Red Light District Amsterdam

Red Light District

I’ve already written about one of Hollands well know vices, the drug culture. There is of course another vice which the country is very well known for. Something that brings a particular kind of tourist to certain shady areas of the country to indulge themselves in special ways. Yes, you’ve guessed it. I’m going to talk about windmills.

Alright. I’m not really going to talk about windmills. I’m going to talk about the sex industry in Holland. Holland has a very open view towards sex and prostitution is legal and regulated in most cases. If you want to see just how open the dutch view towards sex is (or you are on a stag night) you will find no better example then the Red Light District in Amsterdam. It is a network of alleyways containing hundreds of tiny one-room apartments where prostitutes wearing just underwear or bikinis offer their services from behind glass doors. Its also a place where you can find live sex shows, peep shows, sex museums and shops that sell the kind of toys you wont find in London’s Hamleys. Amsterdam has the most well known Red Light District but a lot of towns have there own versions as well. Its also not unusual to pass a sex shop in the main street of some towns.

If you come from a more reserved country the red light district is the kind of place you have to see to believe. In someways it is a tourist sight seeing attraction and that is why a lot of tourist go there for a game of Eye-Spy-Ho. Even my parents want to have a look around when ever they visit (at least that’s what my dad tells my mum). I’ve seen other families walking around there too to see if all the stories they have heard are true. However it is still a sex industry area and has its seedy side. You will often see men lined up out side prostitutes doors waiting for their turn and illegal stuff does still happen.

Visiting The Red Light District

I had a look around a few days after I first arrived in the country (and I’ve only ever looked). It was a time when I still looked very much like an out of place tourist so as I walked down one of the alleyways all I heard behind me was doors opening and calls of…

“Hello English boy.”

“Over here Ginger boy.”

“Hi red head.”

…I just kept on walking.

When my friends come to visit from England they also want to do a bit of window shopping (even the girls) because like everyone else they can not believe it until they see it with their own two eyes. This is how I ended up going to see one of the live sex shows. This might sound very seedy and in someways it was but in others it was quite an eye opener. I don’t mean that I finally found out the true story of where babies come from that night. I mean I was surprised to find out the place was more high tec then some normal theaters I have worked for in the past. They even had a revolving stage and a lighting set up which would make most bands envious. Not all the clientele were brown rain coat wearing men either. Again there were a lot of tourists and couples who just wanted to see the show for the novelty/curiosity factor.

As for the performance itself? Yes, there really where two people on stage having sex and sometimes just a woman alone with more of those toys that are not stocked by Hamleys. Some of the performers looked very bored as if they were following a script which they had done a thousand times before (which is probably just what it is like for them).

Part of the show was interactive as well. There was the woman who fed a banana to a member of the audience but she was not holding it with her hands or even her feet. There was a scary moment when she almost picked me and a friend out of the audience but we sank very low into our seats at that point.

If you are ever in Amsterdam the Red Light District is one of those places you have to see just so you can say you have seen it. However, don’t take any photos unless you want a very angry prostitute trying to take your camera away (cameras are banned in the area).

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

20 Responses

  1. DutchGal says:

    Hiya, I enjoyed reading your post especially your honesty. I recently moved from A’dam to London and always wondered why there are so many tourists in that area of ‘my’ Amsterdam, since to me [half Dutch] it seems just sleazy.

    I think you explained it very well and somehow it showed me a different perspective; one I can understand better. Not all Dutch share the same opion… *thank god* ;)

    Ps, there is a lot more to explore and enjoy, have fun, I miss Amsterdam at times!

  2. Aledys Ver says:

    Oh, but what happened to the windmills? :D
    You’ve said it right: it is something that you’ve got to see to believe. Pity that because it’s mostly tourists that come to see mainly that in A’dam, people around the world get the wrong image of the Dutch in general, when it’s the non-Dutch that keep the industry alive….

  3. Invader Stu says:

    You have a good point. Maybe I should finally write about those windmills :p

  4. Misty says:

    I think I have been to this exact place you speak of in this article. I was with a group of 20 of my American friends on our marathon trip. They sat us in the first two rows…we couldn’t look or speak to each other for the first 15-20 minutes. We stayed the entire show and they it started to repeat and the same acts were on stage again. Once you’ve seen it and get over the shock factor, you can actually watch and carry on a normal conversation. You are right, most of the people on stage look bored. Crazy stuff!

  5. Scottish Lassie says:

    Its not just in the big cities that sex sells. I’ve lived in the provence of Noord Brabant for the last year and just along the road from our village, on the school cycle route to the next village is a nice little house on the edge of the woods. Lovely! I hear you say, but this little house is not what it seems. Het Landhuisje is the local ‘Private Club’. They have a web site, which I had a peek at just out of curiosity, and they seem to offer all kinds of services. Now if a place like that had opened up near my old school in Scotland there would have been an outcry but doesn’t seem to bother anyone here.
    What amazes me about The Netherlands is that even though its a small country each provence has its own dialect and customs so theres plenty to keep us expats amused :)
    Ps Just stumbled upon your blogs today and haven’t done a bit of housework since lol Really a great read.

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