red light district

What’s not to love about Amsterdam?

/ Samantha Durnford / 3 Comments

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Writing about Amsterdam may be the hardest post to write. We loved it so much there, I don’t even know where to start. We spent a week in Amsterdam and it almost wasn’t long enough. It’s an incredibly romantic city with so much to see and do. It’s so clean with parks, bikes, and walking streets – getting lost is crucial to your time in Amsterdam. Towards the end of our time there, we daydreamed about moving there.

We were excited to go to Amsterdam for a number of reasons, some I won’t say here 😉 The beautiful canals, the people, the things to do, the parks, the food… it’s a little city that has it all.

Walking around was easy, as everything is pretty close together, and using the transit system was even easier. We spent half of our time in a hotel and half of our time in an apartment share we found on MyTwinPlace. This is a website where you can list your place and swap with other travellers for no cost (just a small insurance fee). We were lucky to get a beautiful apartment near the canal for three nights, all to ourselves!

IMG_20150716_113905Like Paris, we spent most of our time eating and having picnics. We loved waking up and getting breakfast at a grocery store to eat next to a canal. Eating in Europe is so cheap (and delicious) if you’re getting yogurt, fruits, and sandwich and salad stuff for small meals. This is one way we save a ton of money on our travels.

On the weekend, we went to a music festival called Electronic Family. It’s an all trance music festival during the day just outside of the downtown area in a huge park. The festival was really well done and we enjoyed seeing some of our favorite DJs. It had been almost a year since we experienced anything on a large scale, so we were happy campers.

IMG_0578We met up with my old friend Tim and his girlfriend and got to check out the Red Light district. The Red Light district is pretty cool to see, however also pretty packed with tourists. I didn’t like hearing people making fun of the working girls, so that was a downer on the experience. I’m not sure why people would go to the Red Light District just complain. We had nothing to complain about – many of the girls were bombshells and it’s cool to see the industry.

All in all, Amsterdam was an absolute highlight, and such a refreshing change of culture, atmosphere and ambience. For us, it would be our favourite city in Europe. Eventually, I would even find out that Amsterdam is where Luke had my engagement ring hand-made and designed, so we can carry our time in the city with us forever.

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A taste of nightlife in Bangkok

/ Samantha Durnford / 1 Comment

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Arriving in Bangkok for the second time during our trip, we vowed to do things differently. For starters, we were dying to hear some decent music. For anyone that doesn’t know us — we are massive electronic music fans. Having traveled over much of North America to music festivals and having lived in Toronto, a city blessed with a rich electronic music scene, it’s been far too long since we’ve heard the thumping bass of techno and house music pounding through speakers. We knew Bangkok was the solution to our dilemma.

On our last trip to Bangkok we stuck to Khao San Road and the wats, but consequently found ourselves surrounded by backpackers at all times. This time around we left the hostel region behind and explored some of Bangkok’s darker side — both the good and bad. Many of Bangkok’s clubs were in the Sukhumvit neighbourhood, also home to the infamous Soi Cowboy and red light district. We decided to check things out for ourselves.

Nakadia, a Berlin techno/house DJ, was playing at GLOW Club Bangkok, so we drank some Red Bull and hobbled over to the entertainment district for some much needed dancing. On the way, we wanted to see what the fuss was all about in the red light district (sorry mom and dad, stop reading now!).

The red light district in Bangkok is full of neon lights and girls in barely any clothes trying to get people to come into their respective clubs. It felt a lot like walking through a packed shopping mall, except half of the people you were passing were scantily clad Thai girls and the displays were dancing on poles. The shoppers? Older white men hoping to find the loves of their life and naive, but excited, young backpackers not knowing their wallet was about to be emptied. We managed to get through Soi Cowboy relatively unscathed, save a few dirty looks.

IMG_5103Five minutes later, we arrived at GLOW Club. The club is small but it made for an intimate atmosphere. When Nakadia came on, fans were cheering and reaching for handshakes over the DJ booth. She was smiling and bumping to the beat, happy to be playing for everyone. Her set was everything we hoped for and it felt so good to just dance with a crowd of people who were truly into the music, expats and locals alike.

We left just after 2AM and started the walk home. We got dropped off near Khao San Road and unfortunately, the scene there wasn’t nearly as pleasant. Backpackers with buckets of booze were throwing up on the street, hobbling home, and some had shirts off fist bumping to country music. We grabbed a crepe and made a mad dash for our hotel.

The night life in Bangkok definitely has something for everyone. The clubs are proper and if you want a taste of real nightlife, stay away from the backpacker haunts and dress up for the clubs.