A city where you can live your wildest dreams… within reason of course
Welcome to Amsterdam! One of the most carefree cities in the world. A city that doesn’t get hung up on the bullshit and one that was basically founded by entrepreneurs and with the motto, let’s make money! From this, it has grown into one of the the primary cities in the global economy. Now tour guides have mentioned this, and I believe it, it seems in this area of Europe, it rains, a lot, like every other day and of course on arrival, it was raining, oh to be wet…
Arriving in my hostel on a wet and windy day really gave me no desire to go out and see much of the city. It wasn’t till around dinner time that I got hungry and decided to brave the weather to find something to eat. Found a pretty decent Ramen spot and had a walk around the local area, only to find myself back at the hostel relatively early and settled in for an interrupted first night’s sleep (fucking Americans)
The next day I woke early and went down to the restaurant area and finally did my first live stream from Europe. It was good to be back on live again and even had a famous Pokemon Go content creator drop by. I will be endeavoring to stream more often as my trip unfolds but I have at least managed to keep up with Instagram posts and blog writing as well. Social media is a pain in the ass.
With the stream out of the way in the morning, it was free walking tour time in the afternoon. This was a great history lesson about the city with a really excellent guide (he was American, see, you’re not all bad!) It is easy to forget just how clued on the Dutch are and Amsterdam ends up being a shining example of that. Food, sleep and then once again, woken up by shitty Americans left me in a sour mood for hostel life.
Waking up a little later, I decide to go out and do some recording while wandering the city, it was of course a brilliant morning, so it was a perfect chance to get out and walk around. A short rest back at the hostel ended up being well planned as a rainstorm tore through the city and then it was perfect again in time for my red-light tour at 5pm. This was a great and informative tour with the only downside being the big drop in temperature thanks to the storm that came through. After the tour I went for a short walk around the district to check out the girls. Some were absolutely stunning while the majority were fairly ‘normal’ (I use that term loosely) The biggest thing I did notice was the amount of make-up used. This is something that bothered me a lot about Korean girls and their excess make up use (often poorly) to transform their faces into someone else and I was seeing a lot of that in the red-light district too. Now, I get it, there is the whole image thing and being in entertainment myself I fully understand why they do it. I just don’t like that they do it, I always thought make-up looked better to accentuate, not change. But to each their own and that is just my preference. These girls work hard and do dam well for themselves, you might hate the industry but the girls themselves deserve respect.
Back to the hostel I was greeted with a pleasant surprise, the dorm to myself! This made up for the previous 2 nights and allowed me to relax and get a good night’s rest as I continued my trip, next stop, Hamburg!
Marcus Powell has been living and working in South Korea since 2010. He is now on the road before returning back to NZ. Aside from writing his own blog, he is also a popular Club DJ, Gamer, Community manager, esports fan and anime enthusiast.
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