Be like Moses

After two nights of no sleep, it's time to blog.

After taking a 16 hour bus ride from Luxor, I arrived in Dahab, the backpackers paradise of Egypt. Dahab it filled with hostels, chillout restaurants by the sea, a few bars and shops. Every backpacker ends up here at one point or another, and it seems no one wants to leave. It's also a hot-spot for scuba diving and windsurfing.

After spending the day strolling around town, followed by a great seafood dinner, i departed at 11pm for a night hike up Mt. Sinai. The hike started at 2am, and i reached the summit at around 4 or so in time for the sunrise. As the story goes, this is the place where God gave Moses the Commandments...now it's packed with Polish and Russian tourists. After the sunrise, everyone headed downhill to visit St. Catherine's Monastery which is the site where Moses spoke to God via a burning bush. There's a bush within the monastery which is apparently a descendant of the original bush...although im not sure if the have conducted any bush DNA tests to verify this...i guess for many, faith is enough, as everyone was lining up to touch it (including myself).


Heavenly

Temples Galore

Well I gotta say im all templed-out. Though i must admit this stuff is incredible. I'm not gonna go into details and recite names as it will mean nothing to you unless you've been here and experienced it for yourself. But there have been at least four occasions now over the last few days, where i have just stopped and looked up at a 5000 year old monument in complete awe (and i don't get awe'd that easily).

Final note, if you're ever in Luxor stay at the Bob Marley Hostel...it's rockin.

Threading Ambush

Another day, another story. So yesterday i decided to get another shave. Found a nice barber shop, the guy didn't speak much english but smiled a lot so i decided to give it a go. Very good with the blade, i was impressed. My shave was coming to a close, when he opened up the drawer next to me and pulled out a long string...about a meter in length and folded it. Now the following paragraph happened faster than you can read it.

My first thought at seeing this long string was that he wanted to floss my teeth. Just a natural reaction after having my dentist floss my teeth over the years. Before i could open my mouth and to say "Ahhh", he started 'threading' the tiny hairs left on my upper cheak after the shave. Shock is the only way to describe it, then pain. This man was fast...with my eyes closed all i could hear is the thread spinning. Then i felt pain all over my face...and a few seconds later it just stopped. I opened my eyes, the smiley barber exclaimed "beautiful". A quick look in the mirror and i quickly realized that not only did i get a shave but also an eyebrow threading. Wowzers. Luckily, he only 'cleaned them up' instead of doing some kind of shaping.

I walked down the street back to my hostel, passing by other barber shops and witnessed many more egyptian men getting this done. Back home this threading business is reserved for women, homosexuals and metrosexuals. But here, it seems to be the norm, along with pairs of straight men walking down the street with their arms locked. I think i have a good idea for the next (metro) GQ ad...how about David Beckem and Robbie Williams walking into a movie premier together? (BTW, as i type this, there's a 6 or 7 year old kid having a smoke next to me).

Today i took a train with the 'locals' from Aswan to Luxor...entire ride cost me 1 euro. To put that in perspective, if you take the 'tourist train' then this same journey would cost 25Euro.

Peace from the middle east.

The Deep South

Just a short update today. My final day in Cairo was spent visiting Coptic Cairo with my buddy Ahmed. All was great except for the fact that he kept getting harrassed by the 'Tourist Police'. Aparently if an Egyptian wants to walk down the street with a tourist they need carry some special tourism card. I know this is probably for some greater good...but come on. After saying good-bye, i hopped on a night train with a gazzilion other tourists and woke up the next day in Aswan. Aswan is pretty far south down (or should i say up) the nile. Today i spent the day on the river...i had my own personal Faluka boat (old school egyptian sail boat). Yaman (the captain) worked like a dog all day while i sipped tea and took pictures...so i gave him a huge tip for his effort (and to ease my conscience).


El Capitan


Faluka Boat



Sunset on the Nile

Belly Dancing = Paaaartay

Last night a bunch of us decided to go see a Belly Dancing show. According to our trusty loney planet we had one of two options: classy and expensive show at one of cairo's 5-start hotels, or cheap and sleazy with egyptian locals. One of the american girls who was coming with me was on a low budget so we defaulted to cheap and sleazy :)

So at 11pm, 5 of us hit up a place called Palymra. Unfortunetly, when we arrived we were told the show starts at midnight but we were invited to a bar next door. This was the begining of one of the most bizzar/fun nights i've had in a long time. This little bar was so tacky, you could call it cool. The place was decorated as it it was someone's birthday (think coloured ballons lining the walls). The locals in this pub were ultra friendly, they would come up shake our hands and introduce themselves. But the best thing about this bar was the service. In general, i've found the service in egypt to be quite poor...for example, i've been to a nice bar where you have to place an order for beer a few times before it comes. At this place, the moment the word 'Stella' starts rolling off your tongue, there's a guy running to the fridge to get it for you. Ashtrays immediately are replaced after every cigarette. Anyway around 12 we moved onto the Belly Dancing bar which slowly filled up until it was full around 1:30. There was a live band, singers, and a new dancer every half hour. Now for the bizzar bit. At one point one of the audience members decides to go on stage and shake his fat belly along with the dancer...cool i think. But at the end of the dance, he reaches into his pocket and takes out a stack of cash and proceeds to through large sums of real money into the audience. At this point i thought it was part of the show. But then the next song another guy gets up and walks up the the first guy (who is sitting at his table smoking shisha) and pours money onto his head. Anyway, more guys get involved in this money pouring fiesta and the place is alive. The dancers are happy of course because all the money that is thrown around ends up in their pockets...there's a guy who's sole purpose is to collect money from the floor - I wonder what he writes on his resume. To cut long story short, a few hours, many beers and a couple shishas later im on the dance floor with the belly dancers pouring money on an egyptian guy's head (i made friends with him earlier as i was sitting next to him)...which of course was kindly recipricated later :)

This morning, i woke up with a wicked headache and spent the morning in bed trying to make sense of what happened last night. The afternoon was spent in the famous Egyptian museum...the highlight was of course the mask of king Tut.



Shake it like a polaroid picture

Celtic Bart in Egypt

That's right, after 2 years of essentially no sunshine i've decided to take a vacation to the land of the sun. And man, is it ever sunny...has been hitting 35C ever since i got here which i've been told is very hot for this time of year.

I arrived in Cairo, which is absolutely massive. I was thinking that this would be a good opportunity to get off the drink for a while, but of course, to my dismay, there are local beers in Egypt which of course i have to try. So the first night was spent with a few fellow backpackers on the roof terrace of a hotel smoking Shisha and drinking beer.

My first real day was spent visiting pyramids. I hired a personal driver along with a nice swiss couple and we spent the entire day visiting a series of pyramids (including the famous Giza pyramids). Not wanting to be a complete tourist, we passed on the camel/horse rides and did all our sightseeing on food through the dessert...fantastic! They truly are breathtaking. We had the opportunity to go inside the Red Pyramid which was a cool experience as well.

Today i met up with Ahmed (aka Chronoman) which is a developer i hired to do some work for me a few months ago via the rentacoder.com website. We spent the day visiting Islamic Cairo, many beautiful mosques as well as the Citadel and a cemetery know as 'The City of the Living and the dead'. Just like in Morocco, i couldn't resist building up a little facial hair and then going for a traditional shave.

So far so good. I'll be off in a couple hours to seek out a belly dancing bar.


The famous Giza Pyramids



Me


Cairo in B&W



Prayer time in the Citadel