digging through a friend’s thumbdrive, found some not so old photos. suddenly belgium comes to mind. serious chocolate cravings imminent.

nutella crepes. i mean, seriously, nutella crepes. with belgian hot chocolate. nutella crepes is the second most addictive thing in the world, i swear! we bought one. and then bought another. and then another. what you don’t see in the picture are belgian waffles. itu sudah hilang sebelum the camera even got close to it. itu pemenang nombor satu.

i know someone who’s going to give me hell for this pose but i am asian and this is the asian making her obligatory mark on behalf of all asians in the world’s greatest chocolate factory belgium. *glows with semangat ke-asian-an*

we spent quite some time trying to figure out what that basket of metal things are. i think we decided that they’re flowers. but even that’s probably just our closest guess. the guy at the back must be thinking that this poor jakun asian girl needs some chocolate. well, she does. please feed the poor jakun asian girl some chocolate.

belgian chocolate. wherefore art thou, belgian chocolate? where have you been all my life?

 

brisk walk through ghent & bruges

can you spot the hidden mickey? heh.

 

project wave-back-at-me!

so we get on a boat ride in bruges and mind you, this is when we’ve been travelling in the snow for hours and hours already. so we were kinda on a high that from a cramped up bus, we find ourselves stuffed into a cramped up boat. and not one of those nice cruise boat either. the closest i can describe this vessel is like a sampan. not a longboat. not a penampang. a sampan.

and just as we started off the dock, it started to drizzle.

so, in order to entertain ourselves, we set out on a mission. and the mission is to wave and cheer at all the locals we see along the canals and on bridges etc, and get them to wave back at us.

so there we were, in a sampan, calling out to locals and tourists alike. wishing them merry christmas and a happy new year. saying, hello world! you know, the kind of stuff you can do because you’re in a foreign country in a whole different continent because no one knows you there.

and the wonderful thing is that ramai jugak yang waved back to us. and that just got us going. of course, ada segelintir that gave us that funny look, but i’d always like to remember this place for having people sporting enough for crazy tourists.

i did not get to take too many pictures because dah la hujan rintik-rintik, the sampan was wobbly and penuh dengan manusia. but you know, over the years, one of the greatest lessons i’ve learnt is that the world beyond the lense in a gazillion times better. and between taken nice pictures and being a part of an awesome experience, i’d choose to chuck the camera any day.

a weird crying statue spotted on the bank of the canal. don’t know what the symbolism is supposed to be about but it really is not everyday that you see a statue crying sampai baring on the ground already.

got me a new stripy beanie. J says it reminds him of paddle pop ice creams. honey, in this snowy weather, ice creams are absolutely the last thing on my mind.

 

it ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. ~ mark twain

for some strange and supernatural reason, we had choose the absolute coldest day to visit ghent and bruges. i am serious. by the time we crossed the border – and this was some time in the morning okay – it had dropped to a single digit temperature day.

how cold was it? the locals were pouring rum into their hot chocolate, my nutella crepe-cake got cold in two minutes and my gloves got to worn, they started to tear along the seams and now i have to keep my hands in my gloves in my pocket to prevent the thing from falling to bits.