Day 2 Amstermdam
I found a new place to stay. It’s called Delta hotel and is located at Damrak road and it’s only 65e a night for a single room. My room is located on the fifth floor and the best was it has a double bed and a single bed. A price of a single room for a triple room!
We headed to the museum centre by tram. Abby and I went to RIJKS Museum while her mum and Jess waited outside. RIJKS Museum was pretty boring, as both of us have no knowledge about art and painting. We had totally zero admiration for them even though some of the paintings we saw were world famous and worth million of dollars. However, we spent more than 2 hours walking around the museum. It’s quite huge and has many rooms. They even had a cinema showing documentaries about the paintings.
Another common sight in Amsterdam is a human statue. They could stand for hours without moving, just like those guards outside Buckingham Palace. They usually dress up in a costume or paint themselves with paint. Obviously, they don’t do this for fun, you have to give them some tips in order to take pictures with them or see them move and they could come out with loads of different creative movements. Abby took pictures a man and a young girl, painted with silver, blowing bubbles.
Canal Ride around Amsterdam City wasn’t really enjoyable. The tour is conducted via a television with blurry screen. And we got really bad seats and it was hard to take photos. The ride only lasted for an hour. There’s something special about canal houses in Amsterdam namely the architecture of it, the windows are uneven, and some of them looks crooked and tilts on one side. This is due to the foundation of the building. During old times (some buildings dates back to 1400s), the foundation of the building are made out of wood. Hence, after many years, the wood contracts with water and softens, and there you go, an uneven looking house, which looked like it’s going to fall down.
After canal ride, we went souvenirs hunting around the city. The entire Damdrak Road is filled with hotels, tour agencies, eateries and souvenir shops. Postcards, t-shirts, mugs, toys, fridge magnets, replicas of canal houses and windmills, bongs and pipes and so on are sold in every souvenir shop. The scenery postcards are really nice hence I bought couple of them. Obscene postcards are sold as well, the pictures ranges from naked gay men to mutated sex organs. Postcards can be sent all over the world for a price of 65cents. As for the stamps, I bought loads of them. Whenever I visit a country, I’ll make sure I’ll get their stamps as stamps portray the culture of the country.
We had dinner with Edwin, Jess’s friend, a 30-year-old Dutch working for Malaysian Airlines. He brought us to this small Italian restaurant at a small village outside Schiphol. The restaurant was at the verge of closing but they were nice enough to serve us. Edwin couldn’t stop talking about himself and he thought I was Abby’s brother. We played along and all the while he thought I was Abby’s brother. The food wasn’t that good anyway.
Night time, we went to take a walk around red light district. It was really dodgy. There were loads of men around, they are either looking at the prostitutes or looking for prostitutes. I brought Abby to a peep show, which cost 2e for 2 minutes. Peep show is where you go into a small room, just enough to fit a person, and watch a girl doing obscene things on a rotating stage. She said she felt indifferent but not disgusted.
I then brought her to a small sex shop. The things there ranged from dildos to S&M equipments. The S&M equipments fascinated her. Hehe
– 11:40PM