Egpyt

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I went to Egypt with Em and our good friends James and Louise. We decided to stay in Luxor at Louise's suggestion since she has been to Egpyt several times before (yes, she is a little obsessed) so she knew that there was more to see there than the “big” attractions found at Cairo.

Going in the middle of the summer we were expecting it to be hot and that is the first impression as you step off the plan, a literal wall of heat as we stepped out into the 42 degrees. I dont think it dropped below 40 the whole time.

In Egypt haggling and bargaining are a big part of their culture. Given that we didnt have any transport from the airport to the hotel booked then we jumped right in and haggled with our taxi driver! The trouble is that some Egyptians are smart enough to know that Egyptian money isnt worth much in British money so can use lines like “but it is only £10” and you dont really have any comeback to that... Still it's the principle of the matter! Nobody wants to get ripped off!

The hotel we were staying in was the Sonesta St George and the first thing we noticed was the amazing view over the Nile and the Valley of the Kings (VOTK) over the river from the pool patio and restaurant patio. It was a very nice hotel, with several different restaurants and generally pretty quiet (except for a couple of nights when it was invaded by these crazy loud Americans on this kids summer camp!).

We had a relaxing first night in the hotel, with dinner and a few Egyptian beers. We had some “stella” but this isnt Stella Artois (brewed in Belgium) but rather a random Egyptian beer (brewed in Egypt). All the Egyptian beers are ok, pretty average “lager” beers really. Incidentally the Egyptian word for cheers is “Fee-sa-ha-tak” (spelt phonetically). We also had a lot of Egyptian wine, the one I remember best called “Obelisk”. One night we actually had a “chilled” red wine – mainly because the red wine had been stored outside in the Egyptian heat so was about 30 degrees, so we had to put it in some ice to cool it down! The hotel had a nice lounge bar where we relaxed after dinner in the evenings with a few drinks. They also had a pool table in the basement so James and I had a few games of that.

On the first actual day in Luxor we decided to take a walk to Luxor Temple, passing the famous Winter Palace Hotel just down the road from our hotel. We knew that it was fairly close but we all underestimated the power of the Egyptian heat and all took a battering from the sun on our walk there! It doesnt help that in Egpyt it is culturally accepted to dress very conservatively (especially for women, even though most tourists ignore this), so that made things even more sweltering for the girls. I also also funny being hassled by various taxi drivers and horse and cart (?!) drivers looking for our business as we walked along. This is a common theme in Egypt given that you stand out so much as a tourist and you just need to get used to it. It is pretty much a common theme in less developed poorer countries I have noticed.

Luxor Temple was the first experience of an Egyptian temple (or any ancient Egyptian artefacts in Egypt!) for both Emily and I and we loved it. Whilst the temple is a relic and doesnt represent anything like what it looked like in the past, you still get a feeling of the scale and grandness of this and all the temples in Egypt. I also had my first experience of a another common tourist fleece. Basically random people scattered round the temple are always looking for tips (Bakshish) off the tourists so they will grab your attention and when they have it point at something (can be anything, a stone, rock, their shoe – something totally random) and give some random story about it or tell you that it looks great from a certain angle – then of course the hand comes out looking for the Bakshish. I had been forewarned about this so had been carrying a lot of small spare change on me to beat them at their own game. Surprisingly though when we were in Luxor Temple an Egyptian policeman asked for a tip in exchange for showing us something and then taking our photo. Since he was carrying a gun I thought I would give him a slightly bigger tip!

Egypt is actually quite a safe place for tourists as, given how important tourism is to the country, they take tourist safety very seriously. They have “Tourist Police” everywhere. Like you couldn't walk 100 yards without seeing one.

After the temple we decided to take a walk to a local market for to both get out the sun and take a look at some of the merchandise – it also offered us another chance to practice our bargaining! I always like to buy some sort of local t-shirt or shirt so I selected this white shirt with an Egpytian logo on it. I got the guy down from like E£185 to E£35 (which is about £5) so thought I had done well... Then we walked further down the market and saw them for E£25! Doh!

Back at the hotel for the evening, we settled in for dinner – Egyptian food I found on the whole to be ok. The main thing I noticed was how meat based it is. Especially red meat. I dont think I have seen or will ever see as many different veal dishes as I did in Egypt! While I am not exactly a vegetarian, getting ploughed with meat every night was a bit overwhelming – but luckily the hotel had many different restaurants to sample (although James and I definitely took full advantage of the buffet style in the main Egyptian restaurant!).

While in Egypt we decided that most mornings we would get up and see sights (while it is cooler and less busy), then take the afternoons off (when it is 5 million degrees) before possibly heading out again in the evening/late afternoon. This is what we did on most days and meant a lot of early starts. One of these early starts saw us leave at 5am for a balloon ride over Luxor and the VOTK.

I have never been in a hot air balloon before and it was an exciting experience. The heat from the gas fire is powerful and I kept thinking I was about to have my eye brows singed every-time the “captain” pulled the cord to fire it up! Interestingly in Egypt the hot air balloons appeared to be heavily regulated with each being operated by a fully qualified “captain” in captains uniform – much like an aircraft pilot. He performed various checks and had various communications with air traffic control to get us up and down.

The view from the balloon was immense. I am not the best with heights so was a bit shaky at first but after a few minutes I got used to it. We got to see the sun rise up behind the VOTK and all over Luxor at sun rise.

We just chilled the afternoon after the balloon ride – the hotel had a nice pool and a table tennis table for James and I to have a few games throughout our week.

In the evening we went to go to one of the most famous temples in Luxor, called Karnak. It is famous because it was built my many different Pharoahs – each extending the temple and adding their own unique elements. However, firstly on the way there we were introduced to a character who would become one of the highlights of our trip – a taxi driver named Bode!

We met Bode just by flagging down a random taxi outside our hotel. We liked him immediately as when we asked for a price to get into town he immediately gave us a fair and correct price – no haggling necessary. When we asked him for a price for taking us around the VOTK for the day (we knew a fair price was around E£100) he immediately offered us E£100. But it was not his fair prices that made him the highlight of this trip, but his general demeanour. He was overly friendly and slightly crazy – the most comparable person I could think of was Borat! Especially since he came up with some brilliant statements regarding his wife: “what would you like for Xmas? I would like new wiiiife” “my wiiiife – she fat!” “you should come meet my wife and family but you no tell her what I say you tell her I say she angel”. He also took a liking to Louise and complimented James on his choice of wiiiife.

Anyway he dropped us off at Karnak and we got his card with the intention of using him for all future trips. Karnak temple was absolutely amazing a typically Egyptian over the top palace. We saw a show called “Karnak – Day and Night” which was essentially a night show with flashing lights and cheesy commentary all around the temple. Em and I loved it, so we went back to see the temple again during the day time later in the week. One funny thing happened near the end, after constant references to Thebes (which is what Luxor was called back when it was the Egyptian capital) we overhead these two scouse girls saying to each other “Theeebes – ooooh I think that means Luxor...” “Yer, yer right!”

So the day after Karnak, Em and I arranged to go to the VOTK (James and Louise had been before so decided to have a relaxing day by the pool) so we got Bode to pick us up around 7am (as I mentioned above, Egypt is definitely an early morning/evening place). Bode had the beats going but was of course constantly asked where Louise was! We stopped off at a place I wanted to see called the Rammeseum – another ancient temple. It was really cool, with massive Pharoah statues aplenty as it is based on the many Ramses Pharohs. We also, by choosing to start our day here instead of the Valley had to whole place to ourself which was awesome! The downside to this was that we were the only people around for the hangers out around the temple to hassle in pursuit of Bakshish. In particular, there was one guy that was stalking us almost the entire time and showing us the most random things trying to squeeze money out of us. He even randomly took us to a little “grave” on the outskirts of the temple where there were human bones! At the end I gave him what I thought was a nice little tip but he wasnt happy and made this weird moaning noise (since he cant speak much/any English). To be honest I'd rather have had the place to ourself and not been constantly hassled...

The actual VOTK is a series of tombs hidden up in the mountains outside Luxor. The purpose was to make the tomb as hard to get to as possible to keep away grave robbers. The reason was that all the Pharaohs were burried with lots of gold, carvings, decorations and other materials precious to them. However, none of that is left today – most of the tombs are just empty tombs with a few wall carvings left. And they were extremely hot empty tombs at that – like around 50 degrees in the tomb – so they are like saunas. To be honest I wasnt really that impressed. Plus I almost got scammed as a “policeman” took a bribe as I took a photo of the VOTK when I wasnt supposed to. The tomb of Tutankhamen is here as well, but is empty with the belongings sitting in the Cairo museum (see below).

Bode also dropped us off at a “rock” shop where they did everything in their power to convince us that these rocks (commonly carved into scarab beetles) were worth ridiculous amounts of money hitting us with some massively over the top sales patter... Em caved in and bought a couple of small items while I drunk some tea (it is customary to offer your customers tea in Egyptian shops)!

Our final stop for the day was another temple built into the hills called Hatshepsut. I absolutely loved it, for some reason it reminded me of the castle they go to in Lord Of The Rings up in the mountains. It was basically like they carved a little chunk right out of the mountain for this temple. So we had a really cool day and Bode bought us some cold drinks and slammed on the tunes on the way home!

One other little trip we took in Luxor was a boat trip (from a friend of Bodes!) across the Nile to this little island called Banana Island (full of Banana trees of course!) where we were given a tour of the island by a little kid who must've been about 8 years old! At one point they had a sort of well with a Crocodile in and covered by a mesh cage. To show us the croc in action the kid climbed up on the mesh cage and started poking it with a stick! Not exactly the safest thing I have ever seen, given how thin the mesh was! But the island was nice and relaxing, as was the boat trip and James and I chilled with a case of Stellas that we picked up along the way...

But we all felt that no trip to Egypt without a visit to the only remaining Ancient Wonder of The World, the Pyramids at Giza. Luxor is quite a bit south from Cairo so we booked a flight and day trip (it was about a 1.5 hour flight on Egypt Air, who were pretty good). Arriving in Cairo we had a guided tour shared on a small mini bus with about 4 other people.

The first thing that hits you about Cairo is just how big and crazy it is. I dont think I had realised how big a city Cairo is before I went there (it is one of the top 10 biggest in the world I think) and when you arrive the chaos of the city is what strikes you first.

The weird thing is that the city has extended so far that it has developed right up to the Pyramids – so the Pyramids look like a suburb of the city! Anyway the sheer size and scope of the Pyramids is something that no picture or writing can do justice. Unfortunately we didnt get one of the ~150 daily tickets to go inside, but you get to walk around them and even climb on them.

I am not the biggest fan of guided tours and this Cairo trip only further confirmed this for me. Guided tours are often just: drop off>point click>get back on – this trip was no exception. Sometimes this can be overcome by having a great group of people on the tour (like when I last did a guided tour in New Zealand) but the Cairo trip was probably the opposite – everyone was pretty quiet and kept to themselves except for this one annoying German girl who was like the girl in class who asks all the dumb questions in order to try and appear smart (as well as ass-kiss the lecturer). Her best line was after the guide said “some people think the Pyramids must have been built by aliens as it doesnt seem like we would have the technology to do this” she blurted out “yeh! That's what I'm here to find out!” As if this ancient problem and theory of how the Pyramids came to be could be solved by her in 5 minutes!

When you are at the Pyramids you can see why there are such crazy theories – thousands of rocks that are each over 1 tonne piled perfectly together and still standing after thousands of years – really incredible. After our “allocated time” at the Pyramids (which was nowhere near enough) we moved on to the Sphinx. We were given such a short time there too, but what can you do. The Sphinx is a lot smaller than I thought it would be and also a lot less well preserved that I thought too. Still very cool to see. Also, apparently nearby they are excavating a site where it is believed there is a second Sphinx.

After the time at Giza we dived into the chaotic traffic jam and craziness that is driving in down-town Cairo to head for the Cairo museum. The museum is one of the most famous in the world, the most well known exhibit being all the remains of Tutankhamen's tomb (discovered by the British archaeologist Howard Carter – who's house we saw out by the VOTK – in the 1990s). Most people have heard/seen the famous gold Tutankhamen mask. It is amazing in person, unreal. In fact there are actually like 4 masks, each one slightly bigger and more amazing than the previous one. The Tutankhamen exhibit is worth visiting the Egypt Museum just by itself; but that is not to say that there is a lot of other amazing ancient artefacts there too. In fact, there are so many they are literally just lying strewn around the museum. It is heavily criticised for it's inability to preserve items and being there it was clear to see why (we were told that this will change when they are moved to a new museum being build, which I believe will be one of the biggest museums in the world - it will also be out by the Pyramids at Giza so will mean you can visit Cairo without having to navigate city centre traffic!).

From the museum we were escorted through busy traffic to this anchored boat where we had a nice buffet lunch on the banks of the Nile (all part of the package we booked). After this we were supposed to head to a street market for some shopping. I suggested that perhaps instead we could spend the time at the museum, as I didn't really come to Cairo for the day to walk around the market. Everyone was in agreement except for Annoying German Girl, but luckily the tour guide agreed to let us be dropped off at the museum before he took them onwards to the shops. So luckily we got to spend the afternoon wandering around examining ancient artefacts rather than being hassled into buying tacky t-shirts. The whole tour was pretty crazy, almost spending more time in Cairo traffic than by the Pyramids.

So that was our day in Cairo – whilst it reaffirmed my hatred for tour packages it was still just amazing to see the Pyramids up close, so definitely worth it. But seeing the main highlight of Egpyt was a fitting end to a fitting week in Egypt.

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Photos

Luxor Temple
Hard to pick a photo of any of the temples that sums it up - they are all so huge and awesome

View Across Nile to VOTK
This is the view from our hotel at sunset one night

View From Hot Air Balloon
The view over the VOTK at sun rise

Karnak Temple
Again even harder to pick a favourite photo of Karnak!

Bode!
The legendary Bode with James, Louise and I

Rammeseum
Empty Rammeseum

VOTK
The tombs at VOTK

All the Pyramids
Em and I at the Pyramids view point

Where are the pyramids?
James and I