the one with the trip to Amsterdam

someone was asking me via email about Amsterdam weeks ago (sorry Farah, it took me so long, but u belum pergi lagi kan? :p) i was about to reply to that email then i remembered i wrote about it in my old blog, big yellow taxi, was reading through it and i think its usable hehe..

so please read through below, sorry i cant put any pictures in here, but Farah, ive emailed them to u okey hehe :p

so here it is, enjoy!

when we were in the uni, my best friends and i often sit around talking about where we’d go and wat we’d do, you know, when we got our degree, and working and have money, often having these talks over breakfast in pusing (remember the nasi lemak? huhu) or in our jammies on our beds in the hostel, or as we drive around in my beat up proton..and the one thing that we all agreed upon for sure is that we would all go europe one day, you know, go shopping in milan and paris, go on the canal in amsterdam or italy, see rome, take a road trip around spain, have coffee in germany and buy chocolates in belgium, we’ve always wanted to see the world more often than not, after these discussions ended we’d end up piling into the car and drive to exotic places like lumut, or kuala kangsar or penang (funny how exotic batu gajah really ‘isnt’ huhu) knowing its not really the same, but being the adventurous that we are, it might as well have been the world :)

so imagine my excitement when one of the things that we’ve always talked about came true, as i meet one of my best friend, in the chic city of amsterdam! my best friend, han, took a flight from oslo, norway to amsterdam, while i took a bus from plymouth to london, then a flight from london to amsterdam, and meet her there. it has been almost 5 months since we last each other, and seeing her at the airport, i was soo happy that i was actually speechless for a few seconds, then all hell broke loose and we were hugging and talking at the same time hehehe

the first night we were there, we had dinner at the hard rock cafe, and of course did some shopping! or a looooooot of shopping actually as we both are currently collecting hrc merchandise from all over the world, the shop proves to be a challenge to our funds as we kinda wanted to buy everything! in the end, i bought a tshirt and a keychain for myself, and a box of guitar picks, for mr.bestfriend :)

dinner was fabolous as we both tried to catch up on 5 months worth of our lives (this is a friend that i used to work with and still talk on the phone at least 4 times a day, so imagine how much i miss talking to her!)..we stayed in a charming little hotel, 10 minutes walk away from the hrc, in a part of the city called leidseplein, the hotel name is prince hotel (its spelled different in dutch tho actually hehe), with an amusing morrocan concierge whom was ever so helpful in giving us the right directions, taking interest of wat we wanna do and where we wanna go and ever so kindly warned us if we wanna try any marijuana or wanna get high, dont eat any brownies or the mushrooms, but smoke it instead! and which he could, if we wanted, you know, arrange!

since we were both exhausted from the journey, after dinner, and a quick photo session and some clubs kivs, we decided to get some rest and go out bright and early the next day..

the next day was gorgeous and sunny and perfect for touring the city! first stop is the floating flower market, where we go via the boat bus, through the canals, i cant never get enough of those boats, loved them in bangkok and adored them here in amsterdam! we stopped to get some fresh fruits with lovely fresh homemade cream, and was entertained by the shop owner who sings oldies songs as he served us! really! it was like a scene from a movie! hehehe needless to say, twas a fantastic start to the city tour!

we walked around the city centre and along the floating flower market, saw a tatoo and piercing shop, with a huge picture on the door of a pierced nipple, ouch! bought tons and tons of souvenirs, saw a lovely shop that sells all kinds of colors, materials, shapes and sizes of hammocks! the air was full of the heavenly smells of the fresh tulips and roses and lilies and baby’s breaths and christmas trees and mixing with fresh aromas of coffee and another interesting smell that we strongly suspects to be the smell of you-know-what!

then there was the museums tours, where han gave a dazzling smile to the cute guy selling the tickets and managed to get us discounts for the entrance hehe and took lots and lots and lots and lots of pictures! lunch was french onion soup and pasta, of course!

as the evening approaches we found ourselves in front of the sex museum, which we found by chance actually, and paid the 3 euros to enter the museum…now, for someone like me who has never even watch porn, being inside the museum is like being in the dentist’s office, not something i wanna do, but kinda like i have to, for educational purposes of course, and i didnt want to wait outside alone huhu but there are some stuff in there that was soo gross that i almost throw up, some are pretty interesting (albeit weird and somewhat mind blowing actually!) and some are just down right unbelieavable! not much that i can describe in here actually, u kinda need to see it for yourself, but lets just put it this way, the girl that walked out from the museum are not the same as the naive innocent girl that walked in, i now know things, things i dont want to know actually, but i know, yeap, now i know..sigh (sounds scary, huh? hehe)

next stop of course, is the red light district, an area which is ironically a place for you-know-wat, but seems to be crawling with little children and families, wanting to get glimpse of the infamous women in their windows, its funny how "that" has become a tourist attraction, so when you see these women wearing well, practically nothing, parading their assets, while on the other side of the window, is a bunch of japanese families with babies in their strollers gaping at these women… makes you think doesnt it?

after our curiosity was satisfied (hehehe, again, not gonna go into details here, u gotta ask me if u wanna know more :p) we got out of the district and back into ‘normal’ world, well, as normal as amsterdam can be, and after some funny mishaps with the tramps, we finally made our way back to hotel, exhausted and laden with our shopping bags :)

altho i wished i could write more in this blog about the trip, it really really would make this entry waaay to long, lets just say that we managed to do wat we wanna do and saw wat we want to see (and then some) and just before going home the next day, we made a quick excursion to another market in the city and did a little bit more shopping and picture taking and managed to say our goodbyes at the train station without shedding a tear, altho i am extremely sad that i will not be seing han again until dunno when, and i barely got on the train when i started to miss her very much already sob sob :(

but nevertheless, we did have fun, didnt we han? it was a fantastic trip, short and sweet hehe perfect weather, great people, the best company in the world, gorgeous food and wonderful shopping, we did the whole works, historical museums for the educational part, mingled with the locals and attempted the tramps and boat buses for the cultural part and saw the other ‘parts’ as well that made amsterdam famous and so well known.. yeap, i think we covered it all !

so thats the end of the my quick tour of amsterdam and the end of this realllly loooooooooong blog hehehe

my final thoughts, i think if there was ever an european city that i am soooo sure that i could live in, it would definetely be the city of amsterdam, there’s something bout the air and the charm and the people and the life that i could definetely imagine myself living in it, so much so that i actually looked for available jobs there, in shipping and logistics of course, it is after all a port city, and there are some very interesting career oppurtunities that might be suitable for me but that my dear darling readers, is another story :)