Walking like an Egyptian...(20/09/2008-27/09/2008)

I am over the moon that Hawthorn won the grand final today!!! I'm disappointed that I missed the game though..I love the atmosphere of grand final day in Melbourne. I had to rely on sms' from mum as we drove from Cairo to Alexandria...I guess I'll just have to watch a replay when I get home and get drunk then in commemoration!

I think that that th last time I wrote this blog we were just about to depart from istanbul to Cairo...and I am writing this one as we are about to embark from Cairo, home. Our last nght in istanbul was fantastic, we went out and had a few beers with Tom and Alex from New Zealand and England respectively (whom we had met on the Fez tour), Gabriel from San Francisco (whom I had met at the bar when ordering the first round), and Stacey and her 13-year-old daughter Saaskia from New Zealand (we met them randomly when leaving our hostel to walk across the road to the bar.

After a brief stop-over in Greece we arrived in Cairo at 2am. Im thankful now that I had my VISA in advance and that we had an airport transfer. When we arrived at the hostel it turned out that there was no booking...fortunately they could still afford us a room and we had a massive sleep in for the first time in a week. Our first adventure was to locate teh Go Bus Office (this was the tour company we were booked with). The cab driver appeared to have to ask every thrid person for directions, but we got to the street and his thenext dilemma when theaddress did not seem to help us locate the office. By chance we saw someone in a Go Bus t-shirt and they helped us finally locate teh place. When inside we showed the guy our booking, he was utterly confused and had to call someone else. What was booked did not seem to correspond at all to the dates or days or anything that we were actually in Egypt. Out of nowhere the operations officer for teh company rocked in and after some lengthy discussions knocked together an itinery for us. We were informed that we woudl leave immediately to meet a group, that had already seen the pyramids that morning, at the Egyptian mueseum and after whcih would check out of our hostel and get a train that night to Aswan in southern Egypt. Feeling a bit dazed and confused, we said 'sure, why not?'

The mueseum is extroardinary!!! Its essentially a shitty old building, crammed full of statues, artifacts, mummies and stuff drom insude tombs up to 5000 years old crammed into every corner! Following that we checked out of our hostel, hastily arranging a booking for later int eh week when we woudl return and headed off to reconvene with the group to head to Aswan. Admittedly I had never heard of Aswan prior to this point in my life and the thought of another sleepless night on an overnight train chill me to the bones...but we made do. We arrived in Aswan at midday and checked into a hotel. Then spen the afternoon with a Ian and Julie, a couple we befriended, haggling in the market. We then spent the late afternoon playing cards on the hotel rooftop before heading to dinner with everyone else.

This is when an issue struck...upon walking to dinner I realised that I had left my camera on the rooftop of the hotel. I quickly tould Abdul, the tour leader, and he called the hotel to check. After our shithouse meal at a floating retaurant (whcih even included Kentucky Fried Chicken onteh menu!) I returned to the hotel. The camera hadn't showed up, it wasn't in my room or on the rooftop...fuck!

I kind of had to put the camera aside for a while because we had to get up at 2:45am that morning!!! This was to make a three hour journey into the dessert with a police convoy to visit an amazing temple by a made made lake...wow! The name escapes my sleep deprived mind, but go see it...its awsome!

I spoke to Abdul after returning from the temple, he said essentially that the camera was probably stolen but we couldn't prove naything. he also said that if this was reported in a police statement then it would lead to me being stuck in Egypt til it went through full investigation. so I was taken to the tourist police to make a statment saying that it had gone missing while I was walking around the market. Having already come to terms with losing all my photos once this trip, I simply did it again! Luckily Kent is snap happy and we have essentially been with each other for the past two months, so I am not empty handed.

That night we said good bye to the group, they weren't quite sure what to make of us as we kept leaving and reconnecting wtih them, and headed off to Luxor on our own. essentially the advantage of booking with Go Bus was that we got picked up and taken everywhere...so it was minimal hassle.

We checked into another hotel...we had to get up at 6am for a 7am start to see the sites of the city. We saw teh Karnak Temple, teh Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of Workers...basically it is all amazing stuff! Its hard to comprehend what human being have been capable of or jsut some of the amazing stuff that exists in the world! Thats what I have to say about that!

That night we had a proper sleeper carriage in a train...teh downside was that the train was possible early and we were woken up at 4:30am for breakfast. I haven't previously mentioned that it is currently nearing the end of Ramadam, which has had an unsuspected affect on our trip. We barely noticed a thing in Turkey, except for the drums at 3am to wake people up to eat, but Egypt was very different. As a result of Ramadam most tourist attractions close by 2pm, it is impossible to go out and eat, get a cab or anything between 5-6pm because everyone is breaking fast, and it is hard to get anything to eat during the day...except for American fastfood chains! Enough said. Upon waking at 4:30 for breakfast we arrived at Giza station at 5:30am and were taken to hotel cafe to relax for a couple of hours. We played a couple of furious games of 500 and I furiously drank endless cups of coffee! Then we went to see teh jewell in Egypts monument crown...the Pyramids! They are literallyt jsut on the edge of Cairo where the western desert..and tehy are just absolutely more amazing than I could imagine!!! It is just breathtaking to attempt to comprehend their size. We went inside the second pyramid to the tomb..I really had no idea what this would involve. First we had to walk down 30 odd metres of a shaft which is no more than a meter high. Then it flattens out and its about 1.5metres high, then there is another meter high shaft that is slanted upwards. We eventually reached the centre, it was hot, clautrophobic and hard to comprehend that we were in the middle of the pyramid. WE also saw teh Spinx, but after seeing the pyramids, it really doesn't look spectacular.

We then went to see the Sankkara Pyramid, whcih is the first, proper, well constructed pyramid built in Egypt. From that Pyramid we could see another two pyramids in the distance. I learn that there are in fact 108 pyramids in Egypt! I also learnt that contrary to popular mainstream media, the Pyramids were 100% built by paid workders and not slaves! In the afternoon we jsut tanked! WE spent teh whole eveneing, watching TV, reading and pretty much doing nothing!

Today, as I said we went to Alexandria...a few interesting tombes nad monuments. We saw the former sites of the Alexandria Lighthouse and Library, two of teh former ancient wonders of the world...taking our count on this trip to 4 of the 7. We tried to figure out if we could visit them all, but realised that the hanging gardens of Babylon are in present day Iraq...probably not my next choice of travel destination! Now we are jsut unwinding until we jump on our aeroplane tomorrow for Australia! We leave at 1:30pm, we have a sic hour stop over in Singapore (apparently they have a cinema at the airport!) and then we arrive in Oz on Monday night.

I guess I will probably write some kind of rant about what I have learnt about myself and the world when I get home...but for now here are my immediate reflections...teh world hates vegetarians, beer is cheaper all over teh world than in Australia, I am truly scared of heights, and I amver much infected and feverish form the travel bug...