Text in red is comments made when turning my original email messages into web format.

Status Report - 25-Apr-1998

Describes 30-Mar-1998 to 2-Apr-1998

Cairo

At the end of the last message I was in L.A. International Airport, on the way to Egypt (via Heathrow).

My flight to Heathrow was my first ever really bad flight.  I was put in a middle seat, between two women.  One of them, the one by the aisle, was a hostile little nun that didn't speak English.  She needed room to stretch her little legs, so every time I wasn't looking, she pushed her suitcase (which was under her legs) over in front of me.  I had to wait each time until she got up for personal business before I could push it back again!

Anyway, I didn't get any sleep on that flight.  I did get to watch "Tomorrow Never Dies" again - it was the movie that had been playing on my flight over to California.

At Heathrow I looked out of the terminal windows to see England.  I really didn't feel like going to Cairo, because I knew that it would be non-stop touristy activities until I left.

The flight to Cairo was good.  I had a window seat, and looked out the window to see France and the Alps and Italy (by night).  The Alps were amazing.  I also got to see "Tomorrow Never Dies".  Again.

At Cairo airport there were dozens of taxi drivers yelling, trying to sell a ride into the city.  Luckily I was met at the airport by the tour director from the tour company (Mohamed).  (I was only just brave enough to go to Egypt - I wasn't brave enough to get around there by myself!)

Mohamed pointed out that I was missing my return ticket to London.  Thinking back, I realise that I must have handed it to the stewardess when I was boarding my flight to Cairo, because someone in L.A. had pulled it out by mistake.  Dumb!  It was late on the night of Monday, March 30th.  Mohamed said he would sort it out for me.

The ride to my hotel room was my first taste of Egyptian driving.  Insane!  I had read that Egyptians drive at night with their lights off, but I thought they meant out in the desert!  Not so!  They scoot about everywhere, making their own lanes, honking their horns at each other, and flashing their headlights.  I never did quite figure out what it all meant - I think the loudness of the horn may have indicated the size of the vehicle staking a claim for a particular piece of road or something.  They drive whichever way they want down one way streets, go around roundabouts in any direction they feel like, and just about every car I saw was covered in dents, especially the taxis.

My room was in the President Hotel, on Zamalek Island on the Nile!  The hotel itself wasn't anything to write home about (!), but I just loved the location!  Only the top three stories (of eleven, I think) are for the hotel - the rest are residential, with their own lifts.  In all the time I was there I never saw any of the residents, though.  My bathroom had a bidet, and because I'd never seen one before I pushed one of the buttons to see what it did, and it squirted me in the face.  After the second time (hey, I was tired!), I realised I didn't have to worry about the quality of the tap water in Cairo - everything would be an improvement from that point on.  :-P

The next morning I had breakfast at the top of the hotel, looking out over Cairo.  What an amazing place!  High rise buildings everywhere as far as I could see, and most buildings had extra rooms built out of bits and pieces on the top.  Everything seems to be covered in a light layer of dust.  I was too scared to leave the hotel (not really having been outside yet) so I waited in the lobby to be picked up by the tour.

It turned out that I was the tour!  I had my own driver and my own guide, which felt very awkward.  My guide's name was a young lass named Shrien.  (At least, that's what Mohamed wrote.  I got the impression he was making up the English spelling himself.)  I don't know what the driver's name was.  Let's just call him Sven.

The first place we went was the pyramids at Giza.  I used to read about the pyramids when I was a kid - it was great to see them after all these years.  I climbed into Khafre's pyramid, the middle of the three.  The walls were very smooth, and the guard that took me in said it was a "new entrance", although Shrien later said it wasn't a new entrance at all.  There wasn't much inside (that I could see), just a couple of passages, a room below (the queen's burial chamber) and a room above - the king's burial chamber.  There was some graffiti on the wall (from the French guy that found the tomb?) and a large black stone coffin.  I wasn't allowed to take any photos (I found out later), but the nice guard took some for me.  While he was trying to get a second handful of money from me for his services, I was saved by some English tourists arriving in the chamber.

We drove around to a viewpoint behind all the pyramids, but I got sick of all the people trying to sell me stuff - little model pyramids, pictures on papyrus, postcards etc.  As soon as you've said no to the bunch currently flocking, there's another bunch to take their place!

Pyramids

I saw the Sphinx from the nearby temple - I couldn't get any closer than that.

We went to the "Open Museum" at Memphis, where I saw the King!  King Ramses II that is.  There was an immense statue of him there, one of a pair that was found.  Evidently his name is on a lot of statues and artefacts - he had his name chiselled into all sorts of monuments that were already there!

When I was dropped off back at the hotel I decided to go out for a walk around Zamalek Island.  Everywhere I had been there had been police with machine guns positioned every 100 meters or so along the streets.  Zamalek was the same.  Everywhere I went people stared at me (I'm not paranoid, honest!), but smiled back when I smiled so I wasn't too worried.  The whole reason I had been wary was that I hadn't been sure what the locals thought about visitors, but I had been reassured after the morning's adventures.  I walked until I found the Nile, and sat on a short wall watching the cats and the little fishing boats.

One weird thing about about Cairo was that for the first time I could remember, I found myself illiterate!  All the street signs etc. are in Arabic, so I had to be on the lookout out for landmarks all the time.

I thought I'd go into downtown Cairo so that I might blend in a bit more, but that didn't help at all.  Everywhere I went people followed me!  I wish I could have spent an afternoon there looking like an Egyptian.

The next morning I got up early and went for another walk.  I bought a bottle of coke from a kiosk on a corner, and sat there on a wall drinking it.  Taxis passing would stop to ask me if I needed a lift.  One man asked me if I was lost - when I said "no" he asked why I would drink in the street when I could have gone to a cafe in my hotel?  I was thinking "because I can't see Cairo from in there!", but I wasn't sure if I could get my meaning across.

Sven took me to meet Mohamed - together we sorted out getting my return ticket reissued.  I was pretty annoyed at myself for letting the last one go, but luckily Mohamed had spotted the problem early enough to fix it without too much hassle.  It would have been very bad indeed if I had tried to catch my flight without a ticket!

After that I met Shrien at the Egyptian Museum.  What a place!  Looking at some books of ancient Egypt at Dad's place tonight I am impressed with the tour Shrien took me on that morning.  We seemed to cover all the most important artefacts (which I won't go into details on here) in a short space of time.

The highlight (of course?) was the Tutankhamun exhibit.  I saw that fabulous mask, and hundreds of other bits and pieces.  My favourite was the statue of the jackal (Anubis) - for some reason I had always wanted to see that.  It turns out that at some stage part of the exhibit was damaged as it was shown around the world, so now it will never leave Egypt again, so I was glad to have had the opportunity to see it.

We next went to the Mehemet Ali Mosque, inside the Citadel overlooking Cairo, and after that to the markets.  I only had an hour in the markets, and most of that was spent following some guy around the back alleys and up five flights of steps to see a bunch of statues.  (I was trying to find a nice statue of the Tutankhamun jackal.)

I said goodbye to Shrien reluctantly - she was the only person I had really been able to talk to for the last few days!

In the afternoon I went for what I knew was my last walk around Zamalek island.  I found the local university just as a bunch of art students were leaving, each holding a sculpture I presume they had made.  One guy showed me his, and I said "Rhinoceros" and his eyes went wide.  He called over all his friends saying "Rhinoceros!  Rhinoceros!" as if it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard.  The next thing I knew I was surrounded by students showing me their sculptures, as I named them one by one.  "That's a kangaroo, that's where I'm from!"  One guy showed me his sculpture and said "horse", and I said "No mate, that's a donkey!" and they thought that was pretty funny.  After a while I started to get the impression they were laughing at me rather than what I was saying, but they all smiled and said goodbye as they left, very friendly.  One girl shook my hand and said "Nice to meet you".  I remembered how nervous I had been when I first arrived, and it all seemed a bit silly now.

That night I had to choose between going to the Light and Sound show at the pyramids, or to go on a dinner cruise on the Nile.  I decided on the cruise.  Leaving my hotel was always a pain - there were always a dozen or so taxi drivers and a shoeshine guy waiting outside, and they would all start yelling as soon as they saw me.

The cruise was great - there was a band and a belly dancer and some guy that spun around on the spot for about 15 minutes taking off various skirts he had, and twirling them over his head (which doesn't sound that interesting, but he was very good!), and what I think was real Egyptian food.  It was really good anyway, whatever it was.

The next morning, April 2nd, Mohamed and Sven met me to take me to the airport.  I didn't watch "Tomorrow Never Dies" this time.