Advertisement
The Pyramids of Giza
Pretty awesome experienceIn need of some inspiration after spending 3 months in bland old england ( still loved it, just too much like home ) was glad to be off to my favourite type of cities, third world.....
In this installment...
1. Pre requisites needed to drive in Egypt
2. How to survive a Egyptian sand storm
3. Showing some leg in Cairo
4. Face to face with King tuts....face
5. Camels, and how to keep your parenthood riding them
6. Egyptian sheesha
7. How to extort children and get away with it....
8. Rules for drinking in Egypt
9. Obtaining a student card without ever studying at a university
After leaving England on a bright sunny day, (who would have thought....), i was lucky enough to be taken to the airport by my good mate Steve and also local boozehound of Thame... in his boxter porsche.
I was keen to get away from normality again and get back together with my old mate of a brother for more good times... So time waiting at the airport was spent buying a new camera which i misplaced in an internet cafe in Venezuala and have been without ever since...
Great Pyramid
The sun going down on the great pyramid After being picked up at the airport by our friendly driver Yasser, he explained to us that to drive in this country you need 3 things....
1. Good horn ( he pushed it three times to make sure we knew it was good)
2. Good brakes ( which he demonstrated more than once to us on the journey )
3. Good luck....which so far we have had
Egyptians are funny people, they are soo nice to you when you meet them, but they turn ugly as soon as money gets involved, as explained later in this blog. But on the whole coming into Egypt we were welcomed by everyone and they seemed to accept us into their country, after first checking our nationality, and making sure we werent americans.
The first day we spent sleeping for most of it, i was still tierd from the gruelling pub work schedule, or more to the point the social drinkers you make friends with working at one, and timmy was tired from flying for 2 days to make it here. So we got up round 3pm and made our way round the city and got lost a few times and
Camel Jockeys
Sahara Cowboys.... it wasnt long till the first of many local shiesters tried to relieve us of a few of our egyptian pounds. They will do just about anything here to talk down where you are going, the place your staying or how bad the travel agency is that your booked with... After this guy following us for about an hour through the streets we finally told him to tell his story walking, which he replied to by telling us we were un-australian, and sounded more like canadians...hmmmm....
It was then where we realised why people on the street were trying to sell us kleenex for about an hour.....sandstorm. Within about 10 min the city went from peaceful ( as you can get for middle east) to sand swept chaos..... People had rags, towels, tissues, everything to cover their mouths, what did we have...aussie pride...not much else. truly amazing, visibility was about 20 metres at best, and the whole city shut down for the night.....
Next day we were keen to get a early start and headed off to the museum of Egyptian antiquities, which was to say the least, one of the greatest museums i have ever been
Desert Storm
It took 5 mins for the city to be COVERED in dust and sand... we were wondering why everyone was trying to sell us tissues.... to or in.. This place was wall to wall artifacts from every era of Egyptian history, and its a shame they wouldnt let me take a camera in cause it would have made for some sweet photography... We walked around for about 4 hours inside this massive museum, observing tombs of former egyptian kings and queens and other royalty of this great country... Finally in one of the last rooms we came to, under high gaurd we came to the mask of tutankhamen, which was one of the greatest things ever witnessed by this world battler since the start of his travels way back in the day... Timmy summed the place up pretty well by saying that all the aboriginal history of all time could have fit in the toilets of this museum, which is probably right....
The next day was our well awaited trip to Giza and the great pyramids, first however it was a trip to the local student card office, where we soon discovered that everything has a price. We turned up there with nothing short of just a passport, and our word that we studied....Business Admin and Germ Warfare at Sydney University, full time of
Desert Safaris
Spot the tourists?? course... And for less than 20 dollars we were off with our student cards and on the way to a world of half price museum and train and bus ticket heaven.... happy days....
Our first stop on the pyramids adventure was a place called Memphis which holds a massive statue of a leader called Ramses ll which has to be seen to be believed, 44 metres in height. Amongst other things this museum had, were guards that were willing to pose in any postion for a small tip, so we both took advantage and got a pic of us saluting with this one guard which turned out to look exactly like about 90% of the guards we've seen since being here.
After this short stop it was off to Saqqara, where we saw our first pyramids. Also here there was a tomb of Mere- Ruka, an egyptian ruler of some stage. which had hieroglyphics all over the walls of the tomb and murals to other egyptian nobels from before his time... A great experience... One of the pyramids here you could actually go inside, it was one of the early pyramids which was built slightly different to the
Sun setting on the Sahara
As soon as the sun went down the temp dropped about 10 degrees.... ones we know these days...see the pic. Inside was small tunnels leading to different rooms and ultimatley a room that housed the tomb of whoever was buried there. It was at this stage where the lights went off and me and timmy were stuck in the darkness of the pyramid, shitting ourselves. We made it out only due to the flash of our camera, and some cunning trench management from our days in nam.....
After this stop i asked the driver if we could stop at one of these many "carpet schools" that we had passed along the way of the journey so far... which he happily agreed. You see a carpet school is a place where the rich of Cairo take under their wing the poor kids who cant afford or do not wish to go to school and would rather be put straight in the workforce. So it was there that we witnessed kids no older than 10 weaving away carpets, the ones you see on those crazy ads in aus where they are having their final 90% off sale... Funny how they get away with doing such a thing where i would have looked at it
Not a happy customer
Would you be?? with a head like that? as.... well something else...
The final stop of the day was to be The Great Pyramids of Giza, which overshadowed all the other pyramids and were visable from kms away. We got there and it was late in the day...about 4.30pm and were told that too see it all in the time we had we would need some extra help to get us there. Here starts the story of one of my worst experieces mounted on something else.....camels.
Me and the historic beast came eye to eye for the first time when he was being taken out of his mud hut behind the shed where we booked them... he didnt seem happy at all to be taken out in such a late stage of the day, but i said....sweetheart...you behave. Both beasts gave a wild grunt as the two aussie beasts mounted them and took charge of the reins....well as long as the old mate was pulling them where we wanted. It wasnt long on the journey that we realised that certain body parts were gonna hurt bad in the morning... namely the baby factory and upper legs. But being battlers we decided to push on through
The Egyptian Museum
The home of King Tut's famous burial mask the bad times knowing that good times would be close ahead. Before we got to all that we were confronted by a man with shiek towels for our head, which we though was very nice and continued on our way...he even commented us how we looked like bin laden and how handsome we were....i thought what a nice man, and got back to being camel capitan...Not the case we found out 100 metres down the road where old mate was back for payment. Twenty egyptian pounds he wanted for each, i said no way, take em back and gave them back. This seemed to infuriate old mate and his welcoming demeanour became hostile within seconds, i eventually bargined him down to 10 pounds for both, which he seemed happy with, but this lesson i didnt learn and we continued on the journey.
After openly bribing the guards around the pyramids, ( clearly we were too late to see them, or not with a registered tour company or something) but every guard we came across demanded money for being where we were, we were on our way around the pyramids. Both camels were behaving at this stage and things were
Getting cheeky with the guards
You could take as many photos as you like for a price.... looking better than expected for both the trouters at this early stage. The pyramids are such a good experience, something everyone should do. Each block of the pyramids weighs over 3 tonne and there are something like a gazillion rocks up there people, a huge effort.
We saw tombs, pyramids, sphinx, along with a lot of sand....dont ever forget that...theres heaps of sand, on our 3 hour camel ride and finally got off to enjoy the sunset and view of the pyramids before we went back for the sound and light show. It was at this stage where one of the guides put out a blanket and tried to get timmy to sit next to him and discuss the amounts of girlfriends he had... when i told him none his eyes lit up with hope ( u see a lot of egyptians are gay, dont know why, maybe cause they dont respect women a great deal) and he went to work on young timmy... which didnt last very long at all, maybe if i wasnt there...who knows?? We got to one of the pyramids to find a local man standing in front of it claiming it to be his
Statue of Ramses ll
This guy was 44 metres tall... pyramid....after fobbing him off in true aussie fashion he demanded we pay him money to touch his pyramid, and we had so much money we could afford it... truth be told i was down to my last 10 pounds for the day ( 1 english pound) and had nothing at all to give him.....he then said it was alright and gave me a rock that supposidly gave me good luck, which i thanked him for, which then he asked for money for that, "for his son"!!! After yelling at me for about a minute i finally gave him a dollar, but warning people, nice egyptians turn quicker than a homosexual on mardi gras night!!!
On the ride back the camels really started to hurt...it was ok for timmy cause he had his new life partner saddled up with him for the ride home....but for this old mate it was free saddling mayhem for the ride home. You see the camels are tied together which means the camel at the front ( timmys) has control over the camels behind ( mine ) so once this was discovered it was the funniest thing to pull nicks camels string to make him
Hieroglyphics
These tomb walls were covered in the writing of the ancient egyptians run and at the same time bounce me up and down on the hump/saddle, and every moment making me more and more tender round the man factory....not too much fun....well it was funny at the start but after an hour of torture it was only funny for timmy and his special friend.
All the spare time has been spent in the room sinking cans, there is NO nightlife here due to the religious beliefs, and also two men trying to get into a nightclubs are looked upon as gay, and cause there is such a high population of gays in this country they try to stop them from going into nightclubs. Drinking in public is frowned upon, also showing leg or shoulder is also highly frowned upon, hence the looks we get wearing shorts and thongs down the main streets. Ooooh sailor....
So today our last day here, we have spent walking around, taking in the city, and letting all the women perv on our exposed legs, it is highly frowned upon for locals to expose any leg in the streets, so we let caution fly to the wind and let it all hang out... legs and all.
Inside the tomb of Mere-Ruka
The last room of the underground tomb... Scandoulous... It has been great times here, bring on Dublin next stop with all the pre camp lads from fwf...well most of them ( DOM ) will be there..... Next update from Dublin... hope you are all well keep in touch!!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.092s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 14; qc: 53; dbt: 0.0471s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Gem
non-member comment
Gold times as always Duggan!
Nick - bit of an essay but got to the end IN THE END - anyway I am in Dublin from tomorrow til Sat so call me and we might get that Rio Reunion beer OR GUINESS!