THE olde worlde pub was heaving. The air was blue with cigarette smoke and expletives, alcohol was being sloshed back at an alarming rate and the place buzzed with animated chatter.

It could have been any York pub on a Saturday night - except this was 4.30 on a Wednesday morning at Leeds/Bradford Airport.

This is how some members of the great British public get their holidays off to a flying start. Most of us would gag at a cup of tea at that time of the morning but there they were, knocking it back despite the lack of sleep, the bleary eyes and the body clock being slammed out of rhythm.

Well, how else do you pass the two-hour check-in time now that they've taken away the duty free shopping?

Quick stagger on to the plane, catapulted 35,000 feet into the air and a round of gin and tonics as soon as the seat belts unclick.

Collect your dented baggage - if it has not been whisked off to Bahrain instead - from the carousel, transfer to your holiday accommodation and relax over your 'first' real drink of the day.

Ah, home from home.

We thought we'd try a culture holiday in Amsterdam. Honest. As it turned out, we were caught up in a transplanted Micklegate Run, a giant English pub crawl by euro.

Wherever we went, our countrymen - and women - were hunting in packs before getting into the serious business of voyeurism in the Red Light district.

We had to go and look ourselves, purely in the interests of research, you understand. Just midday, and the beautiful young women were displaying their wares in shop windows, haggling over prices at the doorway with men aged 17 to 70.

As Dutch families with young children passed by oblivious to it all, obscene photographs showed what was on offer inside the 'live' sex shows.

That's when we were grabbed by a barker touting for one of the shows and invited inside. "Ah, English," he barked. "Pretty girls, hard sex. Don't worry, non-participation." Well that's a relief then.

When we convinced him we were not interested, he shrugged and admitted there were only two tired strippers and a couple in which the man was not up to the hourly performance. Poor chap.

Our tout obviously wanted to practise his English because he asked where we were from and then tutted about the marauding hordes of British drinkers. "Only the Dutch farmers are worse," he said.

Convinced I had a union flag pinned on my back, I needed a drink. We spotted a quiet coffee shop and sought refuge.

That's when we realised why it was so quiet, despite being packed. Everyone was sitting there with pie eyes, puffing on giant, conical-shaped cigarettes, exhaling thick, sweet-smelling plumes.

In Holland coffee shops are not just for coffee. They are cannabis joints, if you'll pardon the pun, and if you only want coffee you go to a caf.

We chatted to a young American teacher taking what seemed like her last gasp on this earth from a cigarette as big as her hand. I'll bet her lessons are fun back home!

She reckoned the stuff hardly touched her but when her husband tried it the night before he thought the world was sideways and had to lie on the floor to right it.

Two police officers cycled up to a 'smoker' standing at the door. Here's trouble, I thought. They chatted, laughed, shook hands and moved on.

It's all completely legal and accepted over there. As are the sex shops every 40 yards - sorry, metres - with vivid windows displaying contraptions of every shape and size.

Footsore from trekking round so many museums, we are now safely back in York where we complain about shops that display garden gnomes with their trousers down; where the coffee shops sell coffee; and the sex shops have discreet, blocked out windows.

And the drinkers? Well, we can't get a drink until lunchtime and, strangely, we still manage to have some fun in our own guilt-ridden way.

Updated: 09:21 Tuesday, July 29, 2003