Thursday 21 June 2012

I seem to have left it 9 days since the last post... god help us all

Ok so i sit here in the common room of my hostel in london contemplating what im actually gonna write about...  cause theres a lot.

after the last relevant post i put up i told myself i wouldnt leave it 7 days to post again and yet here we are 9 days later with only a map and a sob story inbetween.


so the last post left us on the morning of my 21st. (12th June 2012).
now this day was a pretty cool one, although not much was actually achieved haha.

in short, we spent the morning driving out to a large empty field that my friend Bastiaan used to visit alot.

the reason for this is simple. RC GLIDERS!!!!!!!!! :D

now i used to fly RC helicopters quite a bit so i thought i would be alright.... BARP, not the case.

all in all we probably spent a hour or two flying the plane around, bastiaan showing me how and me failing haha. different controls on the remote for a plane, i kept inadvertently putting the air brake on and then trying to pull it up before it nose dived into the wet grassy ground.

the day was ended when one of the 2 planes we took nose dived into the ground and broke on of the struts in the secondary wing. (guess who was flying that one....... moi) i felt horrible.
Bastiaan calmed me however by saying he had all the stuff at home to fix it. So i felt better but still bad.

the 2nd plane we took, was actually the one we were going to fly first but when we left Bastiaans house we had checked that all the parts we needed were in the car, body, wings, rc etc. we just didnt check the wings we had were for the correct body. *facepalm*

so once the first plane was damaged we had to cal it quits.

Me being badass (at flying)
Bastiaan showing how its done

on the LH wing are 2 little grips, you hold these, spin like a discus thrower and then launch the plane into the sky


final resting place. the nose piece is 3" into the ground.....

So as much fun as fixed wing flight is, i seem to find it easier to fly a 6 axis helicopter. I think i will stick to them.

another thing that we did on that fateful day was rockclimbing.
now i used to do this quite a bit way back in grade 10 (6 years ago) but then since then i have probably done it 3 times.

so you can assume correctly that i was pretty damn eager to have a crack at it again.

at the climing place, they have a range of graded walls from ~2 up to 7+
i started with the 3's, did them easy as piss.
tried the 4's, now these ones were pretty easy to start out with, but the biggest issue for me was the overhangs, so your climbing up a wall and then all of a sudden the wall starts leaning out away from where you started, so your entire body weight is on your fingers and toes.

i am actually quite impressed with myself, i was able to do one of the 4's but then after that could only get half way up before i started to lose the strength in my fingers and arms so i sat out for a while and just watched.

one major difference i noticed between australian climbing walls and ones in the Netherlands, is that in australia when you are the belayer, your attached to the person up on the wall, but also to the ground, so any weight differences there may be are nullified.

in the netherlands this is not so.
so we teamed up with one of Bastiaans mates and when i was climbing Bastiaan would belay and Rob would be tied to Bas haha.

towards the end of the night we were mucking around and thought it would be cool to see what happened when i climbed to the top of a wall with Bas and rob beneath me and see what happened when i get to the top and just let go haha. we also got this on video, although in the video i didnt go to the top cause i was shattered from having done it about 4 times before we thought of recording it haha.


L-R   Rob, Bastiaan, Ross

Me at the top of the wall

~half way through dropping to the bottom you can see Bas is getting lifted

Free climbing

So this brings an end to the day of my birth.
It also brings an end to my time with Bastiaan for the next day i was to catch a train to Beilen up near Assen (think motoGP)

The following day i was to go to a friend of mines up in Beilen in the north east of Holland, now the only thing is, she wasnt home yet. She was coming home from london that day on the train so after finding out what station she was going to have to do a transfer at i just met her there, a big thanks to Bastiaan for taking me around and showing me the sights and then for taking me to the train to meet up with Suzanne.

after meeting suzanne at the train we went back to her place where we got ready to go to the pub.
now Beilen isnt that big a town so when holland was versing germany in the european championships that night it seemed like the entire town was in the small pub.

Suzanne introduced me to her little group of friends, who were all around my age actually which was nice.

throughout the game rounds were bought and consequently drunk and this process was repeated.... apparently a bit too much as i found out the next morning when i woke up back at the apartment with no memory of getting there.

apparently there was another 8-9 drinks that i dont remember before i ended up getting carried home haha. and the girls i was out with were still going.
can you say SHAME!!!!! i can and i am haha.

now before you start blowing me off as a lightweight, i have a few points i would like to make before you judge,

i quit tour guiding over 4 months previous, so that meant i havent been drinking for over 4 months cause now i was no longer getting mates rates i couldnt afford it so i was outta practice.
i had a slight cold so was taking meds before it turned into the dreaded manflu, the package was in dutch so i couldnt read it but apparently those meds were not meant to be mixed with booze, and finally we didnt have anything to eat for dinner.

so a recap,

outta practice, on meds, no dinner.

thats my excuse and by god am i sticking to it.
i now have to go back to beilen though and show the girls up haha.

so after the nights pleasantries which i cannot for the life of me remember, thursday was spent vegetating on the couch haha.

which going by all accounts was a pretty common place to be for most people that day so it wasnt just me.


the following day was a friday.

this is the day that i caught up with one of my ex passengers that i hadnt seen for the longest.
today i went from Beilen to Breda, which is essentially eastern holland to western so across the country. and it only took ~4 hours haha.

So it was here in Breda that i saw Tom.
Tom was a dutch kid that was on my very first ever tour. which i still consider to be one of my favourite groups. not cause it was the first but the group was just brilliant every single aspect of it was great.

so i was pretty eager to catch up with tom.

so theres not really that much in Breda to be honest haha, walking around with tom we had a beer at a pub and walked around for a while. At one point tom yelled out "TWINGO" and then punched me. i was trying to figure out what was happening and apparently my confusion showed so he explained the game.

if you know of punch buggie then its the same, except whenever you see a renault Twingo, you punch instead of a VW bug.

so needless to say i was quite pleased when i saw the next twingo and then tom called it quits haha.

a big thanks to Tom and his parents. although we didnt really do anything it was really nice to just sit back in a family setting and be included. made me think of home.

i was slightly annoyed though at that nights soccer game, it was sweden vs england. I was backing sweden to win 3-2.

until the last 20 mins it was even looking good haha. but then england came through and the final score was 3-2 but not in my favour. bugger.

the next 2 days went pretty quickly, it began with saying bye to tom and his family, and getting back on the train to Amsterdam.
It was the night of my birthday party. of course i was gonna have a good time. however after the previous wednesday it wasnt gonna be a massive one.


it was a brilliant night out to be honest drinks with a few good mates.
Big thanks to Bastiaan, Elias, Martijn, Jelle, Danielle, Sophie and Eline for coming out.
Eline, Danni, Ross, Sophie

Eline, Elias, Sophie, Ross, Danni

Very happy and slightly drunk Ross
Sunday afternoon i caught up with 2 passengers that were on my very last tour with heading Bush, Fons and Steph.

i had received a phone call from fons saying he was going to be in Amsterdam on sunday afternoon.
so in true spirit of the dutch, we went to a pub to watch the game against portugal.

i was wearing all the orange gear i had, socks, jocks and a scarf but alas holland lost the game
it was awesome catching up with fons and especially with steph cause shes actually from switzerland and fons never told me she was coming so it was a pleasant surprise.

Fons

Steph

Steph Decided my Dutch gear and sunny's suited her better.
A swiss chick wearing dutch colors.



The next day, monday i caught a train to London.
now some may wonder why i went the train route instead of the flights.
long story short i would rather pay less money and sit on a train for 6 hours then pay double to get the plane.

plus i dont mind the trains. its more comfortable for lengths of time then a plane is, the train also stopped closer to where i am currently living so it was a bit easier albeit longer.




So london.....

Its a pretty cool city, but i will say right now it hasnt grown on me.
So far i have seen Big ben, Trafalgar Square, Oxford st, the London Aquarium, and the London Dungeon and although they were all pretty cool i must say the city is too busy and big for me personally.

i havent quit on it yet though, theres still a heap i want to see but im waiting for better weather (london eye etc)

Jelly Fish at the Aquarium

Lion fish (i think)

Massive turtle

London Eye in the afternoon

Trafalgar Square Monument

London eye and Big Ben

Big Beg

Big Ben

Double Decker bus


As i think i have said previously i prefer seeing places as a local, i will do the touristy things but i want to see a place as a local and that takes a combination of either knowing locals and going where they go, or just being in a spot for a while and pacing it out yourself.

so london is going to get a bit more attention then what its currently received.

a few of my highlights so far though have been catching up with mates,
First was Lauren, myself and Lauren went to school together way back in primary school. She left the school in grade 5 when we were 10 but through the magic that is facebook since resumed contact.

the others so far have been pete and then Sheryl.
Both of these people i met when i did my stint in a Cairns backpackers hostel as part of my isolation.
both helped me out so much through that period without realizing, it was quite awesome to see them again.

I know that the above is written badly, but its my fault for leaving it so long between posts and doing so much


Sunday 17 June 2012

a bit of an insight to mcfears life

well, i dont really know how to begin this post,

i know that my last few post's havent really been written with the for want of a better word, "flair" that the first few had. So i think for this post im going to give an insight to the entity that is mcfear.

i dont know whether i should put the lack of "flair" within the posts down to general tiredness, from all the stuff that i have been up to, by the time i went to write the last few blog posts it was generally midnight local time, and i was trying to put posts up so that they didnt build up.

Or could it be attributed to the fact that im not a writer? sure sometimes i can whip out a bloody nice looking and reading post but not all the time. im not sure, im slightly leaning towards the latter of the two options while keeping in mind that the first would have a fair amount of play in the writing.

anywho. enough about my lack of writing skills, the honest reason im even writing this blog, is that it for me is a form of diary, but unlike a conventional diary, it is on the interwebs so that others can enjoy my experience too, maybe not to the same extent haha, but given the right viewer it can be used to maybe strike the flint in someones inner fire to give them the travel bug too.


I got my travel bug when i was just 17, living in a backpackers hostel after just failing highschool.
now i know a lot of people fail highschool and dont seem to give a shit. I however had been getting A's ever since i started, both at a normal school and a top of the line boarding school.
the kicker came when i changed high schools for the final 2 years of my senior schooling.

The school was not a standard school by Queensland standards, it had been set up for the academically gifted, it was there to support the nerds, geeks, technofreaks and everything inbetween.
when i started i liked to think that i was a combination of nerd and freak haha.

The major difference about this school is that it was based on a european stimulus called  the International Baccalaureate. Now this system is a very good system, but when compared to what the Queensland governments idea of a curriculum is, it is a massive step up.

Being the fact that i was actually a foundation graduate, meaning that myself and all the rest that were within my class were the first group of students to go through that would graduate we werent sure what lay ahead of us.

The teachers even didnt seem to know what to expect as they had all come from teaching the queensland curriculum they were some of the best teachers that there could be within their fields, but all thats pointless when both teacher and student are new to a curriculum.

hence why i think i failed, it wasnt that i didnt try, f*cking oath i tried, it wasnt that the teachers were shit, they were brilliant, it was just a completely different system to what everyone was used to and as it turns out wasnt the system for me and i ended up dropping most of my classes and focussed on maths and english as they are the 2 most generally needed courses that you can get.

End result. I failed highschool and when offered a resit told them to shove it. i was burnt out, i wasnt used to failing. I had become massively depressed to the point where it was affecting the relationships with my parents and family, friends were getting pissed off at me, i just hadnt become a person i liked.

so i did what every normal teenager would do, i escaped. i went somewhere as far away and remote as i could possibly afford and then i stayed as long as i could without becoming dependent on others.

i went to cairns.

In all honesty i cant remember why i went to cairns, i dont know if it was that it was as far away from home as i could go while remaining on the eastern side of australia.

All i know for certain is that after spending 8 weeks in a backpackers hostel with basically no contact with the place i had just left, i was a lot clearer then i can honestly say i had been for a long time.

A combination of no contact with the world i had just upped and left, and also living with backpackers, living like a backpacker, hearing about all these other places and doing it on a shoe string budget. It kinda just gave me a new way of seeing the world.

after 2 months i was still having a blast in cairns but it was time to go and i worked on a farm for a few months driving tractors. while this is not a job that i wanted to do for a lengthy amount of time, it was another 5 months of basic isolation, it didnt pay too badly either i might note.

so all in all, it took close to 7 months of isolation to get back to a state of mind that was normal.
i went back to brisbane, i found myself a traineeship and i started going to college.

but all the while i was there, i was thinking about traveling, about the good times i had with the backpackers in cairns.

so after 16 months in the trainee-ship, i decided amongst a few other points which need not be discussed here, although i liked the work, it wasnt for me and i left for adelaide and got as close to what i wanted as i could without leaving the country.

I became a tour guide.

i was finally doing something i really enjoyed.

driving the backpacker tours from adelaide to alice springs is still my lifes highlight. even when im sitting here in a hotel room in amsterdam after just having my 21st birthday party last night.

i drove the busses for close to 2 years, doing a multitude of different tours, from driving the toyota Landcruiser troop carriers and shaking up to 10 backpackers around the real australian outback for 10 days to changing scenery of sorts and driving the mini busses along similar routes but on the highway with up to 21 backpackers.

it gave me the feeling of being a backpacker, it gave me the travelling aspect and it also gave me a putz load of friends all over the world many of whom i have remained in constant contact with.

so when i finally got the chance to come to europe and experience proper travel first hand of course i took the opportunity.

I hope that the above text isnt too monotonous or boring, especially as it has nothing to do with my actual travel so far, but i feel it makes this blog a bit more personal, and gets a few things out there in the open that currently only a few people know about.

My last post was a few days ago so later on today or tomorrow when im on the train to london i'll try to get another post up thats more related to the actual trip itself. 

Friday 15 June 2012

Quick Update

just a quick map screenshot showing how much of holland i have currently been to,

the public transport systems here are so much better then australia's its not even comparable.

Click to Enlarge


I would also like to mention that on the right hand side just under the about me section within the sidebar is a email subscription service, if you put your email in there whenever a new post is added you'll get a email notification

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Who's been a busy lil bastard, ME!!!!!

so, its been ~5 days since the last post and boy has it been fun haha.
i would like to firstly apologize for the length of this post as its going to be massive. 

the day after my last post was written a very dear friend of mine came to see me in amsterdam.
it was the first real day of sightseeing i suppose i did as we actually went out and saw things instead of just randomly walking around and finding these weird little boutique style shops.

Dont get me wrong, the little boutique style shops have been awesome, some of the most random stuff you find in there is just so different its awesome, although not worth the markup some of the places have put on it.

So on the day that Marleen came to visit me, we went and saw the house of Anne Frank who i am pretty sure most people know about or at least have heard about.

It was a pretty humbling experience to be honest, having read a little bit of her book "Diary of Anne Frank" in school and knowing some of the story behind her, it was cool to walk through the actual house she lived in, and see how they lived for quite a long time, a few years.

there were no photos allowed inside so i havent got any from that, we then went for a walk and went to the Pathe Tuschinski which is Amsterdams largest movie theatre.
Now a bit of a background on this, albeit a small background. it is an old theatre, from the age of plays and i assume opera's. Its now been outfitted with quite comfortable chairs (IMO) and a massive screen over the stage. this is by far the coolest movie theatre i have been to outside of Australia..... and within australia.

the entire experience was better then any australian movie i have been to, from the seating, to the actual theatre itself, and even the sound and the screen. the screen was easily the size of the IMAX theatre at southbank in Brisbane.

End prognosis, Pathe Tuschinski theatre in amsterdam is a must if you are in the area and want to watch a movie,

we also went to the Australian bar "Coco's Outback Bar" where i was able to get my first drink of a real rum, BUNDY!!!!!!!

one of two bars in all of amsterdam to stock it. :D

after all the festivities Marleen had to leave but since the sun had come out and the rain had f*cked off we decided for a picture at one of Amsterdams many canals before it was time to go to the train station.

Marleen and Myself

Since that day with Marleen, i have had the pleasure of also visiting the Heineken Experience which although i dont drink beer practically ever, i had a few here throughout the tour because they were included haha, i dont have any pictures as my camera was out of battery, some of the other people that i went with though took pictures and im just waiting for them to upload them to facebook or something so i can poach them haha.

The Heineken experience was pretty bloody cool, it starts out with a bit of history of the company and its founders, to going into how its made and a walkthrough an old section of brewery thats no longer in operation and has been adopted to be educational and in some places demonstrational (not a word but it'll catch on im sure :P)

in the end you get a few free beers and then the offer of a free canal tour which goes from the factory to the brand store, in the hope of getting a few people to spend some of their hard earned coin im sure haha.

last friday i caught a train to Leiden to try and avoid the weekend prices at my hostel (from 22 euro a night to 50 euro a night for friday and saturday).

So on the friday i caught a train to Leiden to stay with some passengers that were on my very last tour with groovy grape in australia.

the train ride over there was quite uneventful, it was only a 20-30 min trip so i spent the majority of that just looking out the window watching the world go by. I did get curious though at the speed of the train as its a fair bit larger then the trains we have in brisbane as its a double decker train. it was a really smooth ride however. It just so happens that i have an app on my iPad which is a GPS speedo haha, from back in adelaide when i had a little $300AU car and the speedo was a bit wack.

So i opened the app and lo and behold i was moving a lot faster then i thought i was haha.
i'll let the picture speak for itself.

Leiden.







What can i say about Leiden, its a very beautiful city, once again i had trouble getting my camera to see what i saw.

myself, Paul and Marjolite (sorry about spelling) ended up going for a bike ride around the city. To see it in a more dutch setting.
After ~ 5-6kms on a bike where the seat was too high for me i think i have briused my tail bone, but im not really regretting it as we saw some brilliant things.

first off we rode to an old orphanage near the centre of Old Leiden, this place has been around since the 1600's. After coming from a country where in the 1600's there was nothing more then what the aborigine's needed this is quite dumfounding and humbling.  


Doorway inscription in the old orphanage
 Next up we rode around a massive church and then up to an old circular structure made out of heavy stone, i cant remember the name of it but i know it was made when the original Leiden was for defence and fortification purposes, nowadays its a part of the local parklands for sightseeing.

Paul in the Circular Fortification
According to Paul each city in the Netherlands has its own flag, the flag of Leiden comprises of 2 keys, which according to biblical folklore (im an atheist dont judge me) are the 2 keys that peter the disciple held at the gates of heaven to let the good people through. so in essence i think subliminally the designers of the flag of leiden think the city is the gateway to heaven, i can certainly see that in the scenery and the architecture but in real life i highly doubt it haha.


We then went and saw the University of Leiden and walked through their botanic gardens and saw the observatory where quite a lot of the early astronomical findings were found. at this point it was raining so i was hiding my camera within my hoodie to hide it from the rain so i didnt get any photos.

i did however get a lot of photos from the next place we stopped which was the museum of really old things (not actual name).

this place was massive, well probably not in comparison to a lot of the museums in capital cities around the world but it did take us quite a large amount of time to accomplish, and i got photos :D

One of the first things i saw when we walked in was this section of temple that looked like sandstone,
upon closer inspection it was a section of the old temple of taffeh, built approx 2000 years ago 50kms away from Aswan in africa.
Taffeh's Temple
 there were 3 floors all were massive, in the interest of time and bandwidth i wont go into much further except their ancient egyptian artefacts are many, varied, and awesome.

as are their roman and greek empire periods.

for dinner they drove me to Den Haag, to show me the beach at Schevinengen.
now i wasnt expecting much from a beach in europe, not after growing up 30 mins from the beaches at the Gold Coast in australia. However, it was quite a surprise when we got to the beach and it looked nearly exactly the same, with the exception of all the bars scattered across the beach.

there were decent waves, lots of sand (obviously) the sand wasnt as golden but thats a minor thing to pick.

Paul and Marjolite decided that after a quick stop at one of the royal palaces for a photo it was dinner time and for dinner they would shout me dinner regardless of how much i refused to allow them to and we ended up at what i am pretty sure was a argentinian grillhouse.

dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians, this place was awesome.
i ended up ordering some spare ribs and fries and salad and i was so shocked when my food came out i nearly squeeled in excitement haha.

once again, a picture speaks a thousand words.




thanks paul and marjolite, it was truly a pleasure to stay with you and experience your city.

what else has happened.....


oh yeh, we got a new dude in the hostel a few days ago, Justin from canada.
Turns out he's also a ex tour guide on a Euro trip :D


although canadian, he's actually pretty cool and we got along pretty well.

i think its probably got something to do with both of us having a pretty messed up sense of humor which is akin to all guides methinks.

anywho, i had been wanting to go to a few places within amsterdam that i reckoned would be more appreciated with other people then just on my own so i was quite happy when justin rocked up because being a new guy in the city he hadnt already seen everything haha.

we ended up checking out a few things yesterday which im glad i got to see.
these were Madame Tussards the wax museum, the Amsterdam Dungeon and the Ice bar.

Firstly madame tussards.
this started of with myself and justin getting a photo with the american president, Barack Obama.
now myself being an Australian who's not even bothered with my own countries politics and justin being a canadian this just gave us an opportunity to make poses with the president that you just would not be able to in real life haha.

we did get a copy of this picture (at 9euro a pop) but since justin paid the majority of it he has the print copy and im waiting for my digital version to come through.

now there are a lot of wax statues in there. when i say a lot, i meant a LOT.
from british prime minister Winston Churchill, to POS's like Lady Gaga.

being the carefree fun lovers we are, we had a fair bit of fun in here.

Julia Roberts

Robbie Williams i think....

booty

Johnny Depp

C*nt Punting Gaga

Justin imitating marilyn monroe

Dame edna

First ever Canadian President of the USA?

Rockin it with Bob Marley

Doing the world a massive favour

Being awesome

mucking around with some famous soccer player

after what ended up being a fair while in there we then left and went just down the street to the Amsterdam Dungeon.
Now those of you who have been to Draculas on the gold coast will know what sorta place this is. those that dont, its something that i cant really explain. you kinda have to experience it to know what im talking about.

If you know draculas this place is essentially the same except bigger, better and more well done in practically every way.

we werent allowed to take pictures within this tour as being quite a dark setting, cameras wont work without flash, and with flash it ruins the setting and blinds every poor bastard there haha.

to try and explain it, you walk through the building guided door to door by actors who each have their own story.

going from the gouls of the black plague era, to the slavers of the east india trading co, to everything inbetween and past each end.

i highly highly recommend doing it.

its not scary but there are some moments when the pucker factor does creep up a bit.


One of the coolest things i have done so far though was the ice bar.
when i say coolest i mean literally.

Its a bar that is carved out of straight ice, the bar, the cups the chairs everything.
the air temperature is -10c to keep it from melting haha, as such you only get 40mins inside, but in that 40 mins you get 2 drinks included in your admission, a 3d movie, and it is genuinely a good time.  Because its so cold inside you wear these silver poncho's with a hood and some gloves which make you look like eskimo's from the future haha

i promised mum i would get some pics from the ice bar but its run by Heineken and apparently they have copywrited an entire bar, so no photos were allowed but they took pictures themselves and then sold it back to you. at 9 euro a print it isnt cheap but i got 2 prints.

Me

(L2R) Justin, our Bartender, Me

Finally today.
i bid everyone farewell in the hostel and got on a train bound for Eindhoven.

if you read the last few posts in here you woulda seen a picture of me with a crazy dutch guy, i was wearing my amsterdam beanie and reflective aviators.

im now crashing at his house for a few nights to catch up with him and some other mates that were on the same tour.

so far i have gotten lost in the house. Its massive and not even by dutch standards.
this house is bigger then quite a lot of the houses in a normal australian suburb.

we have also gone for a bike ride, and ended up 6kms away at the town of Borkel. Little did either of us know that borkel is having a town fete on haha.

so with over 20 euros in coins in my wallet i ended up having a go at the shooting range, and being the true aussie i am i didnt miss a shot. it pissed off the carnies to no end. i ended up walking away with a few prizes haha

Mark another dutchy off the same tour as Bastiaan came over for dinner and after a few hours of talk and food haha he left and myself and bastiaan ended up at the pub haha.

was a good way to end the last few days.

im sorry for the massive write, and also for the writing itself, im tired and as such wasnt able to get it all written exactly how i wanted but i had to get it all down before i started to forget.

its taken me about an hour and a half to write all this and as i look at the clock i realise that its now the morning of the 12th of june, its now my birthday, Im now officially 21 years old

i think im gonna sleep in haha. 

i suppose thats it for the next few days, will put another update on shortly once i got more to write about.

Tuesday 5 June 2012

Been putting it off for a while, no longer.

ok to all my valued readers,

sorry its taken so long to post up but jet lag has been a major bitch to me haha and everytime i have tried to write something, its been no better written than the post i made in korea.

I suppose that most of you are thinking he's in Amsterdam, hes just living it up.

well truth be told i havent done much of anything haha, havent had the energy for it, been waking up at weird hours etc.  I knew that jet lag would be a pain in the ass, but its so much worse then people have let on haha. but its not in a painful way as i had expected, its just annoying more then anything, im here in amsterdam and i want to get out and see the sights, but when i have energy its the middle of the night and when its daytime i have none haha.

its getting better though, i have spent the majority of today out walking around with scotty, a dude in my dorm from perth and then a good mate of mine Bastiaan who is dutch came to see me :D

Bastian (Left) Me (right)
 All in all, i like Amsterdam the city itself is very old, all the buildings are old 3-4 story buildings and have a very cool boutique sort of feel to them, which is accentuated by the shops that they house.


the section of the city im staying in is very touristy, which i generally dont like.  i dunno if thats from being brought up on acreage all my life i just dont really like built up busy areas, or from being a tour guide in the outback whenever around a large amount of people never really appealed to me, i like the smaller crowds and the places that are slightly less frequented.

so this morning when i woke up at 6am and couldnt get back to sleep as my body was saying its actually 2pm haha, i decided to go for a walk.

im not actually sure where i ended up i suppose i could check the geotags on the pics but i found my way out of the center of amsterdam and ended up where the locals live, where they work and where they shop, and it was brilliant.

it was no longer touristy, it was normal.

i know that may seem like a weird thing to like, but the way i see it is that anyone can see a place as a tourist, i would rather see a place as a local. Thats why when i go to england and find a job, i plan to rent an apartment, and live there for a while. find all the places that the locals go, become a part of the community for a while.

thats one reason why even though im only in holland at the moment for probably 2 weeks or so, i will definately be back.


A few of the places i found were just breathtakingly beautiful that im afraid even with my nice big camera (Sony A55) i couldnt capture what i was seeing properly and deleted the photos haha.

here are a few though,

A few of a church tower i saw when taking detours through all the back alleys



A shot of the front of part of the Bulldog Bar, this seems to be a very large pub/bar/thing. theres 3 side by side on this particular street and a few more scattered around the place.
going by advice given to me by a mate of mine from alice springs i have not frequented it but i dont know why i shouldnt go there, any ideas? haha



Only in Holland haha

Going here tomorrow haha. 


A few of the places that im planning on checking out before i leave are the Hash and hemp museum, the medieval torture museum, Madame Tussards and the Van Gogh museum.

This coming friday i am also going to be catching up with some friends from my very last tour with groovy grape getaways in Leiden i think it is, and then a party at another mates place ~15 mins north of Amsterdam for the European Championships (soccer).

in pre-emptive for the EC party, i have purchased a nice orange scarf and the above i AMsterdam beanie haha.

i think thats it for amsterdam so far, but here are a few pictures from the trip over.

The hotel i stayed in while in Korea, Incheon City


Tipped the hotel staff 10,000 won

What i believe is the coast line of Denmark

Ice Crystals on my window