Konnichiwa Egypt (Part III)

12th February 2008 , Tuesday

Woke up at the ungodly hour of 3 in the morning yet again. This is due to the 3 hour drive to the temple of Abu-Simbel . So essentially we had to give the bus about 6 hours to drive to and fro from the temple and had to back by lunchtime for the other activities in store for us on the day.

The hotel was kind enough to pack us breakfast in these cardboard boxes cause we most definately were not gonna be able to be back in time for breakfast. Most of us didn't really eat much at all cause everyone pretty much went to sleep on the bus. Me being me couldn't really sleep and so just stayed up and looked at the scenery outside. At around 3.00 in the morning there was pretty much zero visibility outside BUT since we were in the middle of the desert and far away from any man made light source from cities, the stars shone like i've never seen them before. The whole early morning sky was literally GLITTERING with all the stars. And then it happened.

I swear on my life that i saw a shooting star ! It was a tiny little white thing with a short streak at its rear. However , it didn't really shoot across the night sky like you see them in movies but rather in a small area of the pitch blackness of the sky. I thought to myself , "what a magical moment. .simply magical" and then i proceeded to wolf down my hard boiled eggs from my packed breakfast. It too was absolutely delicious.

Reached Abu-Simbel around 6 something in the morning. Went right to the toilets and proceeded to see the 2 huge ass-ed temples .

Abu-Simbel , as i said before , is one of the must-go-to places when you're in Egypt as it is seriously pretty awesome to look at. Furtheremore, one of the temples was transported stone by stone from the rising Lake Nasser to the neighboring island to prevent its complete submersion in the lake. If Mr Habibi didn't tell me that i would've thought it was right there from the get-go.

From left to right : Ramses II when he was 30 , 40 ,50 and 60( which is when he shaved)

Abu Simbel and I

Pictures weren't allowed to be taken inside the temple not because that mummies or ancient curses would arise if you do but rather they wanted you to BUY the pictures from them. Smart buggers. Inside the temple , the walls were filled with 'propaganda' pictures or rather pictures of the pharoah ramses giving a nice ass-kicking to his enemies and the like.

So after having our share of sand , blocks of stone and of course Ramses II, we bopped back into the cruise for a quick shower and lunch. After some more mid-eastern cuisine we went off to other places like High Dam , Temple of Philae. I'm sure that a quick reference in wikipedia will get you the specifics of the places as to me they are both wonders of architecture that has me thinking . . "These fucking egyptian must've been born with hard hats on em ! "

So at the end of the day we had a nice Felucca ride across the Nile. Now a Felucca is kinda like a boat that doesn't use nothing but wind for propulsion. It was alright i suppose. But the kicker of it all was what my sister asked me. She said something like .. . 'Hey why's this Egypt trip so rude?' My reply was . .' What do you mean?' . .she said 'Well first there was a Labia Party and now there's a Fellatio Ride .. .wtf man?! ' By that time i was laughing like a man outta Bedlam. If you don't know it already , my sister's a real piece of work.

Anyway, to end the day we were to spend a night in a Night Sleeper train bound for Cairo which would take about 12 hours . . i know.. crazy right? Well it was a 6pm to 6am ride so we were pretty tired by then. The train 'rooms' were a disgrace. They consists of 2 bunks , one on top of the other and enough room for the legs of 2 petite ladies if the sat straight up . . man , I've seen dustbins bigger than those rooms. But i have to admit , sleeping on the top bunker was the best sleep i ever had in some time. . . it was like being in a baby pram all over again. Lovely, simply lovely !

Living Da Vida Loca In The Train

13th February 2008 , Wednesday

Wake up call was at around 6.00, breakfast at 6.05 and got out at the Cairo Station at around 6.35 and got onto ANOTHER bus to the one . .the only The Pyraminds of GIZA !!

So you've seen them in pictures, you've watched The Mummy more than once. . Well so have i before i went to Egypt but STILL i was shocked and DUMBSTRUCK when i saw the sheer size and beauty of it. I mean seriously , go ahead and laugh at me but when you get your sorry asses to Cairo , Egypt and see the big bitches with your own two eyes you'll know what i mean. They . Are . Beautiful. In an enigmatic kinda way.

fooling around the pyramids

We didn't actually go INTO the pyramids but it was possible. According to one of me tour-mates , it was REAAAALLLY narrow.. like barely enough space for your shoulders narrow, and it was low as well, where he had to kneel and bend his head down alittle bit. And thats just the half of it. As you proceed deeper into the pyramid , which is kinda like a huge V tunnel where you'll have to descend and then ascend , the air gets thinner and thinner and it gets harder to breathe. So if any accidents were to happen while you're in the tunnel it'd be REAAALL hard to get anyone in to help you or get you out in time.

So anyway , after seeing the fullness and pointyness of the pyramids ( and not to mention some intense camwhoring) we set off to the next point of travel. The Sphinx !! For those of you who aren't too sure what the thing i mentioned is , its the thing with a body of a lion and a head of a human. OR you could see it in the ensuing pictures.

The Sphinx !

The Sphinx ! with me and my sister

The Sphinx ! , Coco Chanel cameo and a bad kisser

So there I was . . a few feet from the protector of the pyramids. Too cool , man . . . too frickin cool ! ZOMG! i almost forgot. Well in between The Sphinx and The Pyramids , I had me a goddamn CAMEL RIDE ! As in a real , walking , smelly , bellowing CAM-ELL !! Well actually they weren't that smelly . . . or rather they weren't smelly enough for my rubbish sense of smell to pick up any smell. However , i DID notice a peculiar smell wafting around me and the other people who went for the camel ride . .though it wasn't foul in any way . .it was more like. . .musty-ish. Hahah.

Me , the camel and camel boy

So anyway , after that we went for lunch and the proceeded to some Papyrus Factory where they showed us how papyrus was made old skool style. And this is where i , according to my mum , wasted my money on papyrus bookmarks. Shee-esh. Talk about cheapos. Anyway , the rest of the day was back at a new hotel getting some R and R after a pretty badass day. Lol

14th February 2008 , Thursday (Last Day)


The first thing on the itinerary today was a visit to the Muhammad Ali Mosque and no, not the boxer but the 'founder of modern Egypt' . Initial thoughts about the mosque were ; "A mosque? Right. Y'all go on ahead. I'll be taking a nap in the bus. I've seen one too many mosques back home already" . This however was not to be. It was a mosque in name but a citadel in practicality in ancient times. I don't know much about ancient or modern architecture and the sort and haven't really seen my share of it all but GOD-DAMNIT ! The mosque was simply beautiful. Y'know i'm wondering if i'm using the word too much. Beautiful i mean. Heh. But seriously , there's no other word to describe it. Every inch of the place was beautifully made with a very royal kinda feeling to it. The interior of the mosque had a certain vastness in it. It isn't particularly huge but it seemed that way.

Although it wasn't that big inside , it is still pretty hard to give sermons by shouting alone so the place is built with a natural speaker system which was demonstrated by our good friend , Mr Habibi. He shouted the words 'Alaaaaah Ooh Akhbah' (this is by no means the real spelling of it but just what is sounds like when he said it ) and the words reverberated throughout the whole mosque. Echos. Pretty cool stuff for a 151 year-old mosque.

The Muhammad Ali Mosque

At the Entrance

Inside the mosque

Awesome awesome stuff indeed. Well after the mosque the rest of the day was pretty much dull. We went to a bazaar to get some knick knacks for the peeps at home and we had a surprise for dinner. We got our first taste of Egyptian Chinese food. Hahah. Our first chinese food in ages . .or rather 8 days. I have to admit that the food there was pretty good by my standards. Quality was good but as for quantity. . we didn't quite had our fill yet when the food ran out. HAHAHAH. Yeah. . .heh

So that was pretty much our whole experience in the Egypt.

I didn't get to ride no roller coasters but i rode a camel ,
I didn't get to see Mickey Mouse but i got to see The Sphinx,
I didn't go to a beach with blue seas but i did go to a temple in the middle of the desert,
I didn't get to see the Empire State building but i saw its equivalent 3000 years ago,
I didn't see lush tropical rainforests but i saw endless dunes of sand and dust ,
But more importantly , I didn't go there for a holiday , I went there to see with my own 2 eyes the oldest and perhaps one of the greatest civilizations in known history.

Konnichiwa Egypt ! (Part II)

10th February 2008 , Sunday

As I said before , we (my family and I ) went for an 'optional tour' which was a ride in a hot air balloon around Luxor and to watch the Egyptian sunrise from 1500 feet in the air. Unlike in Malaysia , sunrise in Egypt does NOT occur around 7.00 something in the morning but rather at about 5.00 in the morning. . . that being said , we had to wake up at the ungodly hour at 3.00 in the morning. "3.00 in the morning?!" i hear you say , yeah . . 0300 hours indeedy ! We had to be out of the cruise hotel by 3.30 , get onto a van , travel to another hotel(not a cruise hotel but a real one) and get onto a boat to travel to the other side of the Nile River.

The Nile River , before i forget , is a friggin long river that splits Egypt into 2 parts , East Bank and West Bank. Apparently , the ancient Egyptians whose lives revolved around both the Nile and the Sun used the direction of the sunrise as "Life" and sunset as "Death" . Thus , most of the tombs and temples can mostly be found on the West bank.

Anyway, as i was saying , we popped into a long motorboat and had our breakfast , consisting of a cup of Nescafe' instant coffee with sweet cakes (which were unbelievably delicious i might add) in the boat. After breakfast and on the way to the East Bank , our pilot for the hot air balloon , who introduced himself as Rageb told us about the safety precautions , positions to take during landing and things not to do in a hot air balloon. An example, would be not exiting the basket in mid-journey. :P

left to right : Mr I-Forgot-His-Name who was our guide for the hot air ballon ride,my mother , me
and Mr Rageb.
PS: By the gods , it was cold

Skip forward half an hour and we're boarding the Hot Air Balloon. Now there weren't just one or two or even five hot air balloons but more to 10 of em all big , round and juicy . . . um. . i meant big , round and colorful . The hot air balloon was pretty big as it was split into 5 different compartments . . . 4 on each side of the basket for the passengers and 1 in the middle for the pilot. .that being Rageb.

I shared a basket with 3 of my fellow tour-mates and the rest of my family had a compartment of their own. This is mainly because 1 compartment can only take about 4 people . After sufficient blasts of heat into the balloon we had LIFTOFF ! But , it wasn't exactly Apollo 13 . . . it was more of a slow but consistent climb up from 10 to 50 to 100 to 1000 feet . At the top we saw many sights that pictures could tell a thousand words could not . .












left to right : both my sisters , Rageb the pilot , me












A small town below us where even as high as we were , we could hear donkeys braying like donkey Armageddon was near

















My basket homies














MORE hot air balloons !

So i guess you could say that i really enjoyed myself up there. The sights i saw when my eyes were with those of the eagles soaring in the sky were beyond a doubt breathtaking and awe inspiring. Every single second spent seeing the sunrise from that altitude was priceless and incomparable to seeing it on land or in pictures. It was romantic with a touch of wonder in the whole thing. And of course , thank god i didn't fall down.

After the whole thing , we all went back to the cruise ship feeling extremely impressed by the hot air balloon ride. Upon reaching the ship we had a REAL breakfast eggs and all. . speaking of eggs , i have no idea why but i found the eggs on the cruise EXTREMELY scrumptious , till i had 2 friend eggs and 2 omelette's. Now THATS some egg-loving i haveta say . . Hahah

After breakfast , the whole day was more or less a l o o o o n g rest cause we had to sail to the Esna Locks to get to Edfu Temple. So typically , i had to try out all of the facilities the cruise had to offer . . . which consists of a foosball table , pool table , ping pong table , sundeck , bar and spa. I tried em all cept for the pool table and spa cause you had to pay for it and a cheapo like me won't pay 5USD per hour for a bloody pool game. Oh , and there were weights too ! Since i haven't really tried bench pressing before i had a little go at it on the sundeck.

left to right : excitement , pain , wipe out

So anyway , when we reached the Esna Locks , which was in the late afternoon , we could not get in right away as there were other cruise ships before us.

Now you might be wondering what this Esna Locks is i'm referring to. Well , its essentially a giant bathtub for your cruise ship. No , it is not for cleaning the ship but to raise or lower according to the height of water in the Nile. You see , the River Nile is not totally flat and one part of it is higher than the other( approximately 3 to 4 storeys high ). So , ships like the one i was in at the moment was not built to traverse down a mini waterfall/rapid , and frankly i don't wanna be in a ship that size even if it was built to handle it. Therefore , these crafty Egyptians made a giant drain in which the ship would sail into it and stop while the entrance and exit of the drain be closed . Then , the water will rise or fall gradually according to the height of the Nile where you're heading. I have to say , these Egyptians are fucking awesome.

As i was saying , we could not get into the Esna Locks till later in the night so we just sat there by the shore. At that time , most of my family members were having a nap as they didn't have much sleep in the previous night. Me on the other hand , could not sleep and so i went out onto the sundeck and read the book i brought with me. And so i read and read and read until the damnest thing happned.

I heard someone shout "HELL-LOWW !!" from below. Shocked by the sudden shout i moved to the side of the boat to see who or what was it. Apparently , they were clothes vendors who were selling clothing and towels to tourists. This salesman , who was wearing a shoulder-to-feet one piece was shouting his prices and then he suddenly threw up a piece of clothing in a plastic bag.
It seemed that if i wanted to purchase something , he would throw up the said thing and we would start to bargain to get a price equally agreeable to both parties. After achieving that , i would replace the clothing thrown up by him into the plastic bag ALONG with the money. He would receive the 'package' and return me the purchased clothing. Well, i didn't buy nothing really , i only just saw the whole transaction from other tourists who bought it. :P Which reminds me , there were at least 20 or more of them peddling their wares to all the cruise ships waiting for their turn to enter the Esna Locks which means this happens everyday for them. What a way to earn a living !

After dinner , we had a Galabia Party where everyone dresses up as sheikhs and parties or something. We didn't go for that one as we just got too darn lazy and fell asleep right after dinner.


11th February 2008 , Monday

Visited yet another temple in the morning . The temple being Edfu Temple in Aswan. Once again I was dumbstruck and filled with awe and the scale of the temple. Being at least 3 storeys high and about 80 metres in width and filled with figures depicting the pharoah smiting down his enemies ! And the thought of this building being built nearly 2500 years ago! Totally unbelievable ! Its pretty obvious that ancient Egyptians were both architectural geniuses and very united.

Our esteemed tour guide explained the whole temple from the meaning of the hieroglyphs and the various places in the temple. There was the pylons , center court ,vestibule and most importantly of all , the 'holi of hollies' . . . what?! Yessir, thats what i was thinking when my tour guide said that. Apparently , he was meaning the Holy of Holies. Hahah. The holy of holies was a place where the idol of the God the temple was dedicated to was placed to worship.

Edfu Temple

After Edfu we went back to the ship and did practically nothing once again for the whole day. Once the sun had set however we went to the Kom Ombo Temple. Apparently , this temple looked much better at night rather than in the day. Couldn't really disagree on that when i saw it.

This temple was dedicated to 2 gods which was quite rare as most temples were only dedicated to 1. Them gods being Horus , the god of the sky (the one with the falcon's head) and Sobek , god of crocodiles (the one with a crocodile head)

The temple was much like Edfu in terms of the characteristics but had 2 holy of holies rather that 1. However, in Kom Ombo there were mummified crocodiles on display. Some of the effigies on the wall were chiseled away as it was used as site of pilgrimage for christians in the olden days and idol worship was against their religion.

Crocodilus Mummifus

Once again, we were told of another 'Optional Tour' . This one being a trip to the famous archaeological site of Abu-Simbel or a trip to a Nubian Village and the former being the pricier one. At first , everyone was pretty smitten with the trip to the Nubian Village as it also had a 25 minute camel ride but after reading some of the picture books and seeing pictures of Abu Simbel , everyone jumped the bandwagon and went to Abu Simbel instead. Rightly so too as it was one of the highlights of Egypt.

To Be Continued

Konnichiwa Egypt !

16 days , 5 months and 1 year since my last blog post. . . and suffice to say i'm pretty glad i didn't just pour out 7 shades of nonsense that pops into my head for a superficial feeling of self importance. But anyway i've finally acquired a truly worthy topic to write about which would be my trip to Egypt.

Now i do not profess to be an avid scholar of Egyptian theology or of it ancient civilizations and the such but i do know enough of it not to get lost in its very intricate stories and the such. This substantial amount of knowledge is usually obtained by the usual ways . . which are either the internet or hitting the school history books which unfortunately have but a tiny dot of it in its pages. Rubbish curriculum we're having i say! Well anyway , i acquired my interest of the ancient Egyptian civilizations due to my avid readings of the Chronicles Of Conan comics where in it there's is a country called Stygia whose denizens are depicted as malevolent and shady in which there are blood stained altars to dark gods and ancient creatures that do the bidding of the high priest Thoth Amon . . These Stygians are represented very much like the Egyptian masses we know from depictions from various sources like movies and pictures. So anyway, my journey into the deserts of Egypt begins as such. .

Pic:Conan Of Cimmeria

8th February 2008 , Friday . .
Departed Penang International Airport to KLIA via MAS and had to wait there for about 6 bloody hours in transit. It got so bad that I personally forked out about 12 ringgit for a pack of Malaysia's tourism playing cards . . . . yes i know, stupid. . but SERIOUSLY , matey(s). .it was THAT boring. Oh and me and my family had a scrumptious dinner at an absolutely delightful restaurant called Mcdonalds. Yes , McDonalds. My sister wanted to have KFC but then again we thought better of it as we had KFC for more than 3 times in that week alone so it WAS kinda sickening.

The plane ride itself wasn't too bad. . .for a 7 hour flight i slept pretty much through the bulk of it. THIS of course being a rare incident as usually i'd preoccupy myself with watching movies back to back on the personal entertainment unit.

9th February 2008 , Saturday . .
Reached Doha Airport sometime in the early morning. . at what time exactly i really cannot remember and am to darn lazy to look up in the itinerary :D// Anyway spent a few hours there for transit and got to know of the nasty characters in my tour group which i will try my best to characterize now :

(Characters are in order based on the first pictures i can find of em in my camera :D)

The Predatress / Pigretor / Lion Queen

Most of her nickname's come directly from her very outlandishly styled hair, which as the names tell that it is EXTREMELY frizzy and might be a fake but i know not if that be a fact or not. She travels with her friend where my and my sisters concocted a story where she , a soon to be Predator (as in the alien from the AVP films and not a animal that hunts prey ) travels with a human guide(that being her friend) and is here on earth in the guise of a human to learn more about humanity to hunt em. . . . Such fantastic imaginations do we Chin siblings have eh? Haha

The Nasty Family

Now here's a whole family thats a real piece of work. The Nasty Family lives up to their name in every bit. The family consists of :
Strokeface - Primary father figure whose face is constantly in a state of a very bad case of constipation
Nasty Mother - Primary mother figure of the clan who keeps pushing and shoving others around to get to the front of the line . . . and the line being a line to get into a plane.
Uncle Lim - The Brother in law of either the primary figures. . .and no his name is NOT Lim but is a name given to him because of a striking resemblance to my
dad's friend whom i call Uncle Lim. Now this piece of the Nasties dresses like he's going to a board meeting every single day in the dusty , hot , sunny deserts of Egypt
NeferDOODOO - Daughter and most probably eldest. Now SHE'S got serious issues. Naming a few would be ; she walks like she's strutting her stuff on the catwalk of some Winter/Fall Collection , she covers her nose when she enters the museum because (i can't even explain how) of the smell of stone , she also asks the darnest of questions for example on the fourth day of the tour , personally asked our tour guide what he did for a living. . . our tour guide of
course gave a perplexed look at replied as best as he could to her "I'm a tour guide"
The Son - He. ..is the only sanity in a family of the insane. Relatively quiet and mild
mannered but is strictly dominated by NeferDOODOO as a kuli (slave- labourer) and translator for the English Language

The Valentine's Day Couple

A married couple who are very close and still foster a romantic bond which i've rarely seen in couples of their age whom by the way they already have 5 children. The husband's unbelievably patient as he translates nearly most of the explanations given by our tour guide to his wife that doesn't really speak English. The both of them have more love in them than the whole busload of us put together. Simply unbelievable!

Mr Habiby / Habibi

Our Egyptian tour guide who's an absolute hit. . . . if it weren't for the fact that the general population of the tourists in our group were pretty unresponsive. However, he had a patience with us that i found myself admiring. Furthermore his charisma was like so that every time he speaks you'll definately want to applaud him as he makes such a show of it . He gets his name from an Arabic name pronounced as Ha-Bee-Bee which means 'darling' or 'loved one' which he uses it to call our group but his real name's Mr Khaleed . As a tour guide he does his utmost best and fully utilizes his impressive amount of contacts everywhere to facilitate our tour. He even sometimes pays couriers with his own money to bring every single person's bags from i end of the station to the other while at the same time bringing some of the bags himself. He likes to use the word 'super' and i have to admit that he is simply super.

So anyway after about an hour waiting in Doha we then proceeded to get onto ANOTHER flight which lasted for about 3 hours to Luxor Airport. Its here that we met with Mr Khaleed and then took a bus to our first destination. . . The Valley Of The Kings . At this place ,were the tombs of the long deceased kings or rather pharaohs of ancient Egypt who were buried together with various 'personal effects' to be used in the afterlife. During the bus ride I saw some of the Egyptian youth literally RAIDING a truck filled with sugarcane which stopped due to really bad traffic. . . These kiddies just ran up to the trucks and pulled shoots of sugar cane and proceeded to eat them . Now i half expected the truck drivers to jump out of their trucks and shout their lungs out at the younguns and the other half of me expected the truck drivers to just reverse and roll em over. :D Evidently , the drivers did neither and just ignored them. . . Must be quite normal in these parts i suppose . Anyway , as i said before, we were on our way to the Valley Of The Kings which was totally unexpected as I thought that we were firstly going to check a hotel or something to freshen up and apply sunscreen and the such. . . unfortunately checking into a hotel and freshing up was the last thing on the days itinerary . However , as dirty and nasty( in a physical sense of the word and not personality-wise) as i was i still pretty much enjoyed the whole day. At the valley , we were given the first look at the ticket which is used to enter the valley and to visit only 3 out of the 22 tombs. Similar tickets like that were used to gain access into most of the tourists sites throughout the whole of Egypt. I'm unsure of which tombs but i'm very sure i visited one or perhaps 2 of the tombs which had the name Ramses which isn't all too hard by the way as there are about 5 tombs with pharaohs who have the name mind you. The tombs were dug into the ground and were rather big where 2 ground men could walk side by side with their arms outstretched at their sides. The walls of the tombs had various (of course) hieroglyphs that still retained some of their original colour....impressive is it not? That for more than 2000 years the colours neither faded not were destroyed by time. . . .However , i was pretty disappointed when i realised that the mummies were NOT in the tombs but in the Egyptian Museum .

from left to right : Mum , Eldest Sister , Me

PS: Mum's reaction to me commenting what a sunny day it is :P

Biohazard suit of sister as seen in the above picture

So after the valley , we popped back into the bus and went to the temple of Queen Hapshetsut or for easier pronunciation , Hot-Chicken-Soup as said by Mr Habiby . Queen Hapshetsut , in the shortest possible way explainable, was a queen who could not be king because of tradition ended up being King of Egypt because of a story told by the High Priest of Egypt at the time to the general public.

Posing in front of the Temple.

Inside the Temple at the one and only entrance

Oh, before i forget we were surprised by the friendliness of the Egyptian people in general. At the sight of us they'd ask where we're from and greet us by saying either "Nihao" or "Konichiwa" which were hello in Mandarin and Japanese respectively. The vendors were especially. They were always approaching everyone and telling you the prices of their wares like "10 pounds ! 10 pounds" and if you just ignored them they'd then say "Okay . . 5 pounds ! 5 pounds! " which was pretty hilarious the first time i heard it ! Khaleed, the tour guide , told us all about their hustler nature before we met them but still i was shocked when i first experienced them.


After our predetermined time wandering and taking pictures in the temple we proceeded back into the bus and off to visit the Colossi Of Memnon. In the bus we were told about various 'Optional Tours' where you can do more stuff in your stay of Egypt but have to pay for it. Khaleed told us about our first optional and one of my most memorable experiences lie there. He told us about touring the surrounding area in a hot air balloon which cost about 100USD per person. The currency of Egypt which were Egyptian Pounds or L.E were about 5 pounds to 1 US dollar. More or less RM 1 is to L.E 1 for us. We didn't agree to going on it right away but in the end the temptation to watch the Egyptian sunrise at about 1500 feet above in the air was overwhelming.

At the Colossi Of Memnon we were told about it in detail at how its name , "Memnon" was given to it by the Greeks who saw them and thought they were of a Greek warrior named Memnon. These giant statues served as protectors to the mortuary temple that was built in the ancient city of Thebes by Amenhotep III. Little did i know that there would be so much of "-oteps" or "-amuns" till i lost track of which were which and ended up calling Tutankhamun , Tutankotep and Imhotep , Imhamun !

Mum and Dad at the Colossi Of Memnon

After the Colossi of Memnon we went to an Alabaster Factory and was shown how statuettes and various furniture like pots were made using alabaster , granite and basalt. They also showed us how to differentiate the real deal from the fakes as seen in bazaars or roadside vendors. By this time the whole group were all pretty tired, dusty , hungry and were over zealously eager to get back to the hotel so it was over pretty fast and everyone just jumped back into the bus.

When we arrived at the hotel or rather a cruise ship called "The Nile Cruise" we went right away to our rooms and got about to freshen ourselves up. Since dinner was a few hours away i'm very sure almost everyone took a nice long nap.


Dinner was surprisingly good and I found out that I enjoyed middle eastern food very much. I had stuff like plain vegetable soups , kishkeh salads , chicken kafkas , mid-eastern rice which does not taste at all like the rice we can get over here , stewed lamb , and pita breads. I had a piece of everything they had to offer and loved all of it ! After dinner , there was a show where a Belly Dancer was invited to give us a show. . . . until now i have yet to be sure whether she was a he. . . or the other way round as Khaleed told us that transsexuals were not exactly alien to the belly dancing scene are were in fact pretty darn common. . . .Scarrry...

The Belly Dancer( Sex Undetermined)

To Be Continued . . .