Egypt Continued

[zahryn]

Day 17: When we got up this morning we only had to dress, pack up the last few bits and then take our bags down to reception to store them for the day. That done, we walked to Emys for our last breakfast which was incredibly tasty as usual, we each had 2 lurpacks and 1 cheese which was odd as it’s usually the other way around, but we still had plenty to eat and enjoyed it very much. During breakfast, we not only played with Stella the restaurant kitty, we also watched the boy on the felucca “Fredom” doing some bits of maintenance. We’d spotted the good ship Fredom a few days ago and decided that we’d really like to go for a sail in her, so as expected, as soon as we wanted to sail the boy packed up and we were escorted aboard.
The captain “Bob” set sail and we dropped another guy off at a mooring point to pick up his own boat. We tacked into the wind between the Island and the East bank, heading downriver to the North. It was lovely on the river, the boy made everyone tea, there was a nice strong wind blowing and we were making good speed. We came around the North end of the island and there was a flurry of activity as the angle of the sail was increased and the direction was changed, but once in the channel between Elephantine and Kitchener Islands there was mostly peace and quiet apart from the odd ferry or Nile Police Speedboat.
After about an hour we were on the other side, away from the villages and running slowly along the rock formations that dotted the shoreline. These rounded arrangements are what gave Elephantine it’s name (prn: Ele-fan-teen) and it’s easy to pick a pair of ears and pointed head, or the back view of a heffalump out of the seemingly random shapes. It took us another hour, with a pick-up in wind once once we were back on the main channel to round the Southern end of the island viewing the “Aswan Museum – Ruins of Abu” which is basically a load of dusty mud bricks, not proper ruins, and make our way to the dock.
We walked to the stairs after saying our goodbyes and found ourselves at the gated entrance to the museum. We didn’t want to go in so we were directed round the fence to a gate where we met “Hamada” (yes another one) the chief of the Nubian Village of Koti. He gave us a tour of the village, it houses 5,000 people and he’s been chief for 30 years, in charge of all them. He has a son who will take over when he’s old enough, just as Hamada took over from his father, who took over from his etc etc.
He was nice enough and clearly proud of his village, he took us to the mosque, the communal village garden and called everyone by name as we walked through the narrow streets and squares. The people we met gave Hamada a lot of respect, I noticed lots of the left-hand-to-chest-then-lips gestures which denote a respectful greeting. Hamada also took us to the house of the woman in the village who is proficient and skilled at doing henna tattoos. I was really looking forward to this and we delayed our trip to the island for the last possible day so that anything I had done would have the longest possible survival when I got home. It was amazingly fast, her skill really showed in the speed and precision of the work, my entire arms tattoo was finished by the time our “Nubian Tea” (tea with mint which is also “Bedouin Tea” apparently) was cool enough to drink. I hadn’t realised that the henns goes on quite thickly, more like paint than ink, then you leave it to dry for half an hour before peeling it off and leaving the stain behind.
Mine looked a bit woolly and indistinct while the henna paint was there so I was a bit uncertain about paying the LE245 for it, but now it’s peeled and clean I love it. Still, that was a lot more than we had expected to pay, and when Hamada took us to the path to the next village and we had “paid” him for his job of being the chief we had very little money left.
Still, we walked to and through the village of Siou, enjoying the quiet and shady alleys, discussing the appeal of life on an island with no cars, no real technology and a spirit of cooperation second to none. We got to the public ferry deck where we met the teacher who had just been teaching at the islands school and was on his way back to the East bank. We sat in the sunshine wondering whether we’d have enough cash for the ferry and were relieved when it arrived and at first the fare was LE10 for both of us, but miraculously fell to LE3 when a couple of locals called the ferry boy on his deception. I found that quite shocking, we’d never have known otherwise and although he laughed it off as a joke I was quite affected. We haven’t really had to watch for liars and cheats since we left Cairo, Luxor and Aswan have both been full of encounters with people who are upfront about their desire to take money from us and we’ve managed to avoid almost all of them, bargaining hard for things we did want. I suppose this was a timely reminder of our trip back to Cairo and a warning to be back on our guard again.
When we got back to the East bank we made a detour past an ATM and avoided “Mohammed Ali” who wanted to know if we were EVER going on a felucca ride. Tbh we decided after our second day that there was no way we would EVER go on a felucca with him because he was just so pushy and had chased after us down the street to ask us about this flipping felucca ride, so we just kept saying “No.” We made it into the sanctuary of Emys, sat in the sun and ordered beer. We whiled away a couple of hours just chatting about this and that, then after a late lunch of tahina to share we got the cars out and I taught G how to play “Spite & Malice” which we played through our last Aswan sunset until just before 6pm. We went back to the hotel, said goodbye and picked up our bags then caught a taxi to the train station.
It was only just after 6pm by now so we were shocked to find our train already at the platform an hour early!! We were directed to our carriage (7) and our cabin (1&2) and settled in. This train is quite different to the one we were on before, two wooden slotting tables for food instead of a hidden pull-out affair and there’s actually storage for our luggage as well as a basin and a seat back which pulls down in the middle making another little table.
Another gigantic shock; the train started pulling out of the station at 18:50 by our clock, this means that there is a chance we’ll be in Cairo on time tomorrow. We’ve already spoken to Aladdin so he knows we’ll be meeting him a day early, which leaves us all of the 5th to do our own thing before we leave. We’ve had our dinner, beefsteak with rice and veg, tahina with bread and a sweet oriental pastry cake. We also had a pickled gherkin that was extremely light on the “pickled” it looked like it’s never even seen a drink in it’s life, let alone been pickled, so we didn’t eat that.
Now we’re just chilling out until the time comes for the Wagon Lit to make up our beds.
Goodbye Amazing Aswan :o(


Day 18: Well, we’re back in Cairo :o)
We both slept very well for sleep while travelling, once we actually got to sleep the journey was smooth enough to let us stay that way. We woke with the alarm at about 06:30 but didn’t actually arrive in Cairo until about 09:30; as usual everything was running on Egyptian time. We got the usual hassle from taxi drivers on the way out of the station, but I got a real bee in my bonnet and was determined to get a taxi where the driver hadn’t got out of his car to hassle for business. I marched off down the rank, stopped and asked one guy who quotes us LE40 (for that? You must be mad!!) then found a metered taxi who did the entire trip for LE6.25 although we did have to direct him!!
We’ve dropped our bags off at the hotel but our room isn’t ready so we exchanged pleasantries with the nice reception girl then headed to one of our old ahwaz haunts opposite the Semiramis Intercontinental hotel. We’re both pretty thirsty so we may sit a while.
After sitting, drinking tea and reading, we took a walk up Talaat Harb st and wandered into the Air France office. We took a seat to wait our turn at the counter, but another man who’d come in after us was served first; they’re not big on queuing in Egypt :o) Eventually our turn came and the lady put our names into the computer…then frowned. I wasn’t too worried until she looked up and told us that there was no record of a return flight reserved for us. She had a record of our outbound journey and could see our original booking had returns with KLM but there were no seats actually reserved (since the KLM flights had been replaced by the Air France flights) I’m not sure if the entire journey should be tickets through AlItalia (I’ve had that before) since our outbound journey was booked with them, but anyway.
We tried to call lastminute.com while we were there but the phone system was playing silly buggers so we left and went to the FelFela restaurant for a couple of beers while we decided what to do. We went back to the hotel so we would have access to the internet as well and G spent a frustrating 10 minutes on the phone to an Indian call centre with a net profit of nothing. The line was too bad, her accent too strong and in the end G got the idea that we do have flights booked and asked her to just email us the details.
We waited a while (the emails usually come through straight away) but nothing happened so we found the original email with the change of itinerary and replied to the customer service address with the same incident number asking tham to email or call us as soon as possible with the flight details and e-ticket numbers (we fly tomorrow night so we’re understandably a bit nervous) After another hour we checked again and had an auto-acknowledgement saying that someone would get back to us within 6 hours so by our reckoning we should have something by about8pm Egypt time, but if not we’ll call them again in the morning as soon as they open. I can’t properly relax until I know it’s sorted.
We came out to the café we’ll be meeting Alaa at later, stopping on the way to pick up our new shisha pipe, tobacco and the galabiyya that was made for me. It’s a little snug with my clothes on underneath which means it should fit perfectly over underwear. It’s also been properly tailored so it fits well all the way down, not just like a bag with a hole for my head. We were greeted at the café like old friends which was really nice, all the waiters have, at some point, come up to welcome us back to Cairo and find out what we’ve been doing since we left. It feels very comfortable here, we’ve drunk a little tea, smoked a little shisha and are looking forward to a relaxing evening.
Well, we had a quiet relaxing evening, talking with Alaa about sex and relationships, I think we opened his eyes a little :o) we smoked a lot of shisha, picked up the star sign cartouches for the boys but eventually had to cry off back to the hotel early because we’re both knackered.
We got back to the hotel, packed and sorted everything ready for tomorrow and then hung out in reception waiting for the computer to come free. We got logged onto email and found a reply from lastminute.com which made no sense and wasn’t remotely helpful so we called them.
We spent the next 2 hours calling (alternately) lastminute.com, then AlItalia with reference numbers that nobody recognised, there was no record of Air France bookings at all and another reference number and 5 calls later we ended up nearly £60 worse off on phone bills, had 3 numebrs for AlItalia, 2 numbers for lastminute.com, 2 e-ticket references which (one of at least) refer to the KLM flights from our original booking.
I’d had enough. I wrote a snot-o-gram to lastminute.com letting them know that we are not calling anyone else. They have tomorrow to get something confirmed to get us 2 flights home tomorrow and when we pitch up at the airport tomorrow night we will try all 3 desks looking for boarding cards. If there are none, we will have to spend the night at the airport and will be on the phone to them as soon as their offices open.

Nice relaxing way to spend our last night in Egypt, Yes? I’m wound up at the hassle and extra expense, G’s going to have to pay the phone top-up costs back to work and we have no idea if we’re going home tomorrow or not. I’ve emailed my folks to give them a heads up that things are fluid until they hear from us tomorrow. Still, I’m now showered and teeth brushed, it’s warm in bed and should sleep ok insha-allah :o)


Day 19: We did sleep well, until 09:30 in fact when Alaa called to say he was at the café. G went down to check email while I got the majority of the rest of our stuff packed. No email from lastminute.com yet, but we didn’t really expect one yet so we took our bags downstairs and left them in reception for the day. We walked to a market grocer to buy crisps and water to take to Giza with us, then went to the café and sat drinking tea while Alaa put another tourist on a place and then came to meet us. We sat a while chatting while waiting for Sayid (yes, another one) to make his way through the intense traffic in Cairo which formed the basis for the rest of our day. While waiting, Alaa helped us find the number for Alitalias office in Cairo airport so we called and were told that the e-tickets definitely related to KLM flights at which point we decided to go to the KLM office in Cairo and see if they could help.
The traffic was so bad that Sayid took ages to get to us, but then once we were in the car G’s phone rang; obviously the snot-o-gram we sent last night galvanised lastminute.com into action as it was they on the phone. The lady said that the confusion was to do with KLM switching our original flights to Air France and then the Air France flights were cancelled (this we know to be a lie because we checked live departures on the Air France website) so the most likely scenario is that KLM cancelled the original flights, notified lastminute.com who called G and changed us to Air France but forgot to reserve us any seats. When they got our email this morning they will have tried to get us our original Air France seats but found the flight full, so when they called us they said the AF flights were “cancelled” and they booked us on the next available plane they could. We now don’t leave until 07:30 tomorrow and spend nearly 5 hours in Paris before arriving in London at about 16:30. Not ideal but at least we’ll be home.
Once that was settled and G had asked the lady to email everything to us by way of confirmation, we set about enjoying the rest of our day. Sayid tried to get us to see his “friend” who could do us a very good deal on horse or camel tours of the plateau, but we said quite firmly that we just wanted to walk so he parked up a little way down from the ticket office and told us to meet him there when we were finished.
We must have been earlier than your average tourists (12:30) because when we started to walk up the pyramids road there were no kalesh drivers and only a couple of people wanting us to take pictures of them on their camels (for baksheesh of course) but we stuck to our aura of “No” and were able to enjoy a really chilled out wander around all 9 pyramids. The haze never really burnt off and the weather could be accurately described, as “sand.” We have the pictures to prove it, but it was pleasant ‘walking around’ weather. Just as we were leaving (with only about an hour until closing) a huge coach load of tourists in a “Tez Tours” bus turned up and a few people jumped out to take pictures from the wall (which is still a good 5 minutes walk from the Sphinx, the first part of the monument) which was unbelievable enough, but even worse, most of the people actually stayed on the bus taking pictures out of the window!!
I commented to G “Oh, it’s only one of the greatest wonders of the world, it’s not worth leaving the comfort of a tour bus for!!” Bloody Tourists!! After all, what other incredible things must they have already seen today if they’re quite happy to rick up at the PYRAMIDS with only an hour ‘til closing time??
We stopped at “Pervy Pete’s Tourist Café” for a quick drink and a sit-down before going back to Cairo. I’m glad, on reflection, that I went to the loo before we got held up in crazy Cairo for nearly an hour, but the loo door didn’t lock, pervy pete held it (mostly) closed and came in to turn the tap water on before I’d got my shorts zipped up, then he brushed my hair back from my face while I washed my hands and “helped” me out of the door with both hands
As I’ve alluded to already, the Cairo traffic was terrible but Sayid dropped us back at the hotel as best he could so we could check email for flight info. Luckily we found an email flight confirmation with e-ticket numbers for both of us on the 07:30 flight from Cairo, issued by KLM for flights with Air France?!? But we’ve got the details and decided to go to the airport at our pre-arranged time, rather than spend another night as a hotel and have to get up at 4am. We might get a bit of sleep at the airport, but probably not :o(
Once we had all the details written down, we walked to the café and played cards, drank tea and smoked shisha a bit. Aladdin arrived after a while and managed to arrange another couple of decks of cards at not tourist-tat-shop prices so we’re set. We also bought some matches to use as chips for poker. At about 6pm I went on a shawirma run for dinner, we fed the restaurant kitties and smoked our last shisha in Egypt before having our Turkish coffee and saying our goodbyes. The staff were all lovely and hugged or shook hands when we left, then Sayid took us back to the hotel to collect our bags. We loaded up the car and got going.
It really feels like we’re properly on our way and now it’s here we’re both looking forward to getting home. Little things like actually understanding the rules of the roads, not getting bitten by insects all the time and having some independence again are some of the things we’re looking forward to. It’s also surprising how much expenditure is purely baksheesh, tipping people for doing their job, it’s not just a nice-to-have here, it’s a way of life and can make things expensive.
The traffic was terrible all the way to the airport turn off so it took nearly an hour to get here. Once we’d arrived in departures we had a look around, got our bearings and then sat down in the café we’re in now. I took a break from playing cards to go to the loo and had a bit of a run-in with a group of Egyptians.
I’ve been getting steadily more annoyed by the staring from both men and women here (natives) they stare, laugh and in some cases point, especially if I’m in shorts. Fair enough it’s (on the whole) a modest country but they’re more than used to tourists dressing differently so it’s down in my book as just plain rude. I don’t stare or point at women in the burkha, or men with permanently bruised foreheads from prayer, I’m respectful of a different culture.
I’ve been passively ignoring it, or staring back, but I went to the loo earlier and as I walked around the corner a group of 5 or 6 Egyptians, 2 women in burkhas among them and one of the guys looked me up and down and laughed in my face, then as I went around him he made a comment in Arabic to one of the burkha’d women who pointed at me and laughed as well.
I’d had enough.

I turned around and walked back face-to-face with the guy (who was a bit shorter than me) and said quite firmly and slowly “if you are laughing at me, it makes you incredibly ignorant and rude, with behaviour like that to a visitor to your country you have NO place to be laughing at me!!” He didn’t understand, but when one of the other guys translated for him they all shut up and before he could say anything else I flipped him off and turned my back on him to walk to the loo. He made me cross
Anyway, we’re on our second cup of tea, I haven’t had any caffeine rush from the coffee earlier and I’m having trouble thinking straight, it’s only 22:35 and there are still 7 hours until we can check in. We checked the departure board when we arrived and the plane we should be on is departing “on time.” I don’t expect we’ll get much sleep if any, which should make tomorrow fun!! Ahh well, at least we’re on our way home.


Day 19: Continued Nope, as suspected we sat playing cards and reading our books in a sort of hypnotised daze until nearly 5am when we walked to T2 and got ourselves checked in. By that point I had vowed never to pay to use a toilet again. The first two times were fine LE1 and the lady directed me to a freshly cleaned loo, raised the lid and gave me a pre-flush, then pulled hand towel out and folded it nicely for me to dry my hands on. The last time (right before our gate opened) a woman pushed open the door to the toilet and then left, but still required baksheesh as I was leaving.
When we had arrived at Cairo airport, Garry made the acquaintance of a little sandy coloured kitten with lovely pale grey eyes who he’d been fussing outside while on a smoke break. The kitty then followed him into the airport and sat a while on his lap enjoying the fussing and using the security to give her fur a bit of a clean. We christened her “airport kitty” and when she came over the table at the café to get some fussing from me G got up and walked to the Air France office where he was delighted to find that they had all the details of our booking. Airport kitty took off looking for him a short while later but wandered too far and missed him.
When we went to get through to departures, Airport kitty was there again, rubbing herself against our legs and generally being cute and adorable. She followed us through into the gate and sat on one of the end tables as we queued to board, getting scritched and petted by the majority of travellers. At one stage it looked like she was going to try and follow G onto the plane but obviously decided it was too chilly in the wind so she stayed inside.
We got onto the plane on time, it was very nice and we had a double to ourselves with on-board entertainment thanks to the video screens and earphones we each had. After take-off I fell asleep and slept on-and-off until breakfast service came round about half an hour later, then I settled down to watch “The Matrix” and G flitted about through a couple of movies before resting back against the ergonomic headrests and going to sleep. He slept for most of the rest of the flight but I doubt it had much impact on his general level of shatteredness. I’m just impressed that he managed to sleep at all!! After the first film, I watched about an hour and a half of “Up” which I’d heard about but never seen. I enjoyed what I was able to see and am quite keen to watch it all now.
We landed without incident and got a taste of cold weather transferring to the next terminal and we got through departures quite quickly so we could settle somewhere and relax, knowing that the flights are all sorted. Mum called while we were sitting in the airport restaurant at CDG drinking our €3-per-cup black, random vending machine coffee, to let us know that they’ve had a total of 10 inches of snow. They’re not 100% sure they’ll be able to get to Heathrow to collect us and even when/if they do, there is a chance we might not be able to make it home from there tonight.
Mum said Heathrow is one of the few airports still open but there are delays because they’re having to send gritters up the runways in between each landing and take-off. Kewl!! A bit more to worry about including the possibility of having to spend another night in an airport, but this time with no money :o( Our €36 isn’t going to get us very far during the next couple of hours in Paris, we’re both having mental acuity problems and I now have a very unhappy tummy which is causing a lot of toilet issues, thankfully it’s free now :o)
Remind me why we came home again??
This day may not be ending anytime soon so I’ll leave this entry open until I have more to add, or until we’re safely home.


Day 19: More We had walked down to the gate for our flight and sat there wondering when a plane was going to arrive to pick us up. G helped with some, long-distance invoice creation for his work and then we heard an announcement saying that our flight was going to be delayed for an hour and that we’d be boarding at about 17:30….then they announced that we were boarding and could go through the gate immediately?!? Confused, but happy at not being delayed we headed straight down to the plane. We were on the aisle and middle seats of a triple and there were quite a number of Korean travellers near the back of the plane where we were. The woman sitting across the aisle from me was a short, round and very scruffy, unkempt looking American who appeared to be annoyed about almost everything.
She sat in her seat for the entire time the plane was loading, tutting and saying “Jesus Christ” a lot (I assume at the speed things weren’t happening) then the pilot came on the tannoy and let us know that Gatwick was closed and Heathrow had limited runways open and as a result we didn’t have a landing slot so were delaying takeoff (per Air Traffic Control) until we could confirm both takeoff and landing slots. Delay could be up to an hour. We weren’t bothered at all but the tutting woman went a bit mental at this point, grabbing one of the stewards and asking why the delay wasn’t mentioned when she boarded (because ATC had only just found out?!) and telling him that she had a company meeting her at Heathrow and she just couldn’t be delayed.
The steward was very good, he crouched down beside her in the aisle and apologise for the delay (as if it was the airlines fault?!) explaining that the bad weather in the UK was out of their control (well d’uh!) the snow had closed Gatwick and reduced the availability at Heathrow. She got all high pitched and felt the need to point out that we weren’t flying to Gatwick followed by “I just left Detroit where they’ve got real snow and they’re not closed…” etc etc blah. The steward explained that the UK doesn’t get snow very often so it’s not always as quick to react and Detroit would be but she wasn’t having any of it and eventually he gave up, apologised again for the inconvenience and left her to it.
The stupid woman spent the entire rest of the flight complaining (and not quietly either) about getting pretzels with her drink when she wanted cheese sticks, about the queue outside the toilet (because she was too lazy to walk to the other loos in the middle of the plane where there wasn’t a queue) and then about being on the aisle when one of the poor Korean girls beside her needed to get out to the loo.
People like her really wind me up, complaining to the wrong people about things that are totally outside of their control and this woman just never shut up. As we were waiting to get off the plane in London she shouted “move it people” down the plane, as though that was going to help an entire plane-load of people move faster!?
We overtook her on the trip to passport control, but then we had to queue for ages while she just zoomed through the “foreigners” aisle. Still, while we were in the queue we were talked at by a tall skinny black nutcase who seemed intent on giving us his life story as quickly as possible, telling us about selling his flat and having no idea what he was going to do, and having a flat battery (I think he was fishing for a ride and/or a bed for the night) before quite openly making fun of the metrosexual Asian guy in front of him in the queue, with his matching luggae and “fashionable” cavalry boots, brown skin tight troos and tan mack, complete with burberry flat cap on his bald head. I’m also quite sure he was wearing makeup, but each to their own.
Mr Mental seemed to realise he was getting the cold shoulder from us and suddenly started buddying up to Mr Metrosexual instead. Luckily by now we were at the front of the queue so we let Mr Mental go off in front then made our way to baggage claim. Insha-allah our bags were on the conveyor so we grabbed them and walked through the (completely deserted) Green Channel to arrivals.
Mum had texted to say that they’d arrived ok and were waiting in Costa “out of arrivals and turn sigh” (according to the text) So we went to Costa and were very pleased to meet up with them, sharing bits of holiday and travel news while we had coffee and (G&I) ate caramel shortcake. We used nice toilets – for free – before heading for Swindon.
The drive back wasn’t too bad, we had some trouble getting everything in the car but once we were off it was slushy although not frozen yet. We got back to the ‘rents and had a cup of tea while exchanging news, we delivered our presents but decided not to take little fish home at that point. We didn’t know what to expect from our drive home and didn’t want to risk getting stranded, or having to abandon Horace with little fish with us. G de-snowed Horace, who started relatively easily, then we piled everything in and started for home. We only had real problems when we tried to stop in a lay-by for a stretch and some fresh air the other side of Stow. Horace got stuck and G had to push him back out onto the road before we could carry on.
Otherwise, a bit of slipping and sliding 2 hours after leaving Swindon and at nearly midnight we got home. The gates were locked so we had to walk around, but it was a small price by then. We were both totally shattered but with work the next day G had to unpack and have a bath before bed. The next few days are a blur, I went back to work Friday, the weather was terrible, we picked up the rest of the family and finally, (Sunday) got caught up on our sleep. I did 9 loads of washing, did fish water changes and chucked water over most of the house in the process. We tried our new shisha pipe on Saturday night which was brilliant.

Now begins the long task of trying to fit our holiday lessons into our routine keep hold of memories and bring Egypt-itutde into our lives.

The End !

I hope you all enjoyed that. It'll be going on a website complete with pictures etc as soon as we have time. There are some of the 666 pictures that go along with this tale on farcebook if we're friends there, if not, why not?!