I just returned from a week long trip to the Netherlands and while there I visted the Holland Casino in Amsterdam. I've brought chips and tokens back home from all over the world, but I have never seen anyhthing like I saw last Sunday.

Our return flight from the Amsterdam airport was supposed to leave at 12:30 in the afternoon last Sunday. I made it to the airport at about 10:00 with my carry on suitcase that had in it about 50 chips from the Amsterdam casino stuffed into one of my socks.

Before you can even check in, all bags are sent through the x-ray machine. Of course mine looked strange and the guard spent at least 5 minutes asking me what I had. When I offered to show him the chips, he said "no you don't have to show me what you have", he then took my bag to a second xray machine where they again studied it and asked me what I had. After 15 minutes and 2 x-rays I was permitted to continue on to the check-in.

Glad to be finished with the bad x-ray, I proceeded to the entrance to the gate area. Guess what??? More x-ray's! This time my bag was xrayed twice and the guy doing the x-ray's asked to see what I had in my sock. After showing him the chips he said "you are supposed to return those to the casino to get you money back". I am still not sure if he was joking!

With less then an hour before my flight was SUPPOSED to leave, I now head to my gate. Guess what... ANOTHER x-ray machine!

This time I expected and got 2 x-rays. Again I showed the security guard the secret goods in my sock. This guy's comment was "oh, that is a good idea, tell your wife you are going to the casino to collect chips. I will have to try that myself!"

After clearing the final check, my plane is now delayed due to a "tempest" with winds of 85 mph. We finally boarded an hour late, but they could not load luggage or food and drink. We waited 6 hours on the plane for the winds to die down, but it never happened. Finally we were told that they plane would leave at 8:00 the next morning (it is now 7:00 at night). So I went back out of the airport and back into AMsterdam where I could get a room for a few hours before trying the flight again.

Now it is Monday morning, and I have to clear all 3 security check points again. This time though, I am prepared! I put the chips in a plastic bag and put the bag outside of my luggage so that it can be x-rayed by itself. This time I was only stopped for a few minutes at each checkpoint and my luggage was never rescanned.

Finally we get back to the states. I've been in and out of the country 50 times or more in the last 20 years and I've NEVER had a customs problem. Well, guess what... this time when I pass through customs the guard puts my passport into a big red folder and tells me to go to the inspection area.

The customs agent went through every bag, every sock and every dirty piece of underware looking for contreband. The most interesting thing he could find was my bag of chips. When he saw the chips, he looked at my decleration and asked if I was carrying more then $10,000 in cash (yeah right!). He actually opened the chip bag and started to count when he realized the chips weren't going to do anything.

After leaving this guy, I had yet another x-ray machine scan my stuff before I could enter the concourse at Dulles airport.

My chips were x-rayed 10 times before I finally got home. These things probably will make a geiger counter go nuts!

Thanks for reading this LONG post. Word to the wise, when travelling with chips use a plastic bag and keep them out of the luggage!

I've got a few of the new Euro chips from AMsterdam for sale, if you can stand the radiation, get them before they lose their half life!

Allen