Egypt
On to Egypt, which was only .. 2 months ago?! Perhaps it's due to the lull of inspiration from Mr. Crisotunity, either that or there's just been nothing much happening over the past couple of months, hah! I think the problem is I'm not particularly enjoying my blogging experience, it's too much of a brick wall which I post all my thoughts to for everyone to see at their amusement. There's not enough give and take, I see no reactions, have little feedback. Then when I meet someone and the perfect opportunity for a story presents, I rub my hands together with glee and start ripping into it only to be shot down with "yeah, I read it on your blog". Great. It's not that bad really, and I do like being able to put photos to the tales, but for now I'm spending more time enjoying wherever I am or reporting in my little black diary (although even this is looking sorely neglected, languishing somewhere back in Germany. I blame this on my lack of pens though, I had 3 to start with, which have either ran out of ink or were stolen (you know who you are!), then I bought another 6 or so in India, of which 6 broke (they were made out of fancy glass with elephants or kangaroos on top) leaving just the inside bit which frustratingly still works but is a real pain to use, so I always feel like i don't really need to buy another pen as I still have a thing which spurts ink out the top and CAN function as one, then there was the blessed pen gifted by the overly touchy teacher on the bus which I cherished as one of the best gifts I ever received and promptly lost)). The other thing is, I'm developing an amazing skill at sleeping wherever I want, which means that places where I'd usually be bored witless and get to writing, I now just sleep and dream of beautiful things.
Anyway, I'll give you all a taste of Egypt, at least what I can remember.
I arrived in Egypt at 1am, went straight to the toilet (see end of India) then got straight back into the habit of telling locals to go away as they pestered me for places to stay. It's always a rather uneasy feeling arriving in a city in the middle of the night when you have nowhere organised to stay. Fortunately I'd found a couple of hostels from the internet, of which one came through, so I organsied a taxi there. The taxi man was nice, so I bought him a carton of cigarettes duty free on the way out, then even gave him a little tip, only to find out he wasn't even the driver, he was the man that took me to the driver. So when I got out of the taxi and he demanded a tip (tipping is big in Egypt) I was pretty peaved and gave him like a dollar or something which he flat out told me was not enough. I've had it with tips, it's totally backward if you're required to give a tip, and what's going on if someone tells you it's not enough?? Well that's what I thought of your service buddy, take it or leave it, pfft. I blame the bloody Americans, running around the world giving people huge sums of money for no reason so that they all begin to expect it after a while. As I walked up the stairs to the hostel a seedy fellow started asking if I needed a place to stay. I told him I was going to this hostel, to which he started trying to sell me a room cheaper just over the road. The hostel owner must have heard him as he stuck his head out the window and started screaming at him! It was a fairly nice place, a little more expensive than advertised, but I did have a big 3 bed room to myself. I ended up watching TV with a guy from India until pretty late at night, he couldn't understand why I liked India at all.
Next day I checked out and made my way over to the fancy hotel I was booked into as part of my organised tour. That's right, I signed up for a 10 day organised tour. Here's a picture of the tour group, including the tour leader (Tarek, with the clipboard of course), minus Kathleen who's taking the photo.
Here's a picture of Sara and Kat, although this was taken after the trip when they splurged on an even fancier hotel near the airport to relax before their flight:
As soon as I hit the hostel in Cairo I regretted it, as I could see all sorts of tours available if you organised things yourself and obviously much cheaper. But I have to say it didn't take more than a couple of days before I was totally enjoying the whole Explore trip (look free advertising!) The first and most important thing was that I was no longer responsible for the direction my travels were heading. This was re-inforced by the tour leader requiring I show evidence of having insurance. I had organised my insurance remotely, so had no documented proof of beign insured, and it was a weekend back in Australia so I had no way of contacting my travel agent. After a number of very expensive phone calls, eventually I managed to get the insurance company to fax the hotel a copy of my insurance coverage. Then things got rediculous. For some reason, the coverage I had required a major destination, even though it was worldwide. So I picked USA for whatever reason, was probably the cheapest. So on the fax that came through it says
"Major Destination: USA"
Tarek (the tour leader) couldn't accept this as we were in Egypt and it didn't say that I was covered for Egypt. I'd really had enough of this as it had been a whole day of back and forthign trying to get this fax alone. I don't understand why you can't just sign a piece of paper saying "I am completely responsible for anything that happens to me". It's even more rediculous when you've been travelling alone for the past 2 months. So he brings his boss in, who agrees it looks like I'm only covered for the USA. I tried to argue that the coverage was for 6 months but I'm only in the USA for 1 month, pointing at my ticket, and why on earth would I get coverage for only the USA for the whole 6 months if I were only there for 1?!
Eventually I had to make yet another call to Australia, paid for by me no less, to let the boss talk to my insurance agent and work it all out. I might argue this all out when I return, as Explore messed up my booking and never sent me my information booklet or any documents requiring me to bring any proof of insurance, which bugged me when Tarek kept saying "But you were told to bring proof of insurance".
Well, enough whinging, look, there is another use for this blog, venting! Before I go on though, I have to make a comment on this KFC I went to in Egypt, sad I know, but I was fascinated by the sign. It was a special KFC for deaf people, run completely by deaf people. You basically just go in and point to whatever you want, they have a special menu which is easily pointable. Perfect for the non-arabic speaker too!
Anyway, the next day involved the usual trip to the Pyramids, Sphynx and the Egyptian museum. They were all very interesting, particularly the museum. I wasn't really struck by the enormity of the Pyramids, more by the proximity to Cairo, there are houses just over the road! Apparently they were the tallest standing man made structure for thousands of years, which is amazing, and the blocks are huge they used to create them. Unforutnately I was more amazed by the crazy tourists. Check this girl out, Egypt is a mostly Muslim country and you are frequently told to dress appropriately:
Such a great stance, and I love the way she's sizing the pyramid up. The other thing I was thinking about was the way the suburbs had completely arrived at the doorstep to the pyramids. The Sphynx, which is right next to them, is now actually looking directly at a KFC / Pizza Hut. You can't actually see it very well in the low quality version of this photo:
So that night we had a big dinner, I finished with a sheesha for dessert as it seemed like the thing to do (the tobacco seemed much stronger there). Then we rushed off to the train station. This is when I realised how good it was to be in a tour. The train station was mad, as they usually are, trains were arriving and leaving all over the place with no indication of where they were heading. I'd never been so comfortable and relaxed sitting back on a platform waiting for my train! Tarek looked a little stessed too, which added to my glee. The train journey was pretty easy, I think it's a 10 hour journey which has never in the history of the train ever actually taken 10 hours, it's more like 14. The others in the group weren't quite as comfortable spending so long in a chair. We arrived in Aswan, deep South of Egypt. Egypt is mostly just a strip of development along the Nile with a few oases off in the surrounding deserts. Again we checked into a fancy hotel, this one even had a rooftop pool with a bar! Oh boy I was in heaven. Sitting in 40 degree heat with a waiter bringing you burgers, chips and drinks, jumping in the water every 5 minutes to cool off, looking out over a strange city surrounded by desert.
There were a few trips to temples and dams, all very interesting, I really liked learning about all the ancient Egyptian gods and found it particularly itneresting that the religion had completely died out. One of our tour leaders said that the Egyptian people loved following any type of religion and it didn't really matter which one, so when the Muslim empire came through, they were happy to just forget about poor old Ra and Isis and go with the flow. It was a marked difference between Egypt and India though, as Hindu temples are still in action throughout India. The only thing about Hindu temples is that once an idol is damaged it cannot be worshipped anymore, so there are still lots of old temples that have been damaged somehow along the line and are now more historic, ala the Egyptian temples. Another similarity between India and Egypt is the crazy salesmen and bargaining. Egyptians appeared to be much craftier, even the little kids, they'd baffle you with all sorts of arrangements "2 for 3, 4 for 5, 6 for 2" Then they'd flip between Egyptian pounds and English pounds to add even more confusion. The Egyptians were also a lot more physical, sometimes even grabbing you and pulling you into their store. Hospitality was very important, so you were always given a cup of tea, usually a hibiscus tea, served cold and extremely sweet. I managed to get one sunglass seller extremely pissed off when I was out shopping one night. I started bargaining off at 20 pounds, to which he looked really insulted and insisted these were high quality glasses. He wanted 400. What a joke I said, and pressed for 20. After a while he said come on, what's your highest price, I said I'm not paying more than 40, as i could get them in Australia for that much. He went down to 200 eventually, then I got sick of it all and walked off to rejoin Sara and Kat. He chased after me and went down to 100. I was getting really annoyed with him at this stage, I thought it was rude that he tried to sell them for so much and didn't like his style at all. Then he went to 40 and put them in my hand. I told him no deal, I didn't want them anymore, so he went down to 20, my original price. I said no, as I didn't like the guy. You should have seen the look on his face, he was mortified. I'm sure I performed some heinous sin there, but by that stage I didn't really care, the guy really pissed me off. The next day I went around the corner and bought a similar looking pair for 20 straight off the bat. It's stupid going through the formalities, I just said 20, that's it, take it or leave it, then had to wait 5 minutes while they whittled there way down until eventually they gave them to me.
One of the optional extras on our tour (there were about a hundred optional extras) was a camel ride. I was still extremely sore on camels from my Indian experience, so I was very hesitant, but had my arm twisted as everyone else in the group were going. I'm very glad I did now though because it was actually a lot of fun and has overwritten my negative thoughts on camels. It was much better having your own camel and we even got to race them a little bit! Here's Simon mid dismount, the most exciting bit.
And just for no other reason except that it's here, is a classic spice shot from one of the little markets in Aswan.
From Aswan the real tour began. The only reason I signed up for this tour was to sail down the Nile in a Felucca. I didn't realise we'd only be sailing for half of the trip, I thought the whole thing would just be floating down the river, but it's all good. The boat itself was really interesting, a huuuge sail on an angled mast. There was effectively one big deck for all 10 of us to eat, sit and sleep, bags were stored underneath. It was a magnificent experience. I think we had a great group, the dynamics seemed to work really well. We were reminded of how lucky we were when we pulled up on a beautiful sandy beach on the first night to find 3 other feluccas full of young drunken bozos. We were the only boat to dig a proper toilet, we even had a curtain and seat for it, but every other boat used our hole (which was only designed, ie deep enough, for 7). They totally trashed our toilet! Even threw bottles and things in it. Most of our group found it hard to sleep that night as the other boats were partying hard on the beach with huge bonfires and bongo drums. Thankfully I still have no problem sleeping.
More floating down the river, amazingly peaceful. I bought my own little sheesha pipe to enjoy that night, making a concoction of apple and mint flavoured tobacco much to the delight of the Egyptians, they'd never tried mixing flavours before. We decided to pull up to our own private beach that night, which was lots of fun, we played many games, had our own fire and were even joined by some random dudes and a donkey. I can't really offer any explanation for this photo, but I think it must be shown. As you can see, I was enjoying the proceedings.
The next day held much the same, a lot of intense relaxation, chatting, playing cards, drinking, laughing and swimming in the Nile (in the face of a warning from fellow travellers on another boat of parasites which enter your bloodstream and kill you in 7 years time. I figured that given the Egyptian crew that were sailing the boat were drinking the Nile it couldn't be that bad)
One last picture from Egypt I'll leave you with as I'm getting tired of writing. When we arrived in Luxor, we went on a donkey ride through to the Valley of the Kings. This was the place the Egyptians started burying their kings when they realised that building the tallest structure in the entire world was not the best place to hide untold worths of gold and jewels in a burial chamber for the king. The donkeys were hilarious! We woke before sunrise and rode for an hour or so up into the hills as the sun rose. It was the most incredible sight and there were more balloons in the sky than I have ever seen! The balloon ride was another optional extra as an alternative to the donkeys, but I'm pretty glad we took the donkeys.
The maze looking structure below are the tombs of the workers.
Anyway, I'll give you all a taste of Egypt, at least what I can remember.
I arrived in Egypt at 1am, went straight to the toilet (see end of India) then got straight back into the habit of telling locals to go away as they pestered me for places to stay. It's always a rather uneasy feeling arriving in a city in the middle of the night when you have nowhere organised to stay. Fortunately I'd found a couple of hostels from the internet, of which one came through, so I organsied a taxi there. The taxi man was nice, so I bought him a carton of cigarettes duty free on the way out, then even gave him a little tip, only to find out he wasn't even the driver, he was the man that took me to the driver. So when I got out of the taxi and he demanded a tip (tipping is big in Egypt) I was pretty peaved and gave him like a dollar or something which he flat out told me was not enough. I've had it with tips, it's totally backward if you're required to give a tip, and what's going on if someone tells you it's not enough?? Well that's what I thought of your service buddy, take it or leave it, pfft. I blame the bloody Americans, running around the world giving people huge sums of money for no reason so that they all begin to expect it after a while. As I walked up the stairs to the hostel a seedy fellow started asking if I needed a place to stay. I told him I was going to this hostel, to which he started trying to sell me a room cheaper just over the road. The hostel owner must have heard him as he stuck his head out the window and started screaming at him! It was a fairly nice place, a little more expensive than advertised, but I did have a big 3 bed room to myself. I ended up watching TV with a guy from India until pretty late at night, he couldn't understand why I liked India at all.
Next day I checked out and made my way over to the fancy hotel I was booked into as part of my organised tour. That's right, I signed up for a 10 day organised tour. Here's a picture of the tour group, including the tour leader (Tarek, with the clipboard of course), minus Kathleen who's taking the photo.
Here's a picture of Sara and Kat, although this was taken after the trip when they splurged on an even fancier hotel near the airport to relax before their flight:
As soon as I hit the hostel in Cairo I regretted it, as I could see all sorts of tours available if you organised things yourself and obviously much cheaper. But I have to say it didn't take more than a couple of days before I was totally enjoying the whole Explore trip (look free advertising!) The first and most important thing was that I was no longer responsible for the direction my travels were heading. This was re-inforced by the tour leader requiring I show evidence of having insurance. I had organised my insurance remotely, so had no documented proof of beign insured, and it was a weekend back in Australia so I had no way of contacting my travel agent. After a number of very expensive phone calls, eventually I managed to get the insurance company to fax the hotel a copy of my insurance coverage. Then things got rediculous. For some reason, the coverage I had required a major destination, even though it was worldwide. So I picked USA for whatever reason, was probably the cheapest. So on the fax that came through it says
"Major Destination: USA"
Tarek (the tour leader) couldn't accept this as we were in Egypt and it didn't say that I was covered for Egypt. I'd really had enough of this as it had been a whole day of back and forthign trying to get this fax alone. I don't understand why you can't just sign a piece of paper saying "I am completely responsible for anything that happens to me". It's even more rediculous when you've been travelling alone for the past 2 months. So he brings his boss in, who agrees it looks like I'm only covered for the USA. I tried to argue that the coverage was for 6 months but I'm only in the USA for 1 month, pointing at my ticket, and why on earth would I get coverage for only the USA for the whole 6 months if I were only there for 1?!
Eventually I had to make yet another call to Australia, paid for by me no less, to let the boss talk to my insurance agent and work it all out. I might argue this all out when I return, as Explore messed up my booking and never sent me my information booklet or any documents requiring me to bring any proof of insurance, which bugged me when Tarek kept saying "But you were told to bring proof of insurance".
Well, enough whinging, look, there is another use for this blog, venting! Before I go on though, I have to make a comment on this KFC I went to in Egypt, sad I know, but I was fascinated by the sign. It was a special KFC for deaf people, run completely by deaf people. You basically just go in and point to whatever you want, they have a special menu which is easily pointable. Perfect for the non-arabic speaker too!
Anyway, the next day involved the usual trip to the Pyramids, Sphynx and the Egyptian museum. They were all very interesting, particularly the museum. I wasn't really struck by the enormity of the Pyramids, more by the proximity to Cairo, there are houses just over the road! Apparently they were the tallest standing man made structure for thousands of years, which is amazing, and the blocks are huge they used to create them. Unforutnately I was more amazed by the crazy tourists. Check this girl out, Egypt is a mostly Muslim country and you are frequently told to dress appropriately:
Such a great stance, and I love the way she's sizing the pyramid up. The other thing I was thinking about was the way the suburbs had completely arrived at the doorstep to the pyramids. The Sphynx, which is right next to them, is now actually looking directly at a KFC / Pizza Hut. You can't actually see it very well in the low quality version of this photo:
So that night we had a big dinner, I finished with a sheesha for dessert as it seemed like the thing to do (the tobacco seemed much stronger there). Then we rushed off to the train station. This is when I realised how good it was to be in a tour. The train station was mad, as they usually are, trains were arriving and leaving all over the place with no indication of where they were heading. I'd never been so comfortable and relaxed sitting back on a platform waiting for my train! Tarek looked a little stessed too, which added to my glee. The train journey was pretty easy, I think it's a 10 hour journey which has never in the history of the train ever actually taken 10 hours, it's more like 14. The others in the group weren't quite as comfortable spending so long in a chair. We arrived in Aswan, deep South of Egypt. Egypt is mostly just a strip of development along the Nile with a few oases off in the surrounding deserts. Again we checked into a fancy hotel, this one even had a rooftop pool with a bar! Oh boy I was in heaven. Sitting in 40 degree heat with a waiter bringing you burgers, chips and drinks, jumping in the water every 5 minutes to cool off, looking out over a strange city surrounded by desert.
There were a few trips to temples and dams, all very interesting, I really liked learning about all the ancient Egyptian gods and found it particularly itneresting that the religion had completely died out. One of our tour leaders said that the Egyptian people loved following any type of religion and it didn't really matter which one, so when the Muslim empire came through, they were happy to just forget about poor old Ra and Isis and go with the flow. It was a marked difference between Egypt and India though, as Hindu temples are still in action throughout India. The only thing about Hindu temples is that once an idol is damaged it cannot be worshipped anymore, so there are still lots of old temples that have been damaged somehow along the line and are now more historic, ala the Egyptian temples. Another similarity between India and Egypt is the crazy salesmen and bargaining. Egyptians appeared to be much craftier, even the little kids, they'd baffle you with all sorts of arrangements "2 for 3, 4 for 5, 6 for 2" Then they'd flip between Egyptian pounds and English pounds to add even more confusion. The Egyptians were also a lot more physical, sometimes even grabbing you and pulling you into their store. Hospitality was very important, so you were always given a cup of tea, usually a hibiscus tea, served cold and extremely sweet. I managed to get one sunglass seller extremely pissed off when I was out shopping one night. I started bargaining off at 20 pounds, to which he looked really insulted and insisted these were high quality glasses. He wanted 400. What a joke I said, and pressed for 20. After a while he said come on, what's your highest price, I said I'm not paying more than 40, as i could get them in Australia for that much. He went down to 200 eventually, then I got sick of it all and walked off to rejoin Sara and Kat. He chased after me and went down to 100. I was getting really annoyed with him at this stage, I thought it was rude that he tried to sell them for so much and didn't like his style at all. Then he went to 40 and put them in my hand. I told him no deal, I didn't want them anymore, so he went down to 20, my original price. I said no, as I didn't like the guy. You should have seen the look on his face, he was mortified. I'm sure I performed some heinous sin there, but by that stage I didn't really care, the guy really pissed me off. The next day I went around the corner and bought a similar looking pair for 20 straight off the bat. It's stupid going through the formalities, I just said 20, that's it, take it or leave it, then had to wait 5 minutes while they whittled there way down until eventually they gave them to me.
One of the optional extras on our tour (there were about a hundred optional extras) was a camel ride. I was still extremely sore on camels from my Indian experience, so I was very hesitant, but had my arm twisted as everyone else in the group were going. I'm very glad I did now though because it was actually a lot of fun and has overwritten my negative thoughts on camels. It was much better having your own camel and we even got to race them a little bit! Here's Simon mid dismount, the most exciting bit.
And just for no other reason except that it's here, is a classic spice shot from one of the little markets in Aswan.
From Aswan the real tour began. The only reason I signed up for this tour was to sail down the Nile in a Felucca. I didn't realise we'd only be sailing for half of the trip, I thought the whole thing would just be floating down the river, but it's all good. The boat itself was really interesting, a huuuge sail on an angled mast. There was effectively one big deck for all 10 of us to eat, sit and sleep, bags were stored underneath. It was a magnificent experience. I think we had a great group, the dynamics seemed to work really well. We were reminded of how lucky we were when we pulled up on a beautiful sandy beach on the first night to find 3 other feluccas full of young drunken bozos. We were the only boat to dig a proper toilet, we even had a curtain and seat for it, but every other boat used our hole (which was only designed, ie deep enough, for 7). They totally trashed our toilet! Even threw bottles and things in it. Most of our group found it hard to sleep that night as the other boats were partying hard on the beach with huge bonfires and bongo drums. Thankfully I still have no problem sleeping.
More floating down the river, amazingly peaceful. I bought my own little sheesha pipe to enjoy that night, making a concoction of apple and mint flavoured tobacco much to the delight of the Egyptians, they'd never tried mixing flavours before. We decided to pull up to our own private beach that night, which was lots of fun, we played many games, had our own fire and were even joined by some random dudes and a donkey. I can't really offer any explanation for this photo, but I think it must be shown. As you can see, I was enjoying the proceedings.
The next day held much the same, a lot of intense relaxation, chatting, playing cards, drinking, laughing and swimming in the Nile (in the face of a warning from fellow travellers on another boat of parasites which enter your bloodstream and kill you in 7 years time. I figured that given the Egyptian crew that were sailing the boat were drinking the Nile it couldn't be that bad)
One last picture from Egypt I'll leave you with as I'm getting tired of writing. When we arrived in Luxor, we went on a donkey ride through to the Valley of the Kings. This was the place the Egyptians started burying their kings when they realised that building the tallest structure in the entire world was not the best place to hide untold worths of gold and jewels in a burial chamber for the king. The donkeys were hilarious! We woke before sunrise and rode for an hour or so up into the hills as the sun rose. It was the most incredible sight and there were more balloons in the sky than I have ever seen! The balloon ride was another optional extra as an alternative to the donkeys, but I'm pretty glad we took the donkeys.
The maze looking structure below are the tombs of the workers.
posted by Flex at 6:07 am
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