Once Upon a Time in the Valley of the Kings

The Story of Cairo and the Mysterious Case of the Shemali
Cairo rises up from the earth in a haphazard mess of concrete buildings and shanty houses sprouting satellite dishes. The ever present "Smog of Arabia" - a permanent haze of pollution settles over the sky. After dumping our suitcases at the hotel, our first activity of the evening is an optional dinner cruise on the Nile, which we all quite frankly accept given that our other option is to hang around at the hotel by ourselves. We soon find ourselves herded onto an enormous cruise ship called the "Memphis", a three storey high vessel jam packed with tourists.

Amidst the blinking Memphis neon sign and the soggy lukewarm buffet food, my first impressions of the tour couldn't be worse. I'm half expecting Elvis (circa overweight with PVC suit) to come out and belt out some tunes. Then the entertainment begins......

The most scary is the belly dancer who looks disconcertingly tranny, complete with fake boobs that never move - no matter how much jiggling he/she does. (Why is it that guys like that sort of thing....?)

"Shemali" has done something strange to her lips - there is lip liner beyond where her lips end, and the lipstick on her actual lips is strangely faded in that kind of way that makes you think that she's just come from the back alley after servicing a few men or two.

Then, more frightening, she then starts dragging people onto the dance floor to dance. The first victim is K. who frankly, looks scared shitless, and tries to bolt at every attempt when the belly dancer's back is turned.

Then the belly dancer starts asking question, "You!" She says addressing to our table. "Where are you from?" We are too scared to reply (besides, we're all from different countries,) and she has to repeat her question about three times before somebody meekly pipes up with an answer. Unwise choice. Whoever buckled under pressure and answered is next to be devoured by this "creature".

The night almost ends in disaster when we board the coach. There are cars parked haphazardly everywhere and the coach window cracks in a cobweb pattern as it hits against a stone wall while attempting to make a left turn. We're lucky that the glass doesn't shatter and after what seems like ten zillion three point turns, we finally get through and head back to the hotel.

The Pyramids

I've seen them in movies, and seen them in books, but until you see them in the flesh,
it's truly difficult to comprehend the size and the scale of how big they really are. The pyramids rise above everything else and can be seen throughout Cairo City. The great pyramid has enough stones to border the whole of France with a three foot high wall or two thirds of the equator with a one foot high wall. All this done in the glory of the after life. They truly are spectacular.

(Below: The Sphinx - "Power of a lion, Wisdom of a man")

So great and mighty are the pyramids that all the hotels in Cairo have decided to name themselves after them - Delta Pyramids, Cataract Pyramids, Hilton Pyramids..... You better learn the full name AND address of your hotel if you ever want to get back to wherever you're staying....

There are plenty of hustlers roaming around the pyramids, but I am fairly fortunate to be fairly invisible and to glide past them unnoticed as they head straight to the blondes of the tour group. The blondes end up forking over 250 EGP (that's the equivalent of more than £30) when a hustler insistently snatches one of their cameras and takes a photo for them. The most expensive photograph ever. I think the hustler even managed to cut off somebody's head in the shot.

You really have to watch your back in Egypt. Expect to fork out cash if somebody puts a scarf over your head or if someone accidentally walks into your photo.

Some idiot calls me a "spicy lady," and I immediately tell him to "fuck off". (Well, he wanted spice, didn't he?") Another young boy outside a perfumery later on proclaimed, "Money for one kiss." I had to laugh and ask him whether it should have been the other way around.

There are already divisions forming in the tour group. The most noticeable one is the "Blonde Group" - you know the kind, the ones that were pretty and popular and cliquey in highschool (and still think that highschool was the best time of their lives). They went to school together, uni together and then decided to move over to London....together.... They're not particularly bright (more examples to enfold), but then, that doesn't seem to deter the boys. (Geez, funny that....) There's a couple in the tour group who tell me that they went to highschool with these girls. "When we saw them at the baggage counter, we were like, "NOOOOOO!!". They were all pretending not to know us and didn't even want to say hi." Looks like some people never leave highschool behind.

All Aboard, the Night Train!

Trains are always inevitably late with the scheduled timetables serving only as a suggestion as to when a train will actually arrive. We're in the first class sleeper train and the windows ledges are caked with dirt. I take cue from another girl who is using her wipes to wipe down the armrests of her chair. Yup, totally black. It's a restless night and I keep on waking up as the air conditioning is freezing. (I'm glad that I decided to buy a sleeping bag rather than a "sleeping sheet" as per the suggestion of the travel guide.) After many hours of delay, we are relieved to arrive in Aswan where the air is cleaner, the sky is bluer and the men....still openly look you up and down.

(Below: Aswan High Dam)

(Below: Trip to the Philae Temple)

Dining with the Crocodiles

A typical Nubian dinner...... Best pic ever to put on your resume when applying to work with children......

4am Date with Ramses II

It's a 3:30am stumble out of bed to catch the police convoy to Abu Simbel. The police convoy is necessary ever since some tour bus got hijack....and everybody got killed. The extremely early morning start is also necessary as Ramses II's temple is in the middle of the dessert, and with the long drive to get to it, it really isn't fun to be there in the midday sun.

The Felucca Safari

Felucca (n.): A narrow, fast lateen-rigged sailing vessel used in the Nile or the Mediterranean sea.

And there's no toilet and no showers on board. So every time somebody needed to go to the toilet, we'd have to anchor along some sandy bank and dig or hole or find a tree. (Notice how when there's no toilet available, you all of sudden have the urge to go more often...?) The whole experience could have been a nightmare, but it was surprisingly serene and carefree.... We spend our days lazing on the cushioned mats that covered the whole of the felucca, go for leisurely swims in the Nile and stuff our faces with Egyptian potato chips.

Lion chips in chili and lemon - officially the best potato chips!

There's suppose to be thirteen people on each felucca but as usual, the Barbie group refuse to be split up and end up with more people on their boat. We hear down the pipeline grumbling from other people who are on the same boat about the lack of space, as the Barbies decide to corner off a part of the boat as their permanent "make-up station".

I also hear comments (from the Barbie boat) that are just too good not to be shared......

"Is this the Nile?"

"Is that a pyramid?" (In reference to a bridge some distance away.)

One of the boys starts laughing when he seems me furtively jolting these down in my notebook.

We're given tasks to do by the tour guide - for the entertainment benefit of the crew. We have to:

1) Convince one of the sailing crew to borrow their ID

2) Make up an Egyptian flag

3) Have a boy dressed as a girl

4) Girl dressed as a boy

5) Have an Aussie imitate a Kiwi

6) A Kiwi imitate an Aussie

7) Have somebody belly dance (inevitably, somebody imitates the tranny belly dancer from Cairo....)

8) Have somebody wear sexy undies

9) Mimic the tour guide

10) Create a theme song for the felucca

I'd like to think that Braveheart, (the name of our felucca,) won because of our little number rapped to the tune of Fresh Prince of Bel Air -

So this is the story all about how

We all got together to sail down the Nile.

If you'd like to take a minute just sit right down

We'll tell you how we became the Bravehearts of the town.

Antipodeans born and raise

In the UK is where we spend most of our days,

We hopped on a plane to get away from the cool

landed in Cairo to hang by the pool.

Headed to Aswan on the overnight train

To a city that only has two days of rain.

Benben, Sphinx, Abu Simbel too,

Hopped on a felucca where we had to do bush poo.

A couple of guys, they were up to no good,

So Sam said "No fucking on the felucca,"

- like we would!

- but in reality, we won because of the additional points given by the other team who also hated the Barbie boat and basically wanted to piss them off.... Totally highschool...? Yes...... (And yeah, apparently people have tried to have sex on the felucca on previous tours..... Ew. Some people have no shame.)

Below: The Braveheart team - Winners are Grinners!

I also discovered when we were doing the Kiwi/Aussie imitations that for once, the Aussies were seriously outnumbered by the Kiwis..... There were talks about "jandals" - me: "Argh!!! They're not jandals, they're thongs!!" and "chilly bins" - me: "You mean an esky!!", and I had great difficulties finding my thongs amongst some thirteen pairs of dark coloured Havaianas.

And the food....was fantastic. Falafel with soft pita bread, a tomato stew with carrots, peas and potat, feta cheese and Egyptian sausage.

(Below: Mmm, Egyptian strawberry jam....)

(Below: Tour guide Sam catches a fish!)

And at the end of felucca trip, tour guide Sam is right - we are sad to leave the felucca behind.

For Harassing our Women.....

......we in turn harass your gods.

I make the mistake of walking back to our hotel in Luxor some fifty metres down the road as I got too impatient to wait for everybody else who was wanted to buy stamps. I immediately regretted my decision as a man riding a horse and carriage on the opposite side of the road some four lanes away, makes an illegal u-turn and decided to follow me....all the way to the hotel. He didn't give up even when I refuse to respond to him.

On a more serious note, we also learnt how to tell the difference between Greek and the Ancient Egyptian built temples. The Greek built temples had statues with fatter cheeks and more pronounced belly buttons. They also combined lotus and papyrus together to form the top of pillars. It might come in useful for your next game of trivia pursuit.

Camels in the Back of a Ute!!

The Murphy's Pub in Luxor......

.....the Irish bar that serves no Guinness. (The Irish are "everywhere" because there are Irish pubs everywhere? Yeah right.....)

View from the Donkey Ride

My donkey and I didn't exactly bond..... He was extremely slow and refused to take heed to any of my directions.

The Perfect Souvenir from Egypt

The all singing and dancing camel - in Arabic!

The Egyptian Tummy Bug
There's some grumbling in my tummy when we go visit the Karnack temple on the Friday, some six days into the trip.

It isn't full blown diarrhea, but my stomach's not completely normal. I fair better than most other people in the tour group, and by the end of our trip, I've calculated that 90% of us have had some form of gastro problem.

Dusk in Luxor City


The Coach Driver once took Obama to the Pyramids, and now drives our Bus

Or so the photo on his dashboard says.

One with Obi Wan Kenobi

With Dior satchel in the background, Cairo Citadel

Stellar - The Bridge between Language, Religion and Culture