolde) and the rich bass tones of Stephen Milling (King Marke).

****the Amsterdam Muziektheater

****the stairs leading to the various levels of the operahouse

****views from the second floor where we were seated

****the orchestra warming-up

Would have loved to take some photos of the performances but that was strictly disallowed. Anyway, here are some photos taken during the breaks. There were a lot of elderly people in the audience and most of them were very well dressed for the occassion.

*****drinks and snacks sold during the break

****i had some chocolate cookies to go with the coffee

The opera ended around 6.45 pm. We decided to walk to a nearby Sichuan restaurant for dinner. It was in the Michellin and Gault Millau guides so we were expecting a nice meal.

We ordered some soup (i had wonton soup), some large deep fried prawns, spicy beef and tofu. The prawns were tasty and crunchy, however there were only 5 pieces to be shared among 3 of us, so there was not much to go around.

*****deep fried prawns

The beef came with a warning of being extremely spicy; however for those who are used to spicy oriental cuisine like us, it tasted very mild like tomato paste with pepper. However it was quite delicious and tender although again the portion was very small.

**** 'extremely spicy' sizzling beef

The tofu and vegetable dish was very ordinary and again the portion looks like it was meant as an appetiser rather than main meal.


****tofu and vegetable dish

As i was not feeling very hungry, the dinner and portions were fine with me. However my two companions were still left feeling a bit hungry after the meal.

Value for money wise, we would have done much better in other restaurants in the chinatown area. However if one is looking for proper (not necessarily friendly) service in a chinese restaurant, this would have been ok.

Evening at Zuiderpark (17 May 08)

Zuiderpark

Last Saturday, we went to Zuiderpark for dinner and bowling with some friends from church. Zuiderpark is around 8km away from my house and has a stadium which is home to the football club ADO Den Haag, in addition to a recreation centre with bowling alley and restaurant. Around 20 people turned up for the event.

Dinner was buffet style at the chinese restaurant Gouden Wok located on the ground floor of the bowling center. It is the biggest restaurant i've seen in the Hague so far - around 200 tables i think, with a live band. Basically you choose your food, bring it to the chefs and select the sauce to go with the cooking.

There was a good variety of meat, seafood, vegetables and dessert arranged in several counters/ bars. It was quite crowded that evening, and there were some long queques e.g. at the grill section waiting for the food to be cooked.

****view of the restaurant - the bright yellow signages are the food counters

****chefs hard at work...

****the Wok buffet counter

****raw materials..


****Japanese buffet selection


****mixed Grill buffet


****some assorted seafood and meats

There was also a selection of ready-cooked food with lemon chicken, barbeque pork, satay, vegetable samosas, prawns and grilled cuttlefish. I had some of them for my first dish to avoid the long cooking queques. The lemon chicken was a bit dry but the sauce was nice. The samosas were quite good as well with light, crispy skin and were not too oily.

***my ready-cooked dinner selection.

****My neighbour's seafood platter with black pepper sauce. Tasted better than it looked.

For my second dish, i opted for some japanese buffet - salmon, cuttlefish, tofu and aubergine cooked in tepanyaki style. Also picked a few ready-made sushi at the buffet bar.

****Japanese grill

****voila....my japanese tepanyaki dish

The japanese dish was good - the salmon, sushi and cuttlefish were very fresh and the sweet soy sauce went well with the tepanyaki grill.

There was also a selection of dessert comprising mainly canned fruits e.g. peaches, oranges, lychees, pineapples, coconut pudding and mixed fruit custard. My favourite was the coconut pudding which was creamy and not too sweet.

****my dessert

If one has time for a 2-3 hour meal, enjoy quantities of chinese food and don't mind the rather raucous atmosphere, this is probably a good place for dinner. It's quite good value for money at Euro 19 per head excluding drinks.

As i arrived late for dinner, i only had an hour to eat before the bowling game started at 8pm. The bowling center was just upstairs - there were 2 sections with 16 lanes each partitioned by a restaurant cum bar in the middle.

It was disco style bowling with loud pulsating music and dim lights so if you wear dark clothes, you would not be easily visible.

****one of the 3 lanes booked for our game

****the DJ spinning away

****restaurant and bar in the bowling center



****get set, ready...

The bowling lanes were rather tricky as the balls keep swerving to the left and right most unexpectedly. Or maybe my game was just very rusty since the last time i bowled was probably about 6 years ago. Anyway, after one too many rolls into the gutter, i decided to watch instead of play. It was still a fun evening anyway..

Picnic at Haagse Bos (10 May 08)

Haagse Bos

There was an unusually warm spell in the Hague for a couple of days last week. Temperature was around 20-25 degrees, rather unusual for this time of the year. Most people took advantage of the great weather by being outdoors either on the beaches or in the many parks in and around the Hague.

We decided to for a picnic at the Haagse Bos on Saturday afternoon. The Haagse Bos is a 2km expanse of wooded parkland a short drive away from the house. It is one of the oldest remaining forest in the Netherlands and used to be part of a much bigger forest popular as a hunting ground for the dutch courts. It was also used as a place to launch rockets during WW2. Nowadays, it serves its purpose as a place for recreation and relaxation in the center of the city.

We bought some turkish pizza and drinks and found a shaded bench overlooking the river in the park. It was a very tranquil setting and refreshing to the eyes and soul. There were ducks in the river that started waddling up - must be used to feeding by visitors, and dogs bounding away all over the place. We were in the park for around an hour and a half; it was getting too close to nature for comfort with insects, spider webs and creepie-crawlies dropping on us from the trees. Lessons learnt - wear a hat the next time or don't sit under a tree for too long.


****crossing the bridge in search of a 'perfect' picnic spot (just behind us, there were some uninhibited souls sunbathing in the buff on the grassy riverbanks)

****the view from our picnic bench

****river meandering through the park

****looking for food....

Visit to Keukenhof (2 May 08)

Keukenhof Gardens

Last Friday, we visited Keukenhof at Lisse. It's been 3 years since I last visited the gardens and i remember massive traffic jams and parking problems due to the volume of visitors on a weekend. So this year, we decided to go on a weekday since i was on leave anyway.

Keukenhoff is considered the 'Garden of Europe' and holds the world's largest spring garden exhibition. You probably need to spend at least half a day there to cover the 70 acres park. It is open for 9 weeks every spring (from 20 March to 18 May for 2008), and draws more than 750,000 visitors annually. There are more than 7 million bulbs planted including some 1,000 varieties of tulips alone. The best time to visit the gardens is in the later part of April when all the flowers - daffodils, crocus, narcissi, tulips, hyacinths etc are blooming.

It was a smooth drive there when we went on Friday early afternoon and parking was also not a problem although we had to walk quite a distance to the entrance gate. There were a lot of visitors there already. We spent around 4 hours walking the gardens and taking photos of the flowers and beautiful scenery. It is really an amazing place, a paradise of flowers on earth. There's even a windmill and a mini walk-in zoo with some exotic hens, rabbits, goats and sheep.

Almost all the visitors were taking photos intermittently, and some looked like professionals with their tripods and long lenses. There were also some who brought along their pets and picnic baskets to enjoy the lovely afternoon outdoors.

We left around 5.30pm but unfortunately took a turn to the wrong parking lot. It was only later that we discovered there were 3 parking fields to the north, south and north-west of the gardens. The parking fields were enormous - probably the size of 3-4 football fields, and to me they all looked alike, being open fields in the countryside. It took a while walking and searching for the car before we realised that we were not in the right place. Luckily we were able to re-enter the gardens and walked across to the right parking area. It was after the 6pm closing time, but the park was still lively with what looked like a senior citizens' cycling event with some bands playing as well.

Here is a link to the official Keukenhof website:-

http://www.keukenhof.nl/nm/english.html

and below are some pictures that we took during our visit.

****the lovely well planned layouts..

****flowers galore..

****Orchid exhibition at the Beatrix Pavillion

****lake views on the western side of the park

****the windmill ..

**** the mini walk-in zoo....

****the glorious tulip fields just next to the gardens.