Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Out And About, And Some More Transport....

 In the course of my wanderings in Egypt and around the world I have taken thousands and thousands of photographs so it is hardly surprising that my little Olympus 'pocket' camera has finally given up the ghost and no longer works.... This leaves me with just the Canon SLR and hopefully the battery will hold up for the rest of my stay because I don't have the charger with me... 

But note that some of these photos have been taken on my mobile!!

Bob Marley again...

And a  pit bull called Diesel which is quite a good name I think...

Keeping the streets clean... The woman in the distance is sweeping the dirt road.

Around my walking route there are several date palm trees that have been felled and will be used for building materials, in particular the really long ones are used as roof trusses, the ones on the left have been used to make a bridge across the irrigation canal.

The irrigation canal is low at the moment because they are draining it to clear out the culvert further up the road and also while the local council make this flash new canal with concrete walls!  

Every butcher's shop comes complete with a built in dog....

And one lucky dog has found a whole skip full of meat!!

Not sure how that dog got up into the skip but it did..

You might have noticed that there are a number of motorbikes in some of the photos??

These are Chinese motorbikes and very popular here, they run out at about 20,000 EGP a pop, or about 1,000 English Pounds which is quite a reasonable price until you consider that an average wage is perhaps only 600 EGP a month, and a school teacher earns 2,000 EGP per month.

The ''farmer's'' version has a fixed trailor on the back, much like the things you see in Greece except new. The ones in Greece are all about 100 years old...

I have been given a lift in the back of one of these.....

And talking about transport... On the right is an official licensed cab with the orange stripe along the top of the plate..

You will also see plates with a red stripe, they are commercial vehicles.

This is a a private plate with the blue stripe, a lot of the people offering you a taxi are driving one of these so they are not supposed to be hiring themselves out. You can have good fun when you don't want a taxi by telling the driver that you are not a taxi, ''Shall I call the police?''

The car on the right is an official ''tourist'' car with a yellow stripe along the top of the plate, you can use these for airport/hotel transfers, and also getting from hotel to the various sites around the area. They don't have meters but you can negotiate a price with the driver. Be generous with him though because he might not get paid anything for official tourist business his only reward is the use of the car. (See previous blog about transfers to Hurghada!)

Other forms of public transport.... The dreaded took took which I will only get into if it is not moving.... 

I don't think they should let people of advancing years even get into one of these...

And one of the local minibuses, (note the orange stripe!). This is quite a smart new(ish) one most of them are banged up Volkswagen Camper vans, and in country towns they are a ute with bench seats along the side. I have yet to work out how these work although I have been in one in Cairo and used one a couple of weeks ago. You sort of stand on the side of the road looking hopeful (years of practice on that one), and eventually one will stop..... You give the driver money and if you give him paper money you seem to get most of it back in change...

And to finish up a ''Benny Hill'' moment as a man hoses down the dirt road to 'lay the dust' a bit...

Tourist: 'Why are you watering the road?'

Waiter: 'To keep the dust down'

Tourist: 'Is it water from the Nile?'

Waiter: 'No. it's bottled water'

Tourist: 'Isn't that expensive?'

Waiter: 'Yes. That is why the tea costs so much money'

(Assembled company is falling off their chairs laughing....)

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - You CAN Read Arabic, Noises In The Daytime, and A Bit More About Egyptians As I See Them..

 Just in case you thought that Arabic was difficult to read, this picture proves otherwise, clearly you can read what is says! 

And below.... This is dried tamarind, seeds, stalks, leaves, the lot I am told. These balls cost the princely sum of 50New English Pence each so I am taking some home with me to see if I can use them for making curry!

We have done noises in the night,

so here are some noises during the day.

In any Egyptian city and even in the middle of nowhere you will get the 'prayers' at certain times of the day. 

This particular lot of prayers sounds more like a speech at a political rally, but the again maybe it is just that!

Certainly you can here it above the sound of the traffic...

And now a bit more about Egyptians... Egyptians always have something for sale, exactly what it is they are trying to sell is never quite clear... You know how it goes, you have just come off the ferry from the East Banks and immediately somebody will try to sell you a taxi, very cheap, very good price, Egyptian price... Having refused the taxi you will then be offered a boat to the East Bank, even though you have quite clearly just come from there... But it will be cheap, you know how much?

No I don't know how much but you are about to tell me.. And if i refuse that I will be offered a felucca for a 'sunset hour' or Banana Island cruise...  

If you keep on refusing various modes of transport they will usually run out of options and in the end offer you a cotton scarf...

Much the same happens with property, they stick a for sale sign up but nobody knows what it is they are trying to sell... And even if you ask you will not find out! And naturally they are having to sell it because they need the money, well actually they don't and this is another similarity with Greeks, many Egyptians own more than one apartment block.

Of course there are some that are as poor as church mice, but many are not, so we don't believe the sob story either!

And then there is the man that wants to sell the family silver for no apparent reason. Or at least a faulty reason... Take the man that has three apartments and wants to sell one of them to buy a new car.

Why does he want a new car?

Well at present he has a car provided by one of the tour companies and he is at their beck and call to take people from Luxor to Hurghada, (and other places), for which they pay him the sum of 200 EGP....The going rate for the trip is 1700 EGP but this man thinks that he will make a lot more money than 200 EGP by buying his own car... Wrong of course because apart from the cost of the car there are all the associated bills so unless he is going to do three trips a day he is not going to make anything, and in the meantime he has lost the cash flow from the apartment he has sold...

This same man is currently doing a bit of building work on one of his apartments and he needs 1500 EGP, (why is it always 1500EGP they need?), very cheekily he has asked me if I would like to make a future booking and pay in advance the sum of 1500 EGP... Why he needs the money I do not know but he could have saved quite a lot if sign writing because he has put his name and phone number on the outside of my apartment... Except that nobody is going to see it because there is a high wall between the building and the street...

Decoration I can understand but he could have saved the cash having his name and phone number written!!

This sign writing can't be seen from the street either....

And even more amusing the table in the top photo has LED lights inside the top and lots of holes drilled in the top... Why????


Meanwhile elsewhere in the 'garden' he has constructed a 'puddle' for producing is own bricks and plaster for his buildings..

Egyptians are naturally noisy as well...

Down  by the ferry there is continuous shouting going on since they moved the arrival point for the public ferry on the east bank, an enterprising band of locals is now running an almost scheduled service across the river to the old arrival point by Luxor Temple, and many are using it because it saves a long walk!

And Egyptians are incredibly cheeky if you let them get away with it, this one (below) seems to think we are ''one''.... Which means it is quite ok for me to buy him lunch on a daily basis...

And we will finish off with a bit of Egyptian music and a belly dancer...

And Egyptian men always seem to have enormous feet.... 

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Noises In The Night, Brits Abroad, and Some Thoughts On Egyptians..

It really is quite difficult to get away from noise and light pollution these days and being here in Luxor I have noticed that quite a lot of the noise is just ''nature''. 

Where I was staying down in Ramla there was noise at night from the river, if you have stayed here on the East or West Bank near the Nile then you will have noticed that there is noise from engines on the Nile cruise ships, this is due to the generators on board which provide power to the boat, and of course drive the pumps to keep the bilges clear.

But even away from the river I can still here the sirens from the trains during the night, but not so much during the day when it is masked by the occasional scooter or vehicle passing in the street, much more likely is the sound of horses/donkeys hooves!

Where I have moved to inland I was expecting to hear more 'people' noise but surprisingly there is little.... An amusing feature is that I am just across the road from the stables, so in the morning when they put the horses in the pens outside I get the sound of horses neighing not much more than about 3 metres from my head! 

They also have a donkey and I don't know if you knew this but donkeys, like cockerels, never seem to sleep, what upsets this one I do not know but it frequently lets forth with a very bad tempered sounding braying in the middle of the night.

Add to this the cats which fight a night and our three neighbourhood watch dogs who take objection when certain people walk past and you can imagine that the wee small hours can be quite lively, but you get used to it...

There is no very late night venues on the West Bank, but I have discovered a bar that caters to northern Europeans of a certain age, and here again the Bob Marley influence is clear insinuating itself into the gent's toilet with the red, green, and yellow stripes... The other night when I visited the bar I entered to the sound of 'Hawkwind' from the 70s! Music is provided by a couple that used to live on Hayling Island...

I still haven't found a way of moving video clips to the right or left, the classic Smokie song... And next the gent's toilet decorations..

And this is something that I have never heard here before but it happens everywhere I guess... Two of the children playing in the street suddenly decided to fall out over something so one child hit the other child, the next minute both families were attacking each other with pieces of wood and throwing rocks whereupon the entire street joined in!!

And some thoughts on Egyptians......
In many ways Egyptians are like Greeks, or maybe that should be the other way around??

It is hardly surprising really when you consider that the Minoan and Egyptians civilisations were flourishing at around the same time and there was a fair amount of commerce around the Eastern Mediterranean, and then add in that Alexander conquered Egypt a couple of hundred years before the birth of Christ, there are bound to be similarities.

One of the notable ones is that they seem to be hypochondriacs just like Greeks are, during my stay here I have begun to lose count of the number of people that have suddenly become gravely ill.... Taking an example of the brother of a friend who is at Death's door, and urgently needs 1500 EGP (about 75  quid) for medical attention and medication, and no I certainly didn't chip in..  A couple of days later i saw him looking quite chipper and he proudly showed me the pictures on his phone of the medication he had to take..... Thoughtfully I got a copy of them from him..

Of course I am not his doctor but I think this is a bit over the top for an upset stomach with diarrhrea and throwing up! I asked him how long he had had the symptoms and they only started in the morning....

And I never knew they gave TOPRO to humans, I thought it was for farm animals....

The usual instruction for this type of complaint is drink plenty of water and eat boiled chicken and rice, or a nice bowl of chicken soup, or perhaps a couple of scrambled eggs... And if the symptoms perisist for more thn a couple of days.... etc., etc., And then we have to contend with the people with high blood pressure who have to go to the hospital on a daily basis for an injection, except they don't go on Sunday because the doctor isn't there on Sunday, so presumably their blood pressure is OK on Sunday... Generally by the way there seem to be quite a lot of people who are unwell in older age because of the hard life they have lived working in the fields....

And if it is of any interest, a new knee here costs 60,000 EGP, about £3,000 if you go private....

This explains the number of pharmacies here of course.....

And there are the business aspects of the Egyptian Economy which I will move on to in my next blog... There's something to look forward to...

And I will leave you with the Neighbourhood Dog Watch on patrol...

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - A Trip To The Market.

I have given u trying to catch up on the blogs that were missed for now, so on with the current stuff and then the rest will follow out of chronological order and you will never know!

When i said i wanted to go to the market everybody thought I just wanted to get the ferry cross the River to the souk to buy a bit of fruit and veg and maybe some spices...

No I want to go to a proper market where they sell camels and horses and animals..

Really??      Yes really.

I don't know why anybody should think it strange that I can milk a cow, or that I want to know how much a camel costs.

Or why I should even be interested in farm animals, but surely I am not the only person who has lived on a farm for a few years, or indeed there must be many that own farms in other countries who might be interested.

After a bit of discussion it seems that the best/nearest livestock market to go to is at Armant about 20kms south of Luxor. For a really big camel market you need to go down to Aswan which is a bit too far... In fact the market is not in Armant at all but to the west almost in the hills and right on the edge of the agricultural belt.

Armant is about centre in the map with the little blue marker..

Map courtesy of Google of course...

So I am up bright an early to leave at 6 am, I should have known that not a lot was going to happen going to happen at that time of day except breakfast...

A couple of wrong turns later and we finally got there, and the easiest way to show you is with a bit of video
.

And it was just what I expected... In a lot of ways it was just like an English livestock market with lots of farmers sitting around drinking tea, (instead of beer), and more than likely discussing the weather and the price of oats and note the almost total lack of 'western' clothing, out here not a lot has changed for a thousand years, except of course they now have a lot more water for crops....

Exceptionally though there was not an auctioneer, everything is sold by battering for it....

And how strange the breeds are compared to the ones we see in Europe... Some might say the cattle are underfed but you see them chomping their way through food and realise they are not underfed it is just the way they are.

Donkeys there are aplenty, at a price...

Camels are worth a lot more than donkeys and indeed horses so a man's wealth can genuinely be calculated by the number of camels he has!

Junior here wanted to demonstrate that he can milk a cow..... But as it was a heifer I don't think he would get a lot out of it.

And in aisle 3, we have these... And I don't think these are donkeys... I think they are either mules or hinnies.

In the absence of any form of pens except a low row of rocks to keep the animals off the carpets nearly everything is 'hobbled' which looks a bit cruel but they don't use rope and it does solve the problem of the animals wandering off!

Goats and sheep are in aisle 1...

Titch on the right has just been sold along with one of his siblings for a total of 3200 EGP about £80 each, which I thought was quite expensive... The 'boy' tells me this is a sheep but it isn't, it's a goat...

And some very cute goats here as well, quite ornamental in fact. Oh dear admiring goats means I have lived on Crete for too long....

Get a camera out in Egypt and you are never short of a subject, this one on the right should go far, he seemed to think his picture was worth 10EGP, but all he got for his trouble was a clip around the ear from his father for pestering the tourist.

       

And some people, below, do not look too thrilled by the idea of market day...

And finally the ''tea tent''.. An important place for meeting friends and chewing the fat over a cup of tea and a shisha...

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Did You Miss Me, Moving House, Bureaucracy... And Why There Have Been No Updates!

 I make no apologies, let's just say that 'things' were against me and the modern technology failed!

So my previous accommodation was supposed to have WiFi, well to be honest it did have WiFi but no internet which by the boss's own admission was because he hadn't paid the bill, but I don't really think he meant to tell me that....

I was due to leave Egypt on 4th February which was allowing for a couple of days delay because of COVID/civil unrest/earthquakes, and possibly because my 30 day visa was due to expire on 8th February....

Now having mentioned this to a couple of people they told me that as I was over 60 I didn't need a visa.... Although it pained me to admit that I was indeed over 60, although I only look 35, I decided to investigate further and went to the visa office to inquire if this was true....

Needless to say the man behind the desk, who I only waited 5 minutes to see, a plus there for the Egyptian Civil Service, looked a bit vague and then gave me a piece of paper, written in Arabic, which told me what to do.... Really useful huh??

And with the rider that I should get the paperwork done tomorrow, Friday, and come in on Saturday before 11am.

As I had no intention of staying in the same apartment if I could extend my stay, I went to see somebody else about a nice little apartment they were doing up when I was last here. Showing him the piece of paper I had been given he assured me this, (whatever this means!), is quite normal and come back tomorrow and we can sort it out.

I duly arrived at his house at 8 am on a Friday armed with passport and various other bits of paper and not enough money... As it turned out.. We then proceeded to go to a government office of some sort, which only takes cash.... I will not go into detail of how much this cost because it wasn't a lot, but was then ushered in to an office with my prospective landlord, and an English speaking tour guide as witness, to meet an older civil servant who knew what was needed but had trouble getting the computer keyboard into Latin characters... The end result was this piece of paper

Just in case you think I have got it upside down because it is 'right justified' remember that Arabic script reads from right to left, indeed if you look carefully you can see my name written ''correctly'', Christian name first reading right to left... But then came the surprise bit... Fingerprints!! I acutally signed my name because I can, but I still had to fingerprint it... Egyptians, (and presumably other Arabic nations) have to fingerprint documents because you cannot sign your name in Arabic script because.... Wait for it... It will just look like Arabic script... Officials and people that think they are really important do 'invent' signatures, you can see an example here from the man in the office bottom left.. but otherwise it's a thumbprint for everyone.

And the end result? well it rather precludes doing anything on the internet that requires signing doesn't it??

Of course if you ever see an Egyptian with a blue thumb, you know what he has been doing!

Now i was going to rush off to the passport office early on Saturday because this piece of paper is 'time limited' but somebody said leave it til Sunday... A government office is open on Sunday?/ Really?

Yes really, well the Law Courts next door are open so why not the Passport Office..

Now bear in mind that my original enquiry was to whether I actually needed a visa because I was over 60, and I assumed that what I had now would give me that visa... Wrong... Yes I can get another visa but it will cost me £85.... 

But wait, there is a British woman next to me asking the same thing and she has already been there once and they have told her, 'No you don't need a visa because you are over 60''

''Can I have that on a piece of paper please.'' She asks.

''No'' The man says.

''Why not''.... And so on. It turns out it's in ''the rules'' that you don't need a visa over the age of 60, and apparently everybody that needs to know about it, like the men at the airport, knows about it....

So that's that sorted out... Hopefully I will not get arrested when I try to leave. I did ask the man dealing with me why I was being charged £85 when I didn't need a new visa, and basically I would only need it if I was buying a house, wanted to open a bank account, or wanted a phone contract... That is something very official, but as it happens I got a short term mobile phone contract before my visa 'expired'....

Which brings me nicely to the point where I have moved to somewhere with no internet at all... And move I have done into the village away from the Nile where it is no quieter than the riverbank and there is a stables with the gentle smell of horse wafting around, (but that applies to everywhere around here), and there is a bakery the other side of my front wall so I wake to the smell of fresh bread in the morning, and they make pastries...

Some photos of the new pad which is very cosy, and a lot more comfortable than the other place... And as I was having to use mobile data for blogging is a lot cheaper now I have bought an Egyptian SIM!!

You can't really complain when you are only paying £10 a night can you....

And did I mention pastries?? There is a bakery across the road from my new accommodation...

These are, of course, part of my five a day...

So that has brought you, if not the rest of the blog up to date, and I am now leaving on 22nd February......

And blogging will continue shortly....

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Out And About and Transport - Part 1

 One doesn't like to be nosey, but then when you are out for a walk how can you help noticing things....?? I was going to try and put on a map of where I go often for a walk but unfortunately by the time I have zoomed in on it it is too big to fit an a blog!

Suffice to say it is very dusty most of the way around, 

And before I forget... This should have been in the blog about Luxor City... This is the El Karnak International Hospital.

I don't know why the International because it is for everybody. As you can see it is new!

                           

The two photos above probably say it all, the one on the left is typical in the fields, I have yet to see a tractor.... The load on the donkey and cart is the tops from the sugar cane which they use for animal feed, the one on the right is in the city and they still use donkeys even there, but behind it is one of the minibuses they use in the cities and in the country.

Meanwhile in amongst the fields they are building yet another mosque, as if they haven't got enough already...

This road is a road not just a dusty track, you really would not want to be disabled around here and a wheelchair user... The canal on the left is an irrigation canal but at the moment they have a problem further up the road as the culvert that carries the water from the main channel has become blocked with rubbish and general black Nile mud!

By the way all these dusty tracks have LED street lighting which they have been using for years in Egypt... Who said they were backward?

Like Greeks they do like building stuff in the middle of nowhere... This is destined to be a hotel in a few years time, yes another hotel...

The palm tree on the right amused me rather, never waste a good palm tree is the motto I suppose.

Years of ploughing has resulted in the soil compacting down, and in dry weather blowing away as dust and left this tree high and dry!

Below right n the banana fields they cover the developing fruit with blue plastic bags to protect them from the cold.

Walking around these back streets you get to speak to a lot of people, many of them invite you into their homes and show no embarrassment that the floor is compacted earth, but somehow spotlessly clean. Years of damping the floor and walking on it compacts the dirt down, indeed they even sweep it.

And of course you get the children and sometimes the adults who ask you for money, and for many this seems strange or unusual, but many Egyptians will refer to it as ''a present'', at this point it is worth remembering the Five Pillars of Islam, one of which is 'Charity'.....

Give an Egyptian an apple and you will often see him cut it in half and share it with somebody else.....

The video is just a part of my daily walk, I took it because of the level of the Nile at the moment which is the highest I have ever seen it. Where the donkey is is usually dry land but at present it is flooded. I asked around and apparently the level depends on the rainfall in the mountains where the Nile rises and when Lake Nasser reaches maximum capacity then the flood gates ae opened, but the level also depends on agricultural demands for the rice fields downstream in the Nile delta around Alexandria. Bet you didn't know they grow rice in Egypt!

Meanwhile the weather is still misbehaving and it is very cold at night.... So along the riverbank there are burning braziers to keep tourists and local alike, warm.

And somewhere I have lost the plot on the transport side of things!!