amsterdam was like the #1 place that the exchange students here wanted to go to and went, by the car loads.....including us during the wkend. 6 pple in a Ford! oh man. being SMALL, i was arrowed to hide and be a "bundle of coats" whenever we saw uniformed men at checkpoints. hehee. and mom and dad were so happy that i went to amsterdam cos they've been there before as well..like 20 yrs ago. nope it was not very dirty, in fact the city is quite pretty. but the roads were so messy. cars can overtake via the pavements and u-turn anywhere.

but that's not the point. of course. it's amsterdam! amsterdam's the place full of kopitiams selling 草 hehee. il faut écrire en français maintenant.. :P j'ai essayé les herbes, 2 sticks et 1 gateau au chocolat avec herbes, "space cakes" -grinz- it wasn't much of an issue actually, for me at least. je pense que c'est à cause de mon abondance des graisse. mais il y avais un personne qui était très stoned. c'était un peu effrayant pour nous, mais une bonne et nécessaire éxperience, bien sur. je ne peux pas mettre des photos, pour des raisons évident! hehee. sauf ça peut-etre..

and of course amsterdam's red light district, and its fish tanks. one particular person has been bugging me for photos of the girls..sorry no can do, didn't take any, or rather, couldn't take any. i don't want big, burly black men descending on me and my camera. anyway, the girls start working at like 3pm (who needs them at 3pm?!) they stand in front of big windows like shophouses, men just knock on them and the girls will open the doors and bargaining begins. then when a deal is clinched, the curtains close. pretty interesting concept. dutch girls on the streets are really really sexy and most are pretty. and then when you go to the fish tanks, these sexy pretty girls seem to disappear and fat druggies dominate. sunken cheeks, sagging bellies and obvious ribcages. well ok not all, some are truly pretty.

entering the district by car is cool. there's like this barrier that moves down when the sensor senses a car. it's that thing that ida's standing on hehh.

saw the anne frank house as well. and omg i can't believe an RG girl hasn't read the diary of anne frank..so uncultured, so ashamed of her tsk tsk :P it was amazing and my goosebumps kept standing on end. it was the real hiding place of anne frank and they conserved it pretty ok. but the story was played out really well in this museum.

we also went to kukenhoff, the tulip fields. so pretty!! i don't hafta go to jeju to see such beautiful flowers already.

after amsterdam, we stopped by antwerp, belgium for a day. t'was so screwed up cos we left ams too late and reached antwerp's formule1 at like 3am..and they cancelled our freakin reservation!! and for some unknown reason, unknown even to the locals, all the rooms in all the hotels in antwerp were fully booked. except for ONE. so in the end, me, manda and cs stayed in that room and the rest slept in the car haha.

every shop was closed on sunday and yet there were so many pple milling about..wonder what they do. and there was this grp of students who were siesta-ing in the middle of the square (background of photo). and pple actually thot they were street artistes and dropped them some coins. haha funny. nth much else to see there lah, main thing was just the fountain, a castle and some big underground drainage system.

our dear lydia wasn't here cos she was visiting other castles in Loire as well, with the rest of the exchange students, organized by the student grp in charge of exchange pple. haha she just HAD to go there, where all the hedonistic fun was. heh but she enjoyed it, i hope..and so did the rest. oh wells, they said Loire isn't worth visiting without gd company. phew i didn't miss much then.