Only 23 more days to go!!!

First off, a word of warning, if you are easily offended, or have grown up in the Muslim religion, this blog will most likely offend you. It doesn’t mean to offend but some people are extremely uptight, or do not know how we often speak here in the west. I am also a Pagan, which I know is very blasphemous in Egypt. So you have been warned, don’t go messaging me to complain or writing rude comments in my blog if you don’t like it. I thought I would mention this just in case the general public happen upon my blog.

I can’t wait, only 23 more days until I set foot in Egypt! Of course I’ll be setting foot there about 2am after 2 days of flying and airports, so I may be a bit more then trashed. A local person from Egypt has offered to meet me at the airport, then we take the city bus 4 hours after I arrive. I’m thinking not, that would be too many people to strangle if any pissed me off (remember the bit about 2 days of airplanes and 2am). So I will be haggling for a cab at 2am after 2 days of travel! If there are still cab drivers willing to speak with me after I’m done, I will be taking one to my hotel.

About 6 months ago Flauros and I talked about me going to Egypt! I just loved the idea but mentioned that it would be awfully difficult for me to afford it. So he asked how much for airfare. I told him, and within 2 weeks I had an order for the exact amount of airfare and travel insurance! Then we discussed hotels, I was looking up the $2-$5 per night ones as I just love budget travel. Flauros told me I have to stay in the nicer hotels. I complained about how much more they cost, but also thought it very sweet that he was concerned. So he asked how much for the ones with AC and bathrooms... I calculated the figures and told him. Of course less then a week later I got a couple of orders for exactly that amount. This is on top of an order for the exact amount for food/transportation/entrance fees some time later when we he asked me how much more I needed to complete the trip.

The very first thing I will be doing in Egypt (well besides changing money to that really pretty Egyptian stuff and haggling with cab drivers and telling touts “IMSHEE!”) will be to go out to eat! Fortunately there are several eating establishments in Cairo which are open 24 hours a day :). So I will be starting off my trip with some good Egyptian food!

I have my itinerary all planned out for where I will be each day and which monuments I will be going to see each day. However this is more then likely to change once I actually get there. I’m already thinking of taking a quick unplanned trip over to the red sea after I have relaxed in Cairo for a few days. I also might be flying to Abul Sumbul instead of taking the 18 hour overnight train. Not that there is anything wrong with trains in Egypt of course... aside from breaking down often, being rickety, being overcrowded, not always air conditioned, and costing more then to fly if you actually want a bed.... but getting there in only a couple of hours is more then tempting. Unfortunately I will be arriving during one of the prime tourist seasons (believe me this was *not* planned) so I will have to book ahead with a lot of places. Damn north Americans and their having to travel to Egypt over the easter holidays! Couldn’t they have done so back at Christmas or in January?

I will be going to the far south at the beginning of my trip, right after I recover from the flight in Cairo, since it gets far too hot there the closer to summer it gets. I have carefully sought out air conditioned hotels with their own bathrooms. While they do cost a little more then the $2 per night options, there are some luxuries that I would like to experience during my first trip over there. Believe it or not, there are actually hotels in Egypt that are $170 per night and up! Keep in mind this is a country where the average national income is about $2 per day. Even in Cairo, people tend to make $200-$300 per month for an entire family. As you can guess one of the primary sources of income for many Egyptians is the tourist trade, and baksheesh (tipping) from tourists.

There is much to do in Egypt... everything from internet cafes and wifi (have to keep up with my email you know), to pyramids, tombs, museums, a wild nightlife, and cruising the Nile on traditional boats called Fellucas. For those with too much money and no imagination there are also Nile cruises on cruise boats that are larger then most skyscrapers, have pools on deck, several restaurants, ballrooms and other luxuries. Most of them make the fanciest of hotels look like not much. Now how they have those marble tiled floors and still stay afloat is beyond me! I am guessing that the Egyptians view the cruise ships full of tourists with the same disgust we here on the island view the hoards of tourist buses that come over in the summer. However like Egypt, that is how most residents pay their rent.

A few interesting facts about Egypt... for example, the papyrus that you buy in most stores is actually just screen printed banana leaves, especially what we get over here in north America! If you want the real papyrus, you have to go to a reputable papyrus dealer or know what you are looking for. Apparently in ancient Egypt there were several grades of papyrus, similar to how we grade leather today. The innermost and nicest papyri was only used for religious and temple documents, while the next layer out was used for official documents, and so on until the not so good outer layers that were used for... probably the tourists LOL.

Cairo is apparently one of the largest cities in the world with 16 million residents! I don’t even think that is including the tourists. Fortunately it is also one of the safest countries in the world to travel to. Well no wonder with 90% (or likely more) of the country’s economy depending on the tourist trade, they have to make it safe for tourists. Finding things like a restaurant with a tiny non-smoking section or a vegetarian restaurant in Egypt is near impossible. Fortunately I quite like lamb. Btw, the Sheeshas (Hookas) that they use in all of the cafes in Egypt actually use a mixture of tobacco and not what we might use them for in the West, well as far as I know anyways. If this is the case it would be quite different from Morocco. When I was in Morocco the men of the country would sit around and smoke blonde hash (also known as Kif) all day either at the cafes, or just outside the stores they worked in. In Morocco it is so much of the culture that many books written about the area by people who live there include kif as one of the main components of the stories. The authors will often pride the hasheesh smokers while making fun the of the alcohol drinkers and tend to have morals to the story such as it is better to smoke then to drink. This was quite a few years ago though, so I don’t know if things might have changed over there more recently.

Another interesting fact about Egypt, and especially Cairo is that it is far from safe to drive there. Tourists are definitely recommended to take taxis (or the city buses if you are adventurous) and avoid renting a car. Of course with the city buses, they don’t actually stop at each stop, they more slow down quite a bit so you can jump off of the bus. It is also a made dash to get onto the buses that resembles 90% off sale day at the shopping malls in the US! Cabs don’t cost nearly as much as they do here though, and you can even hire a cab and a driver for several hours at a very good rate if you wish to tour around a bit, or go out of town a ways. I’m thinking bicycles might be a good option for Cairo, then a taxi when I want to hit the city of the dead (more about that in a couple of paragraphs).

Another not so good fact about Egypt is that when the citizens apply for identification they are asked which religion they are, and this is printed on the ID. It is of course very good to say Muslim, and OK to say Christian (Coptic of course), but if you say any other religion you are likely to be thrown in jail. I don’t want to know what would happen if one of the locals said “Satanist” or perhaps that would be Shaitanism or perhaps Iblisanism. It doesn’t seem all bad though, I have a photograph of a current business card of a magician who advertizes various healing services, getting rid of devils and cleansings! From what I have heard though, one does not speak about being an infidel, er I mean magician over there. Now how they live amongst all of those temples and pyramids and ignore the old Gods is beyond me, but they seem to manage pretty well. Perhaps it is the prayers 5 times per day.

Over here we have cemeteries and graveyards, but over there they have tombs and cities! Many years ago the homeless people of Cairo started living in the graveyard. It was a rather large graveyard that kept getting larger and larger for obvious reasons, and well most graves would have a little building you could use to hang out with your departed ancestors! Pretty cool I think. Well many of these buildings had places where you could actually stay the night and this was done quite often. Well the homeless pretty much thought this was a great opportunity for free lodging. Eventually of course the city of Cairo decided to do something about this! They installed electricity and water for them :). So now it is called the city of the dead, in English anyways, I’m not sure what the name is in Arabic. I would say the dead are far from lonely in that graveyard. They are probably also happier then the dead pharaohs who put up with having their bodies taken out of their resting places, brought into view, and thousands of tourists walking around their tombs everyday! So much for an eternal afterlife, or at least a peaceful eternal afterlife. After all that effort of taking the brains out through the nose as to not mar the skull, the gallons of honey, fancy wrappings, incensed many times, walls painted or carefully chiselled with entire books of what they are supposed to do in the afterlife, statues and other dead people to help them out in the afterlife and so on.... to just be dug up by some guy in a tan shirt with a grant from some foreign government!

It isn’t all bad, the Edfu temple, which is the largest temple of Horus in Egypt was completely buried for thousands of years. This was the temple which was built on top of another earlier temple. Well they found it more recently, and it was perfectly intact since it had been buried for so many years! I mean perfectly intact minus the piles of garbage the people left who were living in it. But the archaeologists (more like their interns or the hired locals) cleaned all that up anyways. Now it is one of the temples in the best condition after all of these centuries. Most of the carefully chiselled hieroglyphics (and even some centuries old graphiti) is in near perfect condition.

Since some of the tombs and temples are wearing out a bit from the thousands of tourists per day, they have brought about some laws such as no flashes to be used, no touching the walls and so on. They also only allow a certain amount of people in some of the tombs each day. They routinely close off some of the tombs and temples for restoration work as well, but tend to leave enough open to interest most tourists.

One of the largest restoration projects was that of the temple of Phillae. The island which it used to stand on (called Phillae) was flooding too much and destroying the temple. So they just picked it up and moved it to another island. So if you want to go visit Isis in her main temple now (you know the one in all the old Egyptian stories), you have to go to the new island. I don’t think they mention the relocation very often though. It would be interesting to visit the old island as well, if it’s not underwater when I am in Egypt that is.

As I travel through Egypt I will be taking numerous photos (obviously) and will be adding them to my blog (insha’wifi; insha’Horus). So there should be mentions of my tour along with photos to see quite a bit of each area, as well as the life of the locals, the locals that don’t mind photos that is :). I may update this blog again before I leave for Egypt, but I doubt it, since there is no point of updating a blog about traveling around Egypt until I get there afterall. So be patient and wait until the 27th, or until I have recuperated and found wifi, to see the next post.

Btw, don't forget to look to the top left to see the google adsense links. Feel free to click them from time to time as well to help fund my souvineer purchasing fund *g*.