140808-150808 - Egypt - Cairo

After a long sleep in, I repacked and did emails over breakfast on the top floor of the hotel. Breakfast here seems to be boiled eggs and assorted eggs as standard.
The notice board in the lobby said the initial meeting would be at 2pm. I noticed that some of the other intrepid people had started to check in, so grabbed two of them and cruised up to where I'd had dinner the night before for lunch.
Erin and John where to guys from America. They'd studied at UCLA together and just flown in from Greece after a heavy night. They came across as pretty easy going and would be fun for the adventures to come.
Back at the hotel, I met my new room mate, Fraser Fox. Fraser is a scottish guy with an awesome sense of humour. He'd just had a series of rotten connecting flights but had already been suitable fed and watered.
The majority of the rest of the travellers were in the lobby by the time we got down there. 4 Aussies in total, a girl from the UK to join our Scottish colleague and 4 Americans. We relocated to the roof-restaurant for the briefing by Emam, our tour leader.
I've already mentioned Fraser, Erin and John. Debbie is an older American lady who works as a translater for deaf people. Well meaning and adventurous, she is also somewhat expressive in conversation. Evy is a young american girl who is turning 20 when we all get back to Cairo. Troy and Sarah are from Australia, Troy worked in logistics and Sarah is an opera singer, they are both really nice and fun to hang out with. Nick is a doctor from RPA who just finished PGY2, unfortunately this quickly blew my cover of “I'm an engineer” quite rapidly, but it'll be good to have someone qualified on the tour. Nick's girlfriend, Rachel, is from the UK. Two people hadn't arrived yet.
Emam is a muslim girl who had graduated from Archaeology and lived in Alexandria. She is extremely pleasant and quite easy going. She confidently and compitently outlined how the trip would operate and what were the main decisions we would have to make at various legs of the trip.
We briefly ran through everyones names (mercifully, no tacky ice-breakers or name-games) and handed up photocopies of passports, insurance and our “Local Payment” money.
Meeting done, we met with our local guide and caught taxis to a Mosque deeper into Cairo.
The mosque was a fasinating experience, hieghtened by having two women lead us and explain the various requirements and aspects of the building. We placed our shoes in the care of two older gentlemen, the girls in the group put on a head-cover and long-sleeves or hired what could only be described as a cross between a full body dress and a nightie. We proceeded into the building and sat in a quiet corner while our guides talked us through the basics of Islam. A bit of a wander later, along with photos of the more impressive architecture, we paid the required tips and collected our shoes.
Outside the mosque, we regrouped and crossed the street to the markets. After a brief orientation (ATMs over there, market enterance over here...) we occupied a couple of tables in a cafe and had egyptian pancakes.
Egyptian pancakes are very difficult to describe. The come in sweet or savoury, with toppings and fillings ranging from bananas to minced meat. I was recommended the pancake with sugar, which turned out to be icing sugar. The pancake itself is an odd type of pastry that is halfway between crepe and the inside of a crossaunt. They're quite tasty (once you remove half of the icing sugar). I also tried some of the sausage pancake that one of the guides couldn't finish, the savoury pancakes could make quite a meal.
Refreshed and renewed, we went back to the enterance of the markets and got let loose. A couple of us forged ahead, being assaulted from every angle with cries of “Hello! Welcome! Come into my shop!”, vendors stepping directly in front of us and youngsters gently tugging at your shirt to try and direct you towards the family business. While quite excciting to begin with, it rapidly became tiresome with EVERYONE trying to sell you something. The group seemed to decide en-mass not to buy anything right now, instead planning to pick up souvenirs when we got back to Cairo rather than lugging them the whole way up Egypt and back. After having a look around the cramped markets for about an hour, myself and the older American Lady emerged and sought out cold drinks and toilets. We were lucky enough to run into Troy and Sarah, two of the other Australians.
We caught taxis back to the hotel shortly after and met with Emam to go for dinner and the orientation walk. Dinner was at Gad, a fastfood chain with table service. The inside looked like a burger joint and served middle-eastern food. Compared where we went to lunch, the food was over-priced, no where near as nice, hot and cramped.. ah well, thems the breaks :p
One of our missing companions had joined us by this evening. Sarah is a Brit who had been working as a child-psych in Sydney. Wicked sense of humour and perpetually humming a tune, her and Fraser almost seemed to have choriographed jokes and pranks. No one knew of the final missing member, Rhiana.
The night ended with Emam taking us to a nearby street cafe for mint tea and sheesha. She explained how and why Cairo comes alive at night, as soon as it is cool enough to come outside for socialising and shoppoing. The tea was a lipton bag, same as home.
Sheesha is a mix of tobacco, mollasses and a flavour. Apple seems to be the most common. Sheesha is NOT hasheesh, which is “whacky tabaccy” and illegal here.
The sheesa is placed in the top of the Hookah, under a layer of aluminium foil. The foil is perforated with a long thin needle and a couple of hot coals. By drawing on the end on the long hose, smoke is pulled down through the hookah and bubbles through water at the bottom. We were told not to actually inhale, the point of it is to merely taste the smoke. It seems to be very popular here, with almost every other table at the cafe having 2 or more hookahs. Can't say it's really my thing, but worth trying (seems to be gaining popularity in Australia and America).

150808
The next morning was a reasonable start. Got up about 8, had the standard breakfast and the like.. Tried turkish coffee this morning, which was quite nice until I hit the sludge at the bottom and realised I should have been stirring it between sips :p
Then it was onto the bus to go to the pyramids.
I have only one thing to say about the pyramids. BIG.
I have MANY things I could say about the locals... none of them pleasant.. Seeing as my mum will probably read this, such things will remain unsaid.
The pyramids were Big to the point of surreal. We stopped halfway there to take photos by the side of the freeway. When you're actually underneath the great man-made mountains, you get a neck-ache trying to see the top. For most of us, it just didn't sink in. It felt more like a movie set.
Most of us got tickets to go down into the depths of the second pyramid (the tickets for the great pyramid had already sold out). It was awefully sweaty work, despite airconditioning. The main burial chamber was fairly large. I would have loved to have been able to wander through the side chambers, but they were all blocked off.
Once outside, we all seperated and dodged the locals to take photos. I got Rachel to take a photo of my biting the top off of the second pyramid, both of us ignoring the local who had started with “You are lucky man, your wife very beautiful..” and was probably planning on buying her.
Novelty photo taken, Rachel went back to the bus and I went to see the Pharo's Boat. Next to the Great Pyramid and in air conditioned comfort, the boat was quite interesting to see. It is fully assembled and floats suspended from the ceiling. It too is rather large.
Back on the bus, we drove up to the Panorama. The best location for getting photos of the pyramids, this area is an absolute tourist trap. Locals expect money for EVERYTHING and are very willing to tell whatever lies are required to get it. Two people in our group tried to get scammed into camel rides. Locals would wait until the last moment, jump into your photo and then demand payment. One local slided up next to a couple of us for “photo.. no money..”. Several snaps later, he held out a hand and was furious when we only tipped him 2 pounds, pointing at our money belts saying “more more..”
I can now see why there are tourism police everywhere.. with machine guns and assault rifles.

Back on the bus, we went to the sphynx and got suitably camera-happy. In a way, the Sphynx was more impressive, it just seemed more “real” or more believable. The pyramids were just like a hill or a mountain.
Lunch was at a local place, Fallafel and kebabs.

Once lunch had settled, we took off around the Egyptian Museum. Unfortunately, we were all close to exhaustion and the lack of real air conditioning made it very difficult to concentrate. The “nasty-butt” (as I'd come to call it) was continuing to deteriorate, so statues and ancient works of art were interrupted by regular visits to the toilet. After the tour of the major exhibits, Emam left us for free time. Most of us hoped in a monster sized taxi and retreated to the hotel for air-con, showers and beers in the foyer.

After a while, Sarah and I took off for the food markets near where we had Sheesha the night before. Sarah seemed to befriend every kid in the market as we haggled for fruit for the train (Sarah is a vegitarian). We found a bottle shop nearby and bought some beer as well, then stocked up on water on the way back. Once back at the hotel with plenty of time to spare, Fraser and the American boys took one look at the beer and decided they needed rum. I escorted them back to the bottle shops at a mad pace, we only had about 10 minutes to do it in before the bus left for the train station! Fraser got 4 bottles of Egyptian Rhummo (read: “Nasty Rum”) for about $20 Australian. There was a mad dash back for the bus, which turned into a bit of a wait.

The train station turned into another wait, seems the timetables in Egypt are “fluid”. Once it arrived, we were all suitably impressed. Each compartment took 2 people in bunk beds, there was a waiter for each car that provided food, drinks and arranged the bedding (we were told in advance to tip him well at the end of the trip). Fraser and I hjad a compartment with a door connecting to Sarah and Evy's. Once people had eaten, we piled into the two compartments for drinks and philosophical debate. After dinner, drinks and a biblical lecture by Nick, the majority of us wandered down to the “club car” for the belly-dancing competition. This mostly consisted of the male bar-tender teaching individuals a couple of moves (which also were typically male). Most of the dancing was on table-tops and could only really be described like staring at “rhythmic train-wrecks”, you know it's not whole-some but you just can't look away.
By this point, the nasty-butt was quite nasty. So I took off for an early night.