We have a really long sleep in (we get up with 9 minutes until breakfast ends!), we have breaky, I do a load of laundry (all my whites are now grey! Don’t know if it’s the washing machine, water or….) then head back to the Mall of Emirates to go to Ski Dubai. We get all kitted out and decide if we can’t figure out the skiing thing, at least we look the part! We have to decide between skiing and snowboarding, so we go with skiing this time, we can always come back… There are only 3 in our group, us and a girl from London. She’s lovely, her boyfriend has been skiing for years so he is off snowboarding. I can’t believe how hard it is to walk around in ski boots! It doesn’t ... read more

Very excited this morning, today we are going to the Dead Sea! We check out and are picked up at 8:30am (or as our driver says ‘eight and the thirty’) for a 3 hour drive to get there. It’s a great drive, through more windy mountains and with some of the biggest dust storms we’ve seen the whole trip, we can’t even see 30 centimetres in front of the car at times. We see a sign saying 326km to Iraq, Saudi Arabia is also not far, don’t want to make a wrong turn here! THE DEAD SEA We get to the Amman Tourist Beach. Next to the beach is a huge swimming pool that is quite busy and a restaurant. We head down to the beach, there are chairs alongside the water but not many people. ... read more

We are picked up a 6am for perhaps the strangest trip we’ve done so far. Originally, plan ‘A’ was we were meant to drive to a town called Taba and then catch a ferry to Aqaba in Jordan. Too simple it seems, so to complicate things, if you catch the ferry over, you then can’t fly from Jordan to another country; you have to catch the ferry back to Egypt and leave from there. So - because our next plan is to go to Dubai from Jordan we have to go to plan ‘B’. PLAN ‘B’ So we drive to Taba and then will be doing a ‘land crossing’. This involves driving across Israel. Our guide does his best to explain what we are to do (go across the border and just catch a taxi to ... read more

We pass loads of checkpoints, perhaps 10 (not sure caused I dozed a little), and these were a lot more thorough than anywhere we have experienced in Egypt. There’s paperwork our guide has to hand each one and he has to state where we are from. If we were from Israel or United States for example, then we would have to have an armed guard accompany us. But as Australians we are just waved through. We arrive just before 1:30am and the carpark is choc-o-block full of vans and big tour buses. Ahmed goes and finds us a guide to get us to the top of the mountain. They are all Bedouin (desert) men wearing traditional dress. I say to Tim that we will be able to get a good photo with our guide, but knowing ... read more

Today we are saying goodbye to our floating home, it’s been really nice. One of the best things (apart from the great food, service, facilities…) is that you don’t tip anyone until you check out and then you put one large tip that is split over everyone. We haven’t bought much in the way of souveniers and yet we have not much Egyptian cash left because we’ve spent heaps just on tips. Everyone has their hand out, understandably people aren’t paid much so they try and get extra where they can. It just gets frustrating when no-one does anything just to be nice. KARNAK TEMPLE We go first to see Karnak Temple and this is also right near where we went last night to see Salem’s parents. This is largest of all the temples and also ... read more