On a Lighter Note
A one hour bus ride took us from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. We noticed right away the atmosphere here was much more relaxed and secular. There is a nice long stretch of beach with hotels, bars, and restaurants just across the street. On the beach, you can see bocce being played everywhere, girls in bikinis, and guys working out by the muscle park doing sit ups and chin ups (“hunka hunka!” Oops did I say that out loud?). It was a drastic change of scenery from the old city of Jerusalem indeed. We weren’t able to book a hotel beforehand, so while the boys sat in the ice cream shop by the beach with our backpacks, Christine and I walked around probably the entire 5 mile radius to look for accommodations. It was the high season so all the reasonable midrange accommodations were fully booked. We finally found a decent hotel by the beach called the Savoy, a treat for us after walking in the 35C heat for almost 2 hours! They only have double rooms, so in order to save some money, Eug shared a double room with Tai (a cool guy from New Zealand we met in Wadi Rum and ran into in Jerusalem again), and I shared a room with Christine. The room was minimalistic modern but very small. I was laughing my head off when we walked into the room and saw two tiny single beds pushed together with barely any room on the sides to separate them. It was a romantic night for Eug and Tai.
Our other travel mate Tim, a young medical doctor from London, rented a car in Tel Aviv and the five of us were able to get around Israel fairly easily in the comfortable Kia. We chilled by the beach for the rest of the day with some beers as Tim kept pointing out all the ‘stacked’ guys on the beach. Thanks for noticing Tim! We went out that night to grab more drinks until 3am. It felt pretty good to have a night life again. We were given some great recommendations for Tel Aviv from the Jewish American couple we shared 5 bottles of wine with in Essaouira 4 months ago. The next day we visited Jaffa, and drove north to Nazareth. Christine has a lawyer friend from Toronto there and we met up with her and her 2 cute kids. Nazareth is Jesus’ hometown (even though he was born in Bethlehem) but he was unsuccessful as a prophet here. The largest Church in the Middle East is the Basilica of Annunciation in the centre of town. It is where Catholics believe the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she was preggo. We found the church to be an eye-sore, but it had some cool mosaics of different interpretations of saintly figures from different countries of the world including China. And there was a statue figure representation of Virgin Mary from Taiwan! We stayed in Nazareth for the night to hang with Christine’s friend while Tai and Tim headed towards the Galilee to do some hiking. They came to pick us up the next afternoon and we went for a winery tour at the Golan Heights winery. The Israeli side of the Golan Heights is completely different than the Syrian side, which as you might remember from a previous blog post is destroyed, demilitarized and under UN rule. There are nice residential areas, farms, vineyards, and wineries on the Israeli side of the fence. We couldn’t believe it was the same Golan Heights. That night Tim suffered the England loss to Germany in the World Cup. We were able to cheer him up with some decent Chinese food right by our hostel in Haifa, owned and run by some Hongers. They had been living there for 35 years! We wondered how they got there in the first place. Too bad we didn’t get a chance to find out. In Haifa, we visited the immaculate Baha’i Gardens and we learned a bit about the Baha’i faith from the free one hour tour of this multi-tiered sloped garden. They are one of the world’s youngest religions and they originated from Ali-Muhammed in Iran. There are about between 5 and 6 million Baha’i worldwide who believe in the equality and unity of all religions, and each member must perform a pilgrimage to the Baha’i Gardens at least once in their life, walking the 1400 steps up to the top of the garden. I guess it didn’t count for us since we walked down, not up.
Christine left us at the end of our Israel leg after one more night of drinks on the beach in Tel Aviv until the wee hours, sob sob… We couldn’t believe how fast the 2 weeks with her went by. Thanks for joining us Christine! It’s been awesome having you around. We had a blast with Tai and Tim as well. After Christine left the 4 of us crossed the border back into Egypt where Tim then proceeded to go onto Cairo. The remaining 3 of us went to Dahab, a laid-back diver’s town on the Red Sea. There we did a couple days of diving (that’s us up there!) and just loafing, it was exciting to be able to dive again! We saw a giant turtle, some lionfish, a big school of barracuda, eels, octopus, and of course the cute Nemo! The coral gardens were absolutely gorgeous and there was an astonishing variety of marine life. Now we know why the Red Sea is so famous around the world for Scuba. We both really liked Dahab and its chilled out vibe (unlike its crass and in-your-face neighbour Sharm El-Sheikh) and hope to return. We are currently waiting to fly to Cairo tonight, where we will be meeting with Andrea (Eug’s sister) to continue on to Tanzania. We’ll be on the slopes of Kilimanjaro in two days! Woo Woo!
As I finish this entry I realize by flipping through the pages of our very worn-out Middle East Lonely Planet that we’ve visited all the countries in this book except for Iraq! And we’ve pretty much been to all the photographed places in the ‘Middle East Highlights’ section in the front pages. It’s been an incredible 4 months in this part of the world. We’ve learned so much more about the history, the religions, the cities, the landscapes and best of all, the people. Just as Lonely Planet describes “it’s the people of the region who will leave the most lasting impression”. We really did lose count of the number of tea invitations we’ve received. They are warm and hospitable and always around to help if you seem lost. We’ve also met a lot of interesting travelers here. I can’t be thankful enough to have had the opportunity to travel through this region, and I’m glad I got to share this with Eug. And in turn through this blog, I’m glad we could share it with all of you
The Wonders of Ancient Egypt are Awesome
I don’t mean awesome like “Dude, that’s awesome!” I actually mean the dictionary definition of the word. It truly leaves you in awe when you see what the ancient Egyptians left behind.
I’ve been lucky enough to have visited Egypt with my family before, so coming back gave me the opportunity to try to do things differently. Instead of flying from Cairo to Aswan and then taking the Nile cruise up to Luxor (which is what I did with my family previously) we took the sleeping train from Cairo to Aswan. It was a comfortable ride and we met some cool travelers. Di was pretty excited too because it was her first sleeper train ride. We got our own private cabin with 2 beds and a sink, all in all pretty nice. In Aswan I decided to skip a lot of what I had seen previously since I was pretty sure Di would not have been impressed (stuff like the high dam). Instead, I made sure we got a seat on a bus to go to Abu Simbel where the great temple of Ramesses II is. In order to get there you have to be part of the tourist convoy which either leaves at 4 or 11 am. We chose 4, not because we like to get up at 2:30am but because it was a 3 hour drive away and seeing it in the early morning is a lot better than in the sweltering heat of afternoon. Most of the passengers, myself included, passed out once the bus started driving. The convoy consists of a lot of different buses and cars, depending on the type of service you paid for. We were with a bunch of other independent travelers, so our minibus was not the most comfortable or luxurious. Because of that, I was waking up every 30 minutes or so with a sore back or neck. This did allow me to catch a glimpse of the sunrise though which was beautiful. I was going to wake up Di so she too could see it, but her mouth was cranked wide open with her mandible deviated slightly to the left which indicated to me she was in deep slumber. I decided to let her sleep. We did meet our first Vancouverite traveler on this trip (the Canucks T-shirt kind of gave it away) on our bus. He’s currently working in London (UK, not Canada), and it was nice to be able to talk about home again with someone who was also missing the same place.
The temple itself is incredible. It was carved out of the mountainside as a tribute to some important Egyptian gods and to Ramesses II himself (he very humbly gave himself god-like status). Three of the four 20 metre high statues remain as you can see in the picture above. There is just something magical and serene about them as they sit there overlooking the waters of lake Nasser like they did over 3000 years ago. Only two times a year the rays of the sun slowly penetrate the temple and illuminate the back wall (apart from the god Ptah on the wall, who stayed in the dark as he was related to the underworld). Though this is debatable, those 2 days are supposedly his coronation day and his birthday. That is a truly unbelievable engineering feat! Though he was Egypt’s greatest warrior Pharaoh, the statues leave an aura of peace over you as they stare into eternity. I’m sure Ramesses II thought the temple would be worshipped forever, but what is also amazing is the fact that this temple was eaten up by the sands of time, forgotten for over two thousand years. The biggest accomplishments by the most powerful and ambitious of men are still fleeting when compared to nature’s infinite timeline and supremacy.
I could write a paragraph each about all the other sites we saw, but that would make this entry way too long. By Luxor we went to the Abydos and Dendera temples (luckily highly recommended by the passionate owner of the guest house we stayed at). These mystical temples are not as popular on the tourist trail and are remarkably well preserved. I returned to the Valley of the Kings, and actually enjoyed it more this time as there were almost no tourists there. Last time with my family we had to line up to go into every single tomb which can definitely take away from an experience. This time we had the tombs to ourselves. Awesome! (In a “Dude that’s Awesome” kind of way).
On our train ride from Aswan to Luxor we ended up chatting with a couple Egyptian university engineering professors for 3 hours. We were sitting in their seats, and that initial apologetic exchange evolved into a fascinating discussion. One got his PhD in Texas and the other in Japan, so it was really interesting to be able to chat with these guys and get their perspective on things. Voluntarily moving from 2 of the most developed countries in the world back to Egypt can tell you a lot about what people find important in life. Not surprisingly they insisted on providing dinner for us on the train and any future assistance if needed. In Luxor, we went to eat at a popular restaurant and beside us were 2 guys eating alone. A little bit of small talk resulted in both of them joining our table for an engaging dinner. One was a young Australian architect taking 4 months off work to travel, and the other was an older Frenchman in Egypt on business. Egypt has been good to us and I think this blog sums up well what you can expect for those who may want to go there someday. You will definitely see sites that will be among the most mysterious, mind-blowing, and powerful in your life. You will have ample opportunity to meet other interesting travelers as Egypt will always attract people from all over the world. And if you’re willing to get away from the tour groups or wander slightly off the beaten path, you’ll get a chance to experience the wonderful friendliness and hospitality of Egyptians themselves. Though we’re now in Turkey, we will return to do the Red Sea portion of Egypt in a couple of months as we slowly make our way back down from Istanbul to Cairo. I have high hopes that Egypt will still be good to us when we return.
The Great Pyramids and the not so great Sphinx
After Libya, we went to Egypt by walking across the Libya – Egypt border. Gebriel could only take us as far as the first Egyptian border police stop and we were told that just one taxi ride would take us from the Egypt border to Alexandria which was over 500km away. We definitely did not expect the 10+ police stops and the 1km walk to reach the border custom officers. At every stop we were asked the same questions, ‘passports?’, ‘Japanese?’, ‘Is she your sister or friend?’, ‘Where are you going in Egypt?’, and we were then passed around from officer to officer, sometimes a group of up to 6 officers all at once who just want to say hi and converse with us in broken English. Eug had to say ‘wife’ a few times and my “birthday present ring” became very handy. An hour and a half later, we were surprised we actually got through to Egypt! And with the help of the nice custom officer, we found out we needed three shared taxi rides to get to Alexandria. The first shared taxi took us to a small town called Saloum (not in Lonely Planet). Then two other kind locals helped us to find the second shared taxi from Saloum to Matruh (again, not in Lonely Planet). In Matruh, one of them also helped us find the third shared taxi and negotiated a deal for us to go to Alexnadria. While waiting for another 5 passengers to fill up the taxi, he treated us to Egyptian tea and sandwiches. The only meal we ate that day was breakfast at 8am and this was already around 6pm, the sandwiches were a life saver. His English was not so good, but he definitely went out of his way to make sure we were ok. His final sentence stuck with us, it was “I Egyptian, you China, all same, all people”. After hearing about how Egypt has tourist scammers everywhere, we couldn’t believe our luck and we were very thankful.
There wasn’t much in Alexandria to see, which totally suited us fine since we needed a break from the 9 full day tour in Libya. We enjoyed our complete freedom and took it slow.
After the crappy hotels we stayed at in Libya, Eug was nice enough to book the Radisson Blu hotel in Alexandria. Needless to say, I was ecstatic just to stay in a cockroach free room with running water that was not brown. But the hotel was more than I could ask for. It was a great relief to be able to sleep in a bed with clean sheets without having to use our sleeping bag liner, and it had wifi too! Some of the other simple pleasures we had here were: Seeing Starbucks for the first time since Spain, and finding familiar brands of facial products which I desperately needed. We also checked out Midan Ramla and Midan Saad Zaghloul and chilled at Delicies, a coffee shop that had a cool retro tearoom ambience.
We trained from Alexandria to Cairo a couple days later. Eug had been to Cairo before and told me about the craziness of the city. But our luck stuck with us and our hotel ended up being on an island called Zamalek where most of the embassies are just across the bridge from the busy city centre. It was actually pleasant to walk around the area and we found some nice coffee shops and restaurants too. We decided to stay for an extra day in Cairo before going to Giza to see the pyramids so we asked to stay another night and the hotel agreed. However, the next day our room was given away due to a big tour group booking. That was annoying, but our hotel ended up moving us to a more expensive 5 star hotel without charging us extra, and they gave us a Nile view room too! The one night we stayed in Giza (only a few kms out from downtown Cairo but we thought we’d stay by the pyramids for one night), we got upgraded to the club lounge floor at Le Meridien with a pyramid view as well. We were both wondering ‘What’s going on?!’, we must’ve done something right. I love Egypt!
Giza has three main pyramids and a few smaller ones known as the Queen’s pyramids (bummer for the queens), and the sphinx. The pyramids are incredible to see with your own eyes no matter how many times you’ve seen them in pictures or on TV. You just can’t help but stare in awe and wonder how they were built. The Great Pyramid Khufu is humongous. It’s the oldest and the largest of the Giza pyramids. The Pyramid of Khafre seemed taller than Khufu but only because it stands on higher ground. You could still see a bit of the leftover limestone on the very tip of the pyramid. The smallest pyramid (Menkaure) was built with limestone and granite. It does not sit in line with the first two. Eug explained that his previous guide told him it was done on purpose to be in line with Orion’s Belt. Then there’s the Great Sphinx of Giza which was quite disappointing. Those who’ve seen it would know what I mean. It looks big in pictures, but in real life it’s puny in comparison! But we had a few fun shots with the sphinx, you can see the pictures on flickr (click the 2nd last icon underneath the profile on the right).
We are having a great time in Egypt so far. Most people are friendly and helpful. We’ve had many ‘welcome to Egypt’ greetings just from random strangers on the street. There were tons of taxi drivers honking at us to see if we wanted rides, but most just smiled and waved goodbye once we motioned ‘no thanks’. And the rich history itself leaves you in wonder and admiration. You have to come and see for yourself if you haven’t already.
fromwonderintowonder 
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