Egypt, And Further Thoughts and Notes For The Future......

A couple of weeks have passed since my return from Egypt and I have ''post holiday blues'', particularly as the weather is disgusting and I hoped I would have missed all the rain on Crete....

Looking back at my notes again, it was nice to see quite a few British people travelling in Egypt again. They all seemed to be ''independent'' travellers who elected to fly in through Hurghada and then after a week of 'beach' holiday were travelling inland by private vehicle or coach to the Nile Valley to see the important sites and spend a few days around the area rather than some Hurghada tourists who come inland by coach to see the Valley Of The King's and then leave again.

The general plan after Luxor and Aswan included a few days in Cairo before flying back to the UK. While these plans sound expensive Egypt really is still remarkably cheap, and Luxor has a lot of accommodation for about 5 euros a night if you are staying a while.

As an example in Luxor, West Bank you can find many properties to rent like this one Mahmoud Haseeb Nubian House at very reasonable rates 

This one in Al Bairat has some lovely traditional features like domed ceilings!

This trip was supposed to be my last and was supposed to included Alexandria where I have a 'family' connection and initially I was planning on 6 weeks until I read on Trip Advisor that it was currently impossible, because of COVID, to get a visa extension unless you were in Cairo and wanted to brave the one and only police station that was issuing them....

Of course I later found out that I didn't even need a visa extension because I was over 60.... And the Passport Office in Luxor was open so don't believe everything you read on TA, unless I wrote it

And of course the new museum in Cairo has not yet opened and I still need to visit that so another visit is already in the planning stage to do that and also visit Alexandria....

I still don't know what it is about Egypt that I love so much.....

One thing is sure this time I will do some reviews of hotels and eateries for Trip Advisor this time as looking at my past reviews I didn't do very many!!

So you can expect some updates to the blog again sometime early next year...

Inshallah..

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Special Assistance, More COVID Bureacracy, Unecessary Expense, And The Journey Home

Many years ago I used to travel behind the Iron Curtain for work

All I had to do was send my passport along with my 'work order' to the relevant embassy in London and about a week later I would get my passport back with the necessary visa stamp in it.

That was in the days before somebody decided to put explosives in their shoes and carry bottles of inflammable liquid with them... Back in the days when suddenly our bags were searched and if you had a Sinclair calculator with you you had to turn it on to prove that it was not a small bomb...

Now coronavirus has produced its own form of hysteria and the number of pieces of paper needed to even enter the airport has become ridiculous....

Indeed in Greece you cannot even go and buy a light bulb without wearing a face mask, carrying a copy of your vaccination certificate and your official ID to confirm the person on the vax certificate is actually you etc., etc., etc.,.....

In order to get back in to Greece I must either produce a pcr test valid for 72 hours or a rapid antigen test valid for 24 hours.... I have to have the expensive one because my journey is going to take more than 24 hours because I am flying to Cairo and staying overnight there before taking an onward flight to Athens the following day. 

Somebody did suggest, quite sensibly, that I didn't need to get a rapid test until the evening before my departure and I could go into Cairo centre to do this. 

This sounds fine until you look at how much the taxi fares are going to be and so I might as well pay the extra and get fully tested in Luxor on the Sunday morning and this would be valid until well after my arrival in Athens on Tuesday.... 

This is going to cost me of course.. And somebody told me that it would cost me 2,000 EGP or about 100 GBP, except when I went and asked at the private clinic it turns out it is only 1,000EGP, or about 50 quid... I didn't bother to tell the boy who has come up with a price of 1,700 EGP.... He has obviously found out that it is only 1,000 EGP and is going to collect 1,700 from me and then keep 700 EGP. He thinks I am stupid...

And I would get the results in 24 hours time, i.e. 9.30am on Monday morning.

But I am getting ahead of myself because you don't know how I am getting to Cairo yet, because if you have been paying attention then you will remember that my flight was in and out of Cairo..... 

As I changed my outbound flight after finding that I didn't need another visa and could stay as long as I liked because I am over 60, I also took the chance to change the flight time as my original flight was at 4.40am, so that became 10.30am... So I have choices, I can go on the day train costing 145 EGP, for nearly 13 hours and stay overnight, or I can take the overnight sleeper train and arrive early in Cairo for 126US$, or I can fly which means getting up really early to get the morning flight from Luxor, or taking the afternoon flight from Luxor and stay overnight at Cairo airport.... In the end flying the previous afternoon won out because it only cost €55 and the hotel at Cairo airport was only US$30 with a free transfer bus,

The man on the free transfer bus seemed to think he was worth a huge tip in US dollars although why he though I might even have dollars I don't know, he got 2 EGP instead...

My trip to Luxor airport was more like a charabanc ride for the boy and his cousins of which there seemed to be two in the back seat....

Family is everything in Egypt, you don't just get one you get the whole family, but give him  his due he didn't charge me too much. Here is his FB Page Ahmed-Your-Driver-in-Luxor-Egypt

But arriving at Luxor airport far too early I had to wait before I could go and check in... With the usual Egyptian security which is get all the bags X rayed before you even get to check in.... Luxor airport is only small so you don't really need much in the way of assistance here..

Tomorrow is ''leaving Egypt day'', and I checked with the local Egyptair office in Luxor about my special assistance because I didn't get it on the way in, so arriving 3 hours before my flight is due to depart I have to go to to the 'service desk' window number 3... The man in window number 3 says ''Window number 4'', the man in window number 4 says ''Window number 5'', the man in window number 5 says ''Window number 3''... it turns out it is really number 4 because the man there didn't realise he was the one with the blue wheelchair sign in the window. Apart from that the special assistance is so well organised that I am through emigration, without a visa remember, with the only comment from the young lady on the desk, ''Pull the mask down please, if it wasn't written in your passport I would not have thought you were over 60''......

An uneventful flight after having all my papers checked at check in and all the plfs and certificates checked and I am at the gate 2 hours before my flight is due to leave.

Arriving in Athens it is considerably cooler and inclined to rain... On landing the have got the flash new hoist out for me even though I am quite capable of walking down the steps but it is in a wheelchair from now on through immigration... Where.... Wait for it they scan the code on my PLF, (Passenger Location Form if you don't know by now), don't even bother to ask for my vaccination certificate or for the pcr test results, which you will notice is just an image of the paper turned into a pdf..

 

And wheel me straight into the testing department at Athens airport for a rapid test, which they text me the results of later... This has happened before.. All the expense of a test and they don't even bother to look at it...

With some hours to wait for my connecting flight and my bags not on transfer because the two legs were booked separately, I am at a loss as to what to do with my luggage in Athens airport for the next 5 hours, but Aegean to the rescue and speaking to the man on the check in, they take my bag check me in and give me a voucher to the Business Lounge, not only that when I go to board the flight they have upgraded me to Business Class!!

A highly successful end to the journey....

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - A Bit More Out And About, More Messing About on The River, And A Bit More About Egyptians

 I have already remarked on the similarities between Egyptians and Greeks and yesterday another one reared its head.... The boy sent me a message on WhatsApp the other evening, (and while we are at it if you plan on visiting Egypt then get WhatsApp on your mobile because they all love using it, and even if you pay for data it is cheaper than a mobile phone call!), to say his aunt had died and could I help him with some money. Obviously not presumably he was having a whip round for flowers?

The following morning more people told me that their aunt had died etc., etc.,, so naturally I assumed it that their had been a sudden dramatic increase in the death rate of aunts throughout the West Bank at Luxor.

Mentioning this to the boy he confirmed what I already guessed, that all these dead aunts were indeed the same dead aunt. I can only assume that the requests for assistance was to help pay for the funeral, but here we get the similarity with Greeks in that everybody is related somehow to everybody else even though the relationship is not even a blood tie, everybody is part of the same family..

But getting back to a bit of out and about... Egyptian cafes are very variable, some are quite swish with proper floors, some only have rugs on the dirt floor, but whichever you end up in invariably they tend to be 'richly' furnished with wall hangings and somehow I always get the feeling that Rudolph Valentino is about to make an entrance.

This morning ridiculously early I am on the East Bank at Luxor because I have to get a full pcr test done, and for that I am going to a private clinic on Television Street, and that peeps is the official name for it because of this...

Yes it is the TV transmitter.

When I asked Abdul why Television Street he just pointed at it and didn't bother to even speak..

And my electrician at my house complains that my wiring is old, and he really needs to get out a bit more because this is normal power pole wiring in Egypt...

Abdul tells me that this whole area is quite new much in the same way that the 20th Dynasty is newer than the 18th Dynasty looking at it, but this is a good place to go shopping, there is even a supermarket that sells Egyptian Smoked Salmon, I wouldn't have thought that salmon fishing was a full time occupation in Egypt.......

But something even more interesting caught my eye recently and here we have laid out in a field well have a guess first...

And did you guess right??

 

These are tomatoes being laid out in the sun to dry! 

And so back to the river Nile and boats, and I am fascinated by one boat in particular, called the Mazag it is what is known as a ''dahabiya'' and doesn't really have its own 'power' and like many others is pulled by a tug.

I still haven't been able to find much information on this one except that somebody described it as futuristic but for some reason it reminds me of The Nautilus from the James Mason movie 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea!

There ae several of this type pf vessel around and you can rent them all to yourself and your private party, typically many of them take only 10 passengers with a crew of 10... At a price of course... I seem to remember that Joanna Lumley did part of her Nile journey on one of these...

Other dahabiyas moored on the Nile, they come and go at regular intervals...

I would love to be able to rent one of these for a week and bring my bestist friends for my 70th birthday!!

And while I was on the East Bank I decided to get my very dusty Gant loafers cleaned up a bit the gentleman was just in the process of finishing the second shoe when two policemen arrived and lifted bodily and took him away.

I don't know why they do this along the Corniche... But I never got the chance to pay the man so if you are there and you hear a shoe shiner complaining that a  British tourist never paid him you can tell him it was me and give him 5 LE from me..

 

Egypt Part The Third 2022 - Warning - Archaeology Alert!!!! The Valley Of The Queens and The ''New'' City Of Aten

 After my last visit I did a couple of updates on new discoveries but didn't include the 'Dazzling'' city of Aten not far from the Colossi of Memnon... 

Excavation work has been continuing apace here for a while but as yet it is not open to the public....

So you are saved one bit of history!!

Moving right along... The Valley of the Queen's gets a bit neglected I am sorry to say, mainly I supposed because it is not quite so ''exciting'' and doesn't contain the tomb of King Tut, Seti, etc., etc., etc.,

Indeed I myself have neglected it in the past and so time to make amends..

Mentioning my thoughts to the boy, he promptly offered to take me there at a 'special rate' which means I am going to have to buy lunch again, and that as we are heading that way it will probably be in the subterranean cafe in Al Qarnah, their speciality is pigeon by the way... As it turned out the price i had to pay was to get the car fully valetted for the occasion, this cost me the grand total of about £3.50 (70 LE), plus two cups of tea, 20 LE..

This again was an experience which most tourists don't get, i never knew that washing a car needed so much shouting, and while it was being done I was sat on a bench with 3 elderly Egyptians who insisted on speaking German to me, in the end I gave up telling them I was English and replied with my very limited German.

Now one thing we all know about the Valley of the Queen's is that is contains the tomb of Nefertari which is the main reason for going there..... Or so I thought until I looked at the price of the tickets..... To see the tomb of Queen Nefertari will set you back a whopping 1400 EGP or 70 quid in English money.

And I am sorry I am just no paying that so I settle for the normal ticket of 100 EGP (a fiver)..

The Queen's Valley is a lot less crowded than the King's indeed it is quite pleasantly uncrowded and there is a really strong north west wind blowing straight down the valley which means I had to take the Panama off.

And like the King's Valley the landscape is somewhat alien and pitted with holes everywhere..

I must say the tombs here are impressive, not in size perhaps but in the quality of carving and in the colours that have survived thousands of year. Oh if only modern paint manufacturers could make paint that lasted that long today..

i have already made the comment that one camera has given up the ghost, and the Canon is rapidly depleting its battery so I am reduced to a phone camera which means I can at least take a video.

The Egyptian Govt has given up charging for using cameras these days, mainly because every phone is now a camera and they couldn't make people leave their phones at the ticket office as there would be thousands of them in cubby holes, they do still charge for a camera tripod though...

So I got to see three tombs, which from the set up appear to be the only 3 that are open, apart from Nefertari's, although if you look around the place is full of burial shafts and other 'walk in' tombs which are not open... For some reason the tomb of Queen Titi, (Teyet) ahs a large sign on the door saying NO PHOTOGRAPHS, and the man in charge was applying this quite rigourously, although no doubt a 100LE note pressed into the palm of his hand would have changed his mind.

I did take a couple of stills inside but the conditions for photography are difficult because all the walls are protected by perspex screens to keep sticky fingers at bay, and of course the screens are not only dusty but do have sticky finger marks on them so you have to contend with that and also the reflections from the lights.

Hopefully though you can still see the carvings and colouring sufficiently well to be impressed!

By the way on the way out the the man in charge of the ''very clean toilets'' has taken the price for Nefertari's tomb to heart and is asking a piss taking price of 5 LE as against the normal 1 LE, (it used to be less than that but they seems to have stopped using all the piastra coins these days).

Needless to say he only got 1 LE from me and nothing from some other people,,, so on with the videos..

Firstly the tomb of Prince Amenkhopshef...

And second the tomb of Prince Sethherkhopshef...

And sadly I am now getting near to end of my stay because it is Saturday 19th February and tomorrow I have to get a pcr test, but still more time for a bit of out and about!! Meanwhile a picture of the resident dog at the Valley of the Queen's, and like the King's Valley the people trying to sell you alabaster and papier mache statues and replicas are a bloody nuisance....

 

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

 I really should be doing more than I am but Egyptians are so chatty and on my morning walks they do like to stop me and show me around their gardens which of course does interest me and they always want to know what I grow in my garden..

This is a very elderly vine planted by Imad's grandfather... At the moment all the leaves on it are dead because it's winter, during the summer it will provide shade but I can't help feeling that it could do with a prune.

I will try and get a photo of Imad because when you look at him you see an Egyptian as depicted on the many carvings and wall paintings in the ancient temples.

Elsewhere in his garden he has citrus trees, avocado's, tomatoes, onions, and a henna tree which is much prized for its scent as well as the colour!

And he grows gardenias too... Except he doesn't know the name of them...

During the course of an hour he lets drop that he also owns the hotel next door, and that he has two feluccas on the Nile, and he cannot leave because, like many others, ''The Nile is in my blood''

Not so far away and nearer into 'town' we find today's bread being made using a method that probably has not changed for thousands of years in a traditional oven plonked on the side of the road.

And on the main road a car accessory shop selling fluffy dice..... And flashing lights that no motorbike or took took can be seen without.

And I am pleased to see the bridal shop has changed its display... I think I might go for the Guinevere look in the middle,

Returning to the banks of The Nile for the all important morning coffee we notice that the buffalo has finally been moved from its island because of the new height of the water level...

AS usual there are a couple of cats in attendance. Don't bother trying to make friends with them because Egyptian cats are even more up themselves than normal cats and they are bad enough.

Clearly modern cats have not forgotten that they were once revered in ancient Egypt.

AS you can see everything went completely wrong with the alignment there but i will soldier on..

So walking back to my apartment through the back streets gives a chance for a bit more local architecture..

I am not sure of the significance of the writing or pictures on the outside of the houses...

Aircraft seem to be a popular theme on many buildings...

The pink building is one of the many hotels tucked away in the back streets... I have had a look at some of these and they are actually quite nice once you get inside, don't be put off by the surroundings!

And I am going to leave you here with one of my little videos that was taken in the El Gezira Gardens hotel in Ramla, bearing in mind I have been here three times I had never been in here until the other night, and I must say I was impressed with the garden.

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....