Thursday 20 March 2014

The journey from KL to Marrakesh by land (well most of it anyways) - The Introduction

Al Imam Al Shafie:

Leave your country in search of loftiness,
And travel. For in travel are five benefits,
Relief of adversity and earning of livelihood,
And knowledge and etiquettes and noble companionship.

And now it has come to the day that we will be starting our journey leaving behind our family, friends, careers for this short period of time as we embark from Malaysia to Morocco through Indo-China, Trans-Mongolia, Trans Siberia, through Europe to the northern country in the African continent.  

Planning has been immense, starting from some boyhood dream watching the Trans Siberian Express movie and really starting making the plans 3-4 years back, waiting for our finances to buck up. And now the time has finally come, we would be embarking on this marvelous and culturally rich journey going to places such as Vientienne, Ulan Bator, Irkutsk, Moscow, Prague, Marrakesh, Istanbul, etc. A total of 21 stopovers along for the ride. 

Please sit back and I would try to update as much as I can along the way. Just keep us in your prayers and hope that all turns out well. I will be sharing my itinerary and how did we plan for this moment of epicness.

The overview of our trip:


Till then. 


Friday 28 September 2012

Euro Trip - Amsterdam Part 2

Sorry I haven't been updating as often as I wish. So now we are back to Amsterdam again. :)

The second day we were up early in the morning. Took the tram to the Van Gough Museum. Really can't remember too much about this day as I had two space cakes for breakfast. Hahaha. What I can remember is that the Iamsterdam Card I talked about in the earlier post offered a nice 20% discount on the entry fees if I'm not mistaken. As I said, I was too stoned too remember much.

night before

amsterdam central
me being stoned at the museum
van gough museum

After a few solid hours in the museum, we went out to explore the area around the museum. Nearby was the famous "I Amsterdam' sign. The sign does not sit in one place and is usually moved to another location once every few months. After camwhoring for a solid one hour, me and my partner in crime went to board a nice boat cruise around the canals of the city. The card included a free ride on one of these boats. As the these events happened a few years back, I can't really re-call the exact location, how much was the bus fare, etc. Sorry eh.

i amsterdam 1
i amsterdam 2
i amsterdam 3
The boat ride lasted around 1 hour and 30 minutes and took us through the canals of Amsterdam. We passed the famous red light district on boat, the Nemo Science Centre, the Anne Frank Museum. The ride was quite enjoyable as we were able to relax a bit and just enjoy the nice cool weather (actually it was drizzling and freaking cold but hey, look on the bright side).














After the boat ride, we decided to explore Vondellpark. Vondellpark is one the most famous parks in Amsterdam. Not that pretty though, I thought. Nevertheless, we explored the park for a while before heading out to Waterloo. The Waterloo area is usually packed with all those flea markets and bargain shops but you need to have the correct day and time. Unfortunately we didn't. However the architecture and buildings surrounding the area mitigated the unfortunate turns of events that transpired.

After walking around the park area, we headed back to the main square to get some food. For muslim travellers, I don't really get a hard time finding for halal food. Europe has a large number of muslim immigrants ranging from Algeria to Egypt and so on. Halal food is also considered not so expensive as you would find in Hong Kong for instance. We stopped by a kebab shop which sold the normal food such as kebabs, briyani rice, etc (the cheapest was around 5euros for a small kebab with fries, but by no means it was small).

Walking around the centre itself was just simply amazing. There were a lot of things going on. Huge crowds of people just walking around. There were pastry shops, sex shops, restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. In Amsterdam, coffee shops are basically bars which sells you weed, ganja, hash or whatever you call it nowdays. Based on my survey, it was not exactly cheap but the quality was goooooood. Its like a candy store, only the candy being substituted with weed. Hahaha. Please take note that ecstacy, cocaine, mushrooms are not sold in coffee shops legally. Most probably if you ask they can get it for you. Getting stoned in Amsterdam. Nothing beats that.

After getting stoned, we decided to head back to our boat as it was already night time although the skies were still bright.

We needed a good rest, as the jetlag effect had just kicked in. The next day we will be stopping by Brussels and taking a flight to Venice.

Till next time. Enjoy the huge roll below =)