Amsterdam. Netherlands

Hours, Days, Months of stipulation and planning. Years of Dreaming, all just leading up to this one moment.

Beside me stood the new recruit – Wing Commander Nand. I am hoping all his accreditation and hours of off the field training has prepared him for what lay ahead. An impressive list of conquest snuggly fit under my new partners belt. He stood tugging at my jacket as the overhead speaker sounded – “Final Call for Flight MH0148”. It was time to start the journey ahead. 5 weeks 4 Continents and a whole heap of fast food #Murica!

To baptise our trip with fire, we decided that the first stop in our continental adventure was to be to Amsterdam – Our own Adult Disneyland.

Winning an outstanding bet we boarded the flight as the last passengers, making it just before the gates were to close. To test our stress levels we had managed to find seats surrounded by a perimeter of infants – counting 5 within the 4 seat proximity. With a few glasses of the MH0148’s finest Red and Dolby surround sound of 8 hours of baby crying, we were disembarking for our 3 hour Malaysia lay over. A perfect opportunity to sneak in a beer or two. Intoxicated and lazy, we decided the wisest idea to find out gate was to follow a person who appeared to look and speak dutch – ‘surely he is going to Amsterdam’…. All in all not totally incorrect. He was going to Amsterdam and so was the flight that we were boarding, however, we found out when looking for our seats, that we were on the Wrong plane to Amsterdam! In a mad dash we ran, once again proving that lightning does strike twice – last to board.

Flying KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and being mind boggled by one of our Caucasian Dutch air stewards that could speak Hindi, and insisted on making our drinks in reverse (30 ml coke rest Whisky) we landed in SinCity hungover or possibly still drunk.

The alcohol in our systems was a catalyst to our decision to not go straight to the hotel after a 23 hour journey, but rather stroll around the city till afternoon. Checking in to our abode at 12 pm. Our hotel lay 40 minutes away from Amsterdam CBD, a quiet place with Horses roaming around.

After a long nap we decided to head back into the city and pick up where we left off, spending our first day of Amsterdam getting familiar with the terrain and planning our war crimes which were to follow.

To soak in the arts and culture and taste the finest delicacies that the city had to offer we started our second day in Amsterdam visiting the Van Gogh Museum, marvelling at art and sneaking photos of rare paintings – we only got told off by security twice. Wing Commander had heard legends from previous battles with he city and was ready to visit one of the landmarks – the heineken experience. stumbling through he city we managed to fit the initiation into Amsterdamage.

The nights activities were to start soon – rushing past the horses into the hotel room, we fit in a change of cloths and a bottle of vodka, pre drinking in the shower. Rushing, we set out to meeting the Amsterdam Pub Crawl….A bottle in and already having a few drinks we both looked at each other knowing what lay ahead was a dark and scary road. Not long after Wing Commander and i had split up…things went hazy after the second bar and a fair few events happened this night and i am not at liberty to disclose all of these – There are also a few blanks in the nights. lets skip to the end of the night at about 6 am when i arrived home to found Wing Commander in a state of semi conciseness in the room with an unknown bus ticket and a Random Jacket.

I for some reason was wearing the Wing Commanders jacket – meaning i had no idea where mine was. two hours of debriefing was not enough to locate and explain the events of the night – since the split both Wing Commander and i have some very altering experiences of what happened. Seemed like the city had another victim to add to its list, once again we had lost to this place.

All in all we were safe, limbs intact just with a missing jacket. we decided that we will resolve this by recounting our steps and trying to relive what happened on the night the next day. Approaching 8 am we slept. finally with no alarm set to wake us.

10:22am Fire Alarms are blearing – the second worst thing we have heard on this trip finishing closly after the DubStep Baby Tears. A banging on the door – we are asked to leave the hotel ASAP – leaving everything, there is a fire! At this point both Wing Commander and i are wondering if this was related to our blanks from the night before – had we done something to trigger this – Maybe- but really we have no idea. We rushed, i put on the Random guys jacket and left everything to run outside where a crowd was already gathering. A fire had broken out and there was 6 fire trucks and 2 police cars outside the building already. An hour waiting in the freezing 1 degree weather, a camera crew was approaching us to give comments. Residents stuck in the cold, wearing t-shirts, underwear and no shoes… Not long after the hotel had organised busses to take us to a ‘shelter’ hotel where we could sit and be warm. We sat and made friends with an American group that had kicked down the door of the hotel room since they thought there friend was overdosing on cocaine – turns out he was just sleeping. Some very interesting people, software developers from Montana. Turns out this is common behaviour in Montana. Not long after we were moved back to the hotel and told we can remain there since it was only the other wing of the hotel that had been effected.

It was already late and the sandman looked like he had gone on vacation. We decided not to sleep and rather start out long journey to figure out the mystery of missing jacket. retracing our steps we continued on the tourist route, visiting the local landmarks and the sinister areas. trying local delicacies and enjoying the views, walking around – taking it all in…till finally it was time for the pub-crawl to restart and like vultures we started following them to figure out at which point the madness began the previous night. As we creeped on to make it to the third bar, the door opened to reveal my jacket looking at me, like a start stuck lover looking into the eyes of their lover, i walked over picket it up and embraced it like a dying child, holding it and whispering ‘ daddy’s got ya, everything is going to be alright’ – The jacket had been found, although it seemed that Amsterdam had taken its toll on it too, a 1 centimetre tear in which it was bleeding goose feathers. i held it and promised it will receive some attention. i at once returned the random jacket and the case was solved. Wing commander and i hugged as if although we had lost the battle we had won the war.

With war wounds a duct taped jacket we leave leave this country: Amsterdam, The all consuming City of Sin.