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Part 4 of 4 in the Netherlands. I've been in this country for 6 weeks and was only in southeast Asia for 5- geographically that makes very little sense.
I'm still on the bike, I rode from Utrecht to Den Haag. During my 5 hour ordeal it poured with rain about 10 times. I took shelter in all sorts of places from people's front porches, company workshops and shops to under trees, but I got there eventually . I took a little detour through the city of Leiden where I had a bit of a look around and recall purchasing some strawberries- a major highlight. I then got to Den Haag (also known as The Hague)- where I stayed for two nights. In Den Haag I tried my luck with 'couchsurfing'- don't know if people have heard of this but you simply register on their site by filling in your profile and then searching for potential hosts. It all went pretty well and I've met some really interesting people in the process. It's a bit of a random situation but it seems to work OK. Den Haag is the Netherlands' seat of government and also contains the International Criminal
Court (of course not recognised by the US). I had a wee peak into the Dutch Lower House as I wanted to see what was going on. Unfortunately the chamber was only 40% full and the topic of the morning was transport. After that I had a look around at Scheveningen (west of Den Haag on the sea side) and the city of Delft- to the east (the historical alternative to Den Haag and Rotterdam).
The next day I rode to Hoek van Holland (hoek meaning corner), had a look around and enjoyed the incredible wind gusts before heading to the Netherlands' #2 city, and major port and industrial centre of Rotterdam. Despite it being bombed flat in WW2 (the only real onslaught that the Dutch received during the war), it's a pretty interesting city. The modern architecture along with its harbour area is pretty impressive. My couchsurfing in Rotterdam was also pretty good. I met the hosts only for about an hour and then they went off for the night and said "just help yourself to all the food and alcohol and have a party if you want'- well that was an alright offer, so myself and the
two other couchsurfers got stuck in. However the next day was bit of a marathon bike journey from Rotterdam to the southwest corner of the Netherlands. 110ks with a hangover, coupled with strong headwind all the way wasn't the best. Getting out of Rotterdam was a bit of a mission and then I had to follow its industrial area for about 20ks- it's impressive but as you could imagine soon wears off; Zeeland was great though, it's basically half sea half land- connected by dikes/ or dams (which I had to ride over every now and then) is an enough impressive province and its cities of Middelberg and Vlissingen were well worth the visit. So that was that; Netherlands no more.
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1000 Kite and wind surfers 
chris
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the dutch
the dutch are just slightly crazy...i knew it all along...good on them though. gotta love the beauty of den haag and delft. rotterdam didnt convince me though, kees...oh and what do you like more? oud zeeland or nieuw zeeland?;) now you seem to be off to the no-country belgium...enjoy:D