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Published: June 28th 2008
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Well after nearly 30 hours of flight time and layover time we finally landed at Cairo Airport. The initial impression of the country was that of a laid back people, after stepping off the plane the door to the flight deck was left open, no guards, and anybody including taxi drivers could just wander behind customs and wait for the passengers to walk through. No need to organise a visa, all you need to do is walk to a small cubical (bank or currency exchange) and hand over $15US and the man will hand you your visa in the form of a sticker which you put in the passport yourself. Piece of cake!
To me Cairo is very similar to Bangkok, just with more sand. The driving is the same, it's like watching organised chaos, again I never saw a single accident. People drive with their lights off and the sound of horns echo through the streets as drivers warn other cars and padestrians that they are approaching.
Egyptians only work 5 hours normally in the morning, have a sleep in the afternoon, and then the streets are filled at night as men smoke shisha pipes on the sidewalks and
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Downtown Cairo enjoy their time off. Anyone worried about safety, fear not. As young men are required to serve 12 months in the military, the excess of guards take positions all day and all night on EVERY street, and outside nearly every hotel and bank. Needless to say they look bored out of their mind, just sitting there with their AK-47 at their side doing nothing at all.
As Cairo houses 21 million people sitting on one sewage system, be prepared to put used toilet paper in the bin instead of being allowed to flush it. Again like Bangkok.
We spent our first full day visiting the Pyramids of Giza and the Egyptian museum. Tourists, be prepared to be scammed at Giza as 'businessmen' have a field day with foreigners. Some tricks include.
- A camel man offering you a free ride. Getting on is free, getting off costs big.
- Men offering free gifts as 'friendship' only to come back later wanting a gift in return, perhaps money or jewellery.
Even the guards get in on it, we saw so many people being 'fined' by gaurds for taking photographs when of course it is free to do so!
Luckily our
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First Glimpse guide warned us of MOST of the tricks before we started wandering around, however myself and Dean still managed to get done by a few of them. It does not pay to be polite!
Some interesting things I did not know. - There are 97 pyramids all on the west bank of the Nile, most as big as the ones at Giza.
- Every pyramid has its own Sphynx to guard it, most are still buried under the sand.
- Only in the pyramids of Giza does gravity drop from 9.8 m/s to 9.4 m/s (so you weigh less inside), also no electrical equipment works.
The museum is MASSIVE. apparently if you spent one minute looking at every item it would take over 3 months to see everything. And from memory the cheapest item is a tiny jewell worth $7million US, so the values keep going up from there.
One item springs to mind. There is a mummy on show which was nearly not even accepted because he was nobody important (they find hundreds of mummys), however after randomly doing a test to find out how old he was when he died, they found that he was nearly 90
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So close I can touch it! and had lived with Leukemia for 40 odd years. Specialists came over and found that this man carried an antibody and probably was never even aware that he was sick, so now this 5000 year old mummy holds the key to curing Leukemia. Cool hey.
Anywho...
That night we caught an overnight train down to Aswan, and I think Aswan is the place to see in Egypt because the people there keep their little city nearly perfectly clean, unlike Cairo. While there we saw Abu Simbel and the Temple of Ramses II, which is the famous temple with four giant statues inset in a cliff face. I also got to swim in the Nile, so there!
From Aswan we headed up the Nile on our little cruise boat, stopping off to see temples of Edfu, Kom Ombo, and Karnak. Needless to say that with a bar and pool on the top deck we had a blast those few nights, apparently breaking the bar tab record. Ooops.
After a donkey ride to the Valley of the Kings near Luxor we headed out to Hurghada on the Red Sea for 2 days of sun and sand. Us Aussie boys were
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Second Pyramid dying for a bit of snorkling out on the reefs, and with that ticked off our list we got a little bit of free time to just bum around the resorts. Hurghada is also a hot spot for Russian tourism, so be prepared for both ignorant Russian men, and smoking hot Russian women who can't speak any English 😊
Oh, I should mention the convoys which the tourist take when travelling across deserts from Aswan to Abu Simbel, and Luxor to Hurghada. You drive with military escort and every bus and minivan has an armed soldier on board, who pretty much sleeps the whole way. Sounds extreme but it's good because in these convoys we don't have to stop at checkpoints along the way. Definately adds a little flavour.
So now we are back in Cairo for one last night before we move onto Kenya and the start of our camping adventure, so keep an eye out for photos and the next blog.
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Jodie
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G'day
Hey Fleety Fantastic photos, a great read. P.S Tell Dean his mother is watching!