It was such an amazing experience, to travel 13 hours from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, all by myself. Well, it's quite a biggie for me as it is my very first time going to such a faraway foreign land all alone. But it felt like a business trip for me though, nothing exciting (as I thought at the beginning...) walking around at the airport, with my laptop bag, passport and a cup of latte, waiting to board, and again, all alone. What I expect throughout the whole trip was having random chats with random people at random places, which only happened once in a while as I was too lazy to even speak.
KLM, best known for its interesting services and gorgeous eh-hem, EH-HEM air stewardess. 13 hours on its plane, without private screen, and we were all served with cold food and cup noodles, yes, you did not read wrongly, cup noodles! Funny to hold a pair of chopsticks slurping noodles from a cup while watching The Simpsons, and I was the only Asian in the radius of 5 meters. Oh, and I didn't speak to anyone for the entire 13 hours journey (except asking for beer, wine and nuts from the crew).
I arrived at Schipol at 4.30am (what a wrong timing), took a train from the airport to Amsterdam Centraal, reached the city centre at about 5.30am. It was freezing for me, 5 deg Celcius, which is not too cold for the locals I believe. Most of the people were wearing black outfit, and the place is dark, and not too clean. Quite freaky at some point and this is how it looked like.........................
Amsterdam Centraal at 5.30am...Sun rises at 9am every morning, and sets at 4.30pm, rainy and gloomy. It was pretty depressing as I hail from a country where it is hot and sunny! But I managed to "adapt" entirely without suffering from any culture shock (other than seeing almost naked ladies standing in windows waving at you, and going to coffeeshops that sell joints). Amsterdam is an amazing, massive, well-developed, bicycles-friendly and expensive city. Girls are beautiful, and train system is efficient. The city is filled with great architectures and beautiful canals with geese and ducks swimming all over it.
Robin and Guido, the two tall and handsome Dutchmen who came to Malaysia for 2 months under the Dutch Ambassadors Program were my dedicated tour guides. As expected, the first place we went to was the Red Light District, followed by smoking weed and eating raw herrings! Went shopping near Dam Square and had beers at bars. We also went to the Amsterdam market, Rembrant house, Anne Frank House, and many more attractions in Amsterdam. I stayed in Amsterdam for 2 days.
Dam Square...
Guido & Robin
The 1st ever Starbucks in Netherlands, in Schipol Airport
Canal in Amsterdam 
Also in Dam Square...
BIG CANALS...
lovely scenery of Amsterdam 
this is not what you think it is... and they sell more than what you think they sell hehehe
cycling in Amsterdam is something REALLY common...Then I took a train from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, an hour trip which costs me about EU10 one way. When I arrived in Rotterdam Centraal, Amy picked me up from the train station and we walked together to AIESEC International office, THE place where all AIESEC members world wide wish to visit, if not work there. I was greeted by some of my GCC Teammates, which was an amazing feeling to finally meet them in person, after working together for a few months virtually! I have a very diverse team, Mike (Canada), Michael (Germany), Rita (France), Mary Anna (Ghana), Saba (Jordan), Divyanshu (India), Geet (Croatia), Cyrus (HK), Lina (Colombia), Petra (Czech Rep), Damjan (Serbia), and myself (Malaysia Truly Asia!!), and not to forget, my BIG BOSS Michelle Gallant (AIESEC International VPC). A very intelligent team and so much fun!
We had a 4 days intensive meeting together, planning, strategizing, conducting classes, and brainstorming. At night we went to bars for lots of beer after the meetings. The awesome part was all of us are caffeine addict! We discussed on Brand Xp, I am an AIESEC'er Campaign, communication plan, brand audit, secondlife, GCC+TMU+XMU strategies, secondlife, and secondlife. hmm...
Rotterdam, surprisingly, is my favourite city in The Netherlands. It has a modern city skyline (yeah, it actually HAS a skyline), very creative architecture, and most importantly, clean! Anisha hosted me in Rotterdam, in her very Christmassy room, she also cooked some Malaysian dinner for me and Amy, for our Malaysians in AI gathering!! But too bad I didn't have time to actually sit down and catch up with her throughout my whole stay as the GCC meeting took most of my time. The Netherlands is quite pricey, compared to Greece. I paid EU1.70 average for a kebab in Athens, but it costs me about EU3-4 in Tulipsland!
intensive GCC meeting...
Rotterdam skyline... 
I THINK its the city hall of Rotterdam
me and some of my GCC teammates having coffee break hehe
AIESEC International office!!!Another great experience for me was being stranded in Schipol Airport on the way back from The Netherlands to Malaysia. All the KLM passengers were waiting for quite some time to board on the plane, then we heard this anonymous voice saying "Dear KLM passengers heading towards Kuala Lumpur, the flight will be canceled and bring forward till tomorrow 12pm as we could not locate the plane at this point of time". WTF! Then we were given a hotel room each at the Schipol Airport hotel, with dinner, breakfast, and beer provided for free, in order to shut us up! Well, I didn't mind, once I heard we will be given free beer hehehe!
One more night in Amsterdam, hung out with random old Dutch guys talking about politics and economy while drinking beer, which was quite interesting. The next day we have to re-checked in, and then the flight was delayed for another hour (typical), but finally we departed to KLIA after that, and the rest is history...
Now I am back in the sunny and beautiful country of Malaysia! Hope to have another trip soon!
