The early morning torture continues. Since we were going to arrive in Cairo at 6:30am, we needed to be up at 5:30am in order to once again enjoy the fine bread, bread, and bread breakfast offered on the train. We ended up back at the Zayed Hotel, where we learn that Mina will once again be our Tour Guide. Yeah! More secrets and surprises! The first time around, we were a little leery of Mina and his enthusiasm…but honestly, he has been our best tour guide during the trip. We are truly excited to have him as a guide again. We [View Full Entry]

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I think that God is toying with me. I had to get up at 4:30am in order to get ready for my Hot Air Balloon Ride over Luxor. On the way out of the hotel, I noticed a 5-Star sign behind the front desk. It was from the Tourism Board of Egypt. That explains a lot. Hot Air Balloon Ride I had arranged my Hot Air Balloon Ride through Shadi (Pack2Egypt) before I came to Egypt. My Taiwanese friends who joined me on the Nile River Cruise decided they would like to go too, but arranged it through a tour agency [View Full Entry]

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Another early morning…up at 6:30am. I thought this was supposed to be a relaxing vacation. I ate a quick breakfast with my fellow tour participants and disembarked from the ship at 7:30am. We meet up with our tour guide for Luxor, Mohammad, who brings us to the hotel. Ostensibly, we are staying at a 5-Star hotel, but based on the wafer thin mattress and push button TV (you can select between UHF and VHF…and can even manually tune each of the 10 push button channels on the TV)…I am a little skeptical of the rating. Obviously, this is not a 5-Star [View Full Entry]

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Edfu Another early day, as we met our tour guide, Samy, at 6:45am. We grabbed a horse drawn carriage and heading to the Temple of Horus, the falcon god. This is considered the best preserved of all the Egyptian temples, having been buried beneath the sand until it was rediscovered in the 19th Century. It was actually built by the Romans starting in 237 B.C, and finished 180 years later. We toured the temple for an hour, and I unfortunately saw more destruction of the carved reliefs by the Coptic Christians; however the temple was still plenty impressive. One the way [View Full Entry]

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Still no luggage…I wonder what my L.L. Bean fleece will fetch on eBay. Do the French even have eBay? I really could have used the fleece, and jeans too, last night as the evenings are cool on the Nile. Visit to Abu Simbel In the morning we all got up early to take a trip to Abu Simbel, 280km southwest of Aswan. This wasn’t part of the original itinerary, but since every one else wanted to go, I decided to go too (I’m all about groupthink). Some of the group got up at 3AM to take a 3 hour drive to [View Full Entry]

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We had a variety packed bread, bread, and bread breakfast on the train. We had a selection consisting of a piece of white bread, a croissant, and a hamburger bun. Mmm…bread. Of course I needed to tip the porter (who wasn’t afraid to ask for it) before I got off the train. Once we got to the hotel, I talked with Ahmed to see if my luggage had arrived yet in Cairo. Nope. I now fear for the safety of Milkshake, my stuffed cow. Who knows what depraved things French airline baggage handlers could do with a stuffed cow after a [View Full Entry]

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Still no luggage. I think by now the baggage handlers have finally had the hangover wear off after drinking the Captain Morgan’s and Parrot Bay Rum in my missing luggage. We got to meet everyone in the group this morning. There are a total of 10 others in our group. Three of the gentlemen work at Intel in California doing chip design. Six are Taiwanese, five of whom go to UPENN, and the sixth the brother of one of the others. The last is a Brazilian woman who works at the US Embassy in Brazil as a country expert. We met [View Full Entry]

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Introduction Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to Egypt I go. Another year, another part of the world to explore…four continents down, three to go. After the success of my trip to China, I decided to sign up for a tour to explore another of the world’s great civilizations. Ever since one of my friends from college decided to go AWOL during a Spring Break trip to a Model UN conference in Cairo to explore the rest of Egypt, I have wanted to go. I’ve packed up my computer, Milkshake (my stuffed cow), 2 liters of Duty Free liquor (since it [View Full Entry]

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Below are some of the funny signs and other stuff that caught my eye during the trip. [View Full Entry]

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Here is some information on Shanghai from Wikipedia and Travel China Guide. Flight to Shanghai It seems the word got out about my abuse of the First Class lounge privileges in Xi’an. When I walked in to the lounge in Guilin, they looked at my pass, then at me, and made clear that I was entitled to only a single soda and snack. Our tour guide in Shanghai was Wu, a middle aged women that we never really learned much about personally. Wu was conservative [View Full Entry]

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