Danger – Keep Away

I said in a facebook status the following words: “Welcome to the European equivalent of Vegas. What happens here stays here... Unless it's hilarious in which case I'm telling everybody.”

So remaining true to the above statement, I will report on the appropriate experiences.

First of all a special thankyou to my Dutch friend Mitch who let me stay with him for the week and showed me round. Always good to have a local on your side.

But when you think Amsterdam, you imagine city centre, immersed in the party life 24/7. Nope; whilst we spent a lot of our time in the city, Mitch lived outside the city by about 30-40 mins. Not only that, the suburb he lives in isn’t exactly on the DFAT’s safest travel destinations. How do I know? Some houses had electric fencing around their property. Low socio-economic status, a lot of flats, and crime rates. Needless to say I was a little nervous about staying there let alone commuting to and from the city alone (which I rarely did).

But I made it through alright, although I didn’t think I would when this happened:

We’re walking through the city streets in the wee hours of the morning on our way to another cool square full of bars and clubs and people.

Background: In Amsterdam you can legally buy and smoke marijuana and hashish, and may have truffles (which contain shrooms). Ecstacy, heroin, cocaine, MDMA, etc are illegal. However street vendors exist and if you want some (and quality isn’t your primary concern) you can get your hands on it relatively easily (also if you don’t mind diesel laced drugs).

Back to the story: I spot some vendors on the street corner – they’re not hard to spot. I say to Mitch “hey there’s more drug dealers again” (they hassle you as you walk by to buy some of their fine quality baked fresh today produce).

So I’m expecting us to walk straight on past them. Instead, as we walk past Mitch goes up to one of them and asks “Hey do you want to buy some drugs”. In other words, offering the drug dealers some drugs.. as a joke. Now I’m all up for fun and pranks, but when it’s 3am on a deserted street in a foreign country, and 

you’re messing around with people already on edge because of their illegal drug dealing activities, you can’t blame me to think “wait a minute.. this could end badly”.

There’s afew of them now, telling us to piss off. While the rest of their buddies are closing in around us. Some even call out for the police (which is ironic since they’re the ones with the drugs, not us). So as they’re circling around, I just pull Mitch to the side and say as calmly and politely as I can “let’s get the F&*# out of here”.

And we hauled ass out of there.