Trip Report VIII

Hello everybody! [Hello doctor Nick! - OK so I'm a Simpsons fan]
Overlapping chronologically with Trip Report VII:
1) Lunch on Thursday the 1/8/02.
2) Egyptians - helpful & safe (but with a few scam artists!).
3) Karnak temple complex, buying water.
4) Luxor temple & those terrible Christian vandals.
Back to the more recent past:
5) Friday - time on the 'net & the Luxor Museum.
6) Lunch.
7) An afternoon's feluccaing on the Nile.
8) Smoking a hookah in an Egyptian bazaar - the story of the sandals.
9) Running into 5 people online Sat. morning. Of email accounts.
10) Joining my Nile Cruise, of Traveller’s Cheques, ATMs and change.
11) Relaxing and getting a change of perspective.
12) I'm enjoying the view (of the Nile, right...).
13) Some of the best food I've ever eaten, and it's still Egyptian.
14) Getting lost at Edfu (did I say the Egyptians are helpful?).
15) Police everywhere, giving me a guided tour.
16) Dinner with a group on the boat and the first night in Aswan.

1) At lunchtime the van dropped me off at the Amoun restaurant (Temple of Karnak St., behind or beside Luxor Temple, ph.370 547 if you're ever in Luxor) and pointed out the direction to get back to my hotel (I was just at the end of the street it was in, but I didn't pay enough attention to which direction he was pointing in). They gave the waiter 10 EP to look after me and told me drinks were not included with lunch. This actually allowed me to get one of the cheaper lunches (e.g. a chicken sandwich) with a drink or almost anything on the menu without a drink. Their surcharge was a flat 10% (i.e. not 10%+5%=15.5% [the 5% was applied on top of the 10% charge]). I think 12 EP was the most expensive thing on the menu, but I never got to try it because there were too many good Egyptian dishes I was trying to work my way through & I was only eating breakfast and one main meal (either lunch or dinner) per day. I saw a couple from the tour there and they said they had searched all over Luxor and this was the best restaurant. When I left I went in the wrong direction and met a man who walked with me back to the hotel. The hotel is the Saint Mina Hotel, Cleopatra St. Luxor, ph. (095) 375 409, rooms with a bath next to them from 20 EP per night if you're ever in Luxor.

2) Note that although in this case he was looking to take me on a cab ride & try and scam money out of me, on several other occasions I've been looking for something and someone's walked with me to the place to show me, then walked off before I could even offer any baksheesh. Also every time I've asked someone a question and they didn't speak English (which is most of the time outside Cairo), they've found someone who does, sometimes then walking with me to the place I wanted to go. Egyptians are extremely helpful and if you approach someone you're not likely to be approaching someone who wants to scam tourists as most of them don't do this, the only problem is that it's the one's who do who hang around the tourist areas, speak English (or any other language tourist dollars arrive in, such as Russian), & who will approach you. It's a lot less hassle getting lost somewhere away from the tourist areas of an Egyptian village than it is walking up to the entrance of a major temple. Also the Lonely Planet Guide notes that it is safe in Egypt to walk alone on the street at any time of the day or night, and that it's safer than western countries (it's just that the 8 year olds here put some of the notorious scammers in Australia to shame!). Just don't leave anything too valuable in your hotel room or even in the hotel's safe unless it's a 5 star top end place.

3) In the evening we went to the Karnak temple complex - 60 acres with the biggest standing obelisk in Egypt. The earliest parts date back to close to 2000 BC. These temples are the closest thing to Herod's temple in Jerusalem at the time of Christ I'm ever going to see, and I can see why anybody hearing Jesus say, "Destroy this temple and in 3 days I will rebuild it!" would have thought he was a raving loony. There is an avenue of sphinxes connecting Luxor temple to Karnak of 4km, all except a few hundred meters buried under the streets and buildings of Luxor. At the Karnak end they are ram headed sphinxes, human headed at Luxor temple's end. Water here is 2 EP. A tip: when buying water, don't pick up a bottle or even take one out of a fridge with a glass door unless indicated to do so by the shopkeeper - often they'll pull a bottle out of a freezer for you that's heaps colder and will still be cool at the end of the bottle. Buying several bottles of cheap water and taking it with you to the temple sights seems a waste to me, unless you don't mind drinking water at 40 degrees Celsius! Just take one large bottle, preferably from a place that keeps them in a freezer.

4) After Karnak we checked out Luxor temple (a couple of hundred metres from my hotel). Close to 1400 BC. There is a mosque built over part of the temple, which is still in use, which shows that the temple was buried in sand to a height of about 30 metres in the 13th century. There is also a chapel at temple floor level where the Coptics took refuge from the Romans, and a couple of bronze Roman pillars from later on (after Rome converted to Christianity). This chapel is a chapel to Mut that has had its engravings covered with plaster and painted with Christian scenes, some of which have been allowed to remain. Although Egyptian monuments have suffered vandalism & graffiti for over 2000 years, and have been remodelled and added to ever since they were made, it's been the Christians who've done the worst damage as they have consistently removed the faces from engravings & statues, either because they were spooked by them, or (& more likely in my opinion) because they thought it was their Christian duty to deface these pagan monuments. I consider the latter more likely because the temples have been lived in almost continuously since they were built, & no one else ever saw the need to remove the faces, and because it's been my experience that Christians are all to eager to destroy anything they consider pagan, whether it belongs to them or not, forgetting that if it doesn't belong to you then destroying it is stealing, and Paul speaks against this sort of behaviour referring specifically to robbing temples. It neither does Jesus' reputation any good nor sets anyone free if it's not the person getting rid of their own baggage.

5) Got up Friday morning and went to the Rainbow Internet (not Rainbow Cyber Cafe), Sharia Yousef Hassan, 6 EP/hour and decent speed, for a while before checking out the Luxor museum. It's got a range of stuff that's impressive for a museum not in a capital city, really well laid out and easy to take in and understand. They had help from the Boston Museum. It would be great if they could organise the Egyptian Museum like this, but it would probably have to be spread out over a couple of blocks to put everything on display! Mentioned I was interested in taking a felucca ride at the hotel and they organised a trip to Banana Island for 90 EP in the afternoon, saying it would be good if I gave the captain 10 EP. They are very helpful at the hotel, packing basket breakfasts for people leaving early, organising tours etc. So far everybody Ahmed Fathi (ph. 010 543 3269 if you're ever in Egypt & heading for Luxor) has put me in touch with has been very good (I wrote this before I went to Aswan).

6) Had lunch at the Amoun and splurged out on some of the best ice cream I've ever had. Between a good meal, juice & the ice cream it totalled 22 EP including the 10% surcharge. I left them 40 EP (did I mention I like this restaurant?). OK I admit not having dairy products for 2 weeks has biased my opinion about the ice cream, and when I got to Amsterdam I found out what great ice cream is all about! But the stuff at the restaurant was still amongst the best I've had.

7) The felucca was a motorised one, and at first I was thinking I should've specified a sailing felucca, but then I realised there were no sailing boats out and it wasn't for another couple of hours that there was enough wind for them, so I figured at least I got in a couple of extra hours, but once the wind picked up captain Bakr (in case you're ever looking for a felucca at Luxor or Aswan, he sails between them) transferred me to a sailing felucca in the hands of his assistant, so I got the best of both worlds! We went out to Banana Island where I ate a couple of handfuls of small, sweet bananas for 10 EP, then got shown around the island by a small boy for another 6 EP. They had various tropical fruit growing. I resisted the invitation to take a picture of a banana tree since there's one growing in our back yard at Redfern. After that we floated back down to the dock while drinking Egyptian tea, which I've really developed a liking for (I may never have milk in tea again!), then I was transferred to the sailing felucca & went over to some marshy islands for a camel ride. He really wanted 25 EP but I bargained him down to 20 EP, but I saw his point about walking through water (he spent most of his time past his knees in water between islands), so I gave him 30 EP. We then sailed out on the river to watch the sun set over Luxor & I gave the assistant 10 EP. When we got back I gave the captain 40 EP. The Lonely Planet says 30-50 EP/hour is a good price. We had been out for 3 1/2 hours for 186 EP with throwing money away and getting all the trimmings, when if I'd done it myself it would have cost me at least that just for the hire of the felucca, let alone anything else, knowing my bargaining skills.

8) Later on I caught up with Ahmed Fathi (ph. 0105 433 269) to arrange the rest of my trip, and after catching one of the local minibus taxis, which you just get on and off where-ever you want on their fixed route for 25 Piastres (0.25 EP) which you pass to the people in front of you who pass it on to the driver, to the ATM, he invited me to tea at a tea house he goes to. He ordered a hookah & asked me if I'd like to try it and I said yes, so he ordered me one with something milder mixed with honey. It was the mellowest thing I've ever smoked! No sense of discomfit in the throat, just smooth and sweet! While we were relaxing a small boy came up and said, 'Fix your sandals for you?' Let me tell you about these sandals - I was praying one day when during the conversation I mentioned to God that the coolest footwear would probably be leather sandals with Velcro straps at the back, smarter looking than the Velcro top ones but just as easy to get on and off. On my first trip to Malaysia as an adult 2 1/2 years ago, my uncle Sri bought me a pair of great sandals that I've worn pretty well every summer all summer ever since. A year & a half ago the buckle broke on one of them. I got them repaired by replacing the buckles with Velcro as I couldn't find a matching buckle anywhere. Voila! Exactly what I mentioned in my prayer, my favourite footwear & a gift from Sri & from God. So when this kid offers to repair them now that I've virtually worn my way through the soles, it is a great blessing. I decide that 20 EP is a good price, but that I'll give him 50 EP since I'm feeling so blessed. He asks for 20 EP & when I say they're my favourite sandals, he throws in 'each.' I give him 50. As we're leaving, his friend comes up and asks for money. He mentions he needs new school shoes and they cost 10 EP. I decide I'll give him 1 EP since he hasn't done anything, but I only have a 20 EP note. He says he'll get change. A moment later he is telling me I didn't give him any 20 EP note. Ahmed talks to him and asks me how much change I wanted and I say '10 pounds.' I get 10 EP back. This kind of rubbed me up the wrong way.

9) Saturday morning and I jumped on the net. Chatted with Suren, Melba, Sri & Navin, and saw Hui Ying online but she was gone before I had a chance to message her (caught up with her a few days later in Aswan, though). Even if you don't want to use Hotmail because of all the junk mail, I think it's worth having an account just so you can chat with people in Instant Messenger. You don't have to actually read all that junk mail, just set your options to exclusive with automatic deletion of anything coming from someone not in your address book, log in every 90 days to keep the account active (your email gets deleted after 30 days so you need to log in at least this often if you actually want to use the account), and let your friends know the email address you actually check. Yahoo is pretty good & doesn't get anything like the junk mail that Hotmail does, plus has 6 MB available for email storage and you can have a site of 30 MB of photos if you want, plus some other things. All my relatives switched from Hotmail to Yahoo & I log on Yahoo Messenger! as well as Instant Messenger whenever I'm at a net cafe that has them. I only have one friend with an ICQ account, so I don't worry about that one (sorry Nick!). The only problem is that every net cafe I've used so far, even in The Netherlands, uses an American spell checker (which you may have noticed I don't often use). Had a rest in the afternoon and came back to the net cafe for the rest of the evening.

10) Sunday & it's time for me to join my 5 star Nile cruise on the Oberoi Sherazzad (Oberoi is a big company with offices all over Egypt and the world, even Australia!). Couldn't access either my savings account (a Plus card which I only ever accessed successfully from the airport in Egypt, no problems in Amsterdam though) or my Visa card from the ATMs and had to go to Thomas Cook to get some traveller’s cheques cashed. Note that although I had already paid for the cruise in advance ($200 USD for the first 3 days & $70 for the extra night) I wanted to give Ahmed a tip. Cashing traveller’s cheques has the advantage that they give you a lot of small change, and the better ATMs give you at least 100 EP in 20 EP notes and the rest in 50 EP notes, but some ATMs just give you the minimum number of notes including 100 EP notes. Not that I had any problem getting 100 EP notes changed at the right places, it was at the other end where I kept losing out. Twice a 5 EP taxi ride cost me 10 EP because I didn't have a 5 EP note, once 4 EP water (the Kings Valley, the 2nd most expensive place after Abu Simbel) cost me 5 EP because I didn't have 1 EP notes, once a 10 EP taxi ride cost me 20 EP because I didn't have a 10 EP note etc. etc. Taxis are the main time you need small change.

11) Had a really good shower and grooming session (even washed my watch band and earplugs) and lay on the bed relaxing in my 5 star cabin which you could put a wall through to make a reasonable bedroom & a reasonable lounge room, with it's 2 bathrooms (showers only, though), and let the relief of not having anybody hassling me and knowing that instead of hiding in my small room at the hotel in Luxor if I wanted to get away from it, I had a whole ship I could wander around without getting hassled. Not that I ever retreated to my hotel room, I guess I used the net cafes to relax. I thought about the fact that the kid who annoyed me because he tried to scam my 20 EP note when I was already being generous towards him & his friend would live in a partially completed (high building taxes on finished buildings) mud brick house without any bathroom, with dirt floors and a few animals, and decided not to worry so much about bargaining so hard or getting scammed.

12) Went up to the swimming pool and found myself surrounded by gorgeous young bikini clad French women with whom I would later be dancing and embracing! They had party games that night which included one where you had to form into groups of as many people as the host said when the music stopped. Most of the tourists in Egypt are French (probably because it's close), including most of those on the cruise who were young French couples, so these gorgeous young women were all married and most had children, but that's OK, I'm just enjoying the view (of the banks of the Nile, of course!). At the party I was the only one there who wasn't French, so all the directions were in French, et le animateur parle "un homme et deux femme" et il est tre agreable! My apologies to the French language.

13) Lunch was some of the best food I've ever eaten, which continued to be the case right up to my basket breakfast they packed for me on Wednesday morning. They had a survey of whether everything on the boat met expectations, exceeded expectations or didn't meet expectations, and I created a new box for the food which said 'far exceeded expectations!' The Lonely Planet Guide says food is not the reason people visit Egypt, which is true in the smaller stalls, but some places (like the restaurant in Luxor) do really nice stuff (let alone 5 star Nile Cruisers). Mostly this was Egyptian style food as well.

14) Monday I gave mum another $100 AUD hour long phone call, then we stopped at Edfu where I headed off in the wrong direction without my Lonely Planet Guide (thinking it was a small place & I'd easily remember where to go), got totally lost and ended up wandering around some Arabic district with no tourist carriages (there must have been over a hundred at the dock), no bazaars or tourist stalls, and no one who spoke English. Asked someone in western clothes how to get to the temple but he only spoke Arabic. After I realised I was heading in the wrong direction & backtracked I ran into him and his friend again, who suggested I asked at a shop we were passing (in sign language), who translated where I wanted to go after I repeated it in a couple of different ways, then they walked with me to the temple & disappeared after a quick Salaam before I could offer any baksheesh.

15) At the next place we stopped (a small place whose name escapes me), one of the policemen with automatic rifles who were everywhere (or occasionally with sub-machine guns with extra magazines taped together) was concerned that I wasn't with a tour group, showed me around a bit and pointed out an engraving of Horus with a stethoscope, then disappeared before I could offer any baksheesh again. I had thought the cruiser was the only place I hadn't seen these policemen until I saw some on the front of the boat through a curtained off window and realised they were still there, they were just a little less conspicuous. I saw others who I assumed were soldiers because of their different uniforms (most of them were in white), but they turned out to be different police uniforms (blue or khaki). I saw teams of police frogmen checking out the water around where the Nile cruisers were docked (all the cruisers dock in the same places at much the same times). I got talking to some people from the cruiser and asked if I could join them for dinner.

16) I joined Tom & his wife Sandy, a lady whose name escapes me, Betty Lou, Marla & Lurvy, but Sam & Barry both said they'd been eating too much and decided not to join us for dinner. Anyone notice that I just wrote the names of 7 out of 8 people I met almost a week ago (as I write this) once over dinner, from memory, when several years ago I would often have difficulty coming up with the names of people I knew really well, even people I'd been best friends with for 15 years, and that even a couple of months ago I would have difficulty coming up with names of people I didn't know quite so well from time to time? Not to mention the amount of stuff I packed into the time I was in Egypt, the lack of sleep I was getting over the last few days & the fact that I kept it all going all through my first day in Amsterdam. Now I'm taking it easy for a while. We docked in Aswan that night, but I went to bed early straight after dinner and was only aware we'd arrive because I heard the anchor drop.

Blessings,
Joe Krishna Mithiran