Egypt!

Was amazing. And by amazing I mean cool. Everything was really really cool. Because you start to learn about ancient Egyptians and mummification and building of the pyramids and Gods and the Nile and hieroglyphs and pictographs and tombs and ! when you’re 3 years old and in every museum there’s a model or an artifact and then… when you’re in Egypt…. It’s all true it’s all real, it’s ALL around you! In real life right in front of you for you to see and (touch if you’re a stupid tourist) it’s all 3,000 years old and still standing strong and huge and amazing and beautiful.

As such, I was the person that I now hate, the picture taker person. I took 300 (exactly – weird I know, I just counted) pictures and videos. This was because everything, eeevvvrrryyy thing was so cool and I just couldn’t stop. So I’ll make sure to post those : ) A camel’s face right now is my background, BUT! Actually it isn’t a camel! Because there are no camels in Egypt!!! !!! who knew?? Camels have two humps and these animals pretending to be camels are an animal that only has one hump and ?? where do the real camels live? I’m going to have to research that because I rode their one humped brothers twice on my trip in Egypt – which was so exciting and I can’t wait to start telling you about it.

We ported in Alexandria – tons of Roman influence, I didn’t walk around much but got right on a bus to Cairo, I had stayed up til 2 the previous night doing my architecture homework but it was awesome to see the country side. Egypt is 96% uninhabitable desert with a green fertile economic zone of life along the Nile, which I loved being on and thinking about because it’s like – hey, if the Nile hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t be here, because there would be nothing at all here to see.

My thoughts on Egypt are hard to put into words other than cool because it makes you think of so much, like this stuff is so old and cool and what will still be standing in another 3,000 years and where is the world going and what will there be left behind of us? How will we be represented and who will be there then? Will there even be able to be people there! It’s enough to give you brain pains… haha uh but it’s just so much to think about.

So on the road to Cairo – there I was with my SAS group, 35 of us, not a bad group, but I had no real friends and there was no single person that I could become friends with easily because they either had friends or were not people I would want to be friends with :( so I spent a lot of time with these two girls who were friends from home and with this other girl – Ebony, who’s actually a life long learner, she just graduated last year (from Harvard) and this was kind of like a graduation present, so she’s a young life long learner and loaded because her last name is Carter, of some Carter who was a professional baseball player that won the world series for the Toronto Blue Jays 2 years in a row. But she’s pretty down to earth and nice and cute and all that.

But it was cool because I got to experience Egypt in my own head instead of always being with the same best friend you know, so it was good. We drove right to the pyramids in Giza. The first view is from miles away through all these buildings, and I have to say that Egypt is actually least modern of everywhere we’ve been – even India had way more ac buildings with windows and stuff, Egypt everything but hotels seemed to be open air traditional houses made of clay or concrete or something. But I love the juxtaposition of really old things with new things, so viewing telephone lines running through the desert and pyramids seen through buildings, very cool.

We road not camels from uphill from the pyramids down to the base of these three small pyramids next to the smallest pyramid one, walked around it and on it and took pictures and then walked over near the middle one. Then we took a quick bus over there, WHERE WE WENT IN! Egypt has been the first place it was a bummer not to have a international student card, it was more than half cheaper all these places if you had one, other countries any school id was sufficient but in Egypt they were sticklers. So I bought my ticket and left my camera behind – as no cameras were allowed, and ventured into a little tiny hole straight down in the dark hunched over and sweating. There were some lights scattered in there but not many, then after leveling out for a bit the hole sloped straight up, and it wasn’t a one way tunnel by the way, then, in the center of the pyramid, it opened up into a little very hot, house shaped room that said a name and year (like 1818ish?) really big and high up in paint, so that must have been who discovered it I think, and a simple open black coffin like tomb that I hope to god and don’t think was an original because some other tourists in there were climbing in it. It was really cool because there are just a few lights laying around on the ground and actually, haha two dehumidifier looking things behind the tomb that could not have been doing any good and would have been totally full. But it was very simple but so cool to be inside a tomb in the middle of a pyramid surrounded by rock and wondering who else has been there and thinking about how it was made and all that.

From there I walked down to the sphinx with this guy Mark, I have to say about Egypt, I was wearing long capris and long sleeve shirts almost the whole time, until the last day I guess or when I was in my swim suite, because Egyptians do not really like women much, and Egyptian women are completely covered except for their faces and some except for their eyes and like India, you really don’t see a lot of women, though you saw more than you did in India, and our tour guide was actually a woman a lot like Kian Carretta. So, that was surprising because she just had a lot of personality and was a very modern beautiful woman. Though I finally realized here that tour guides get a huge cut off the products they advertise if you buy from them, and you can get the same things much cheaper elsewhere. Like the one souvenir you have to get in Egypt is a Cartouche, your name in hieroglyphs on a little slab representing all these things, it’s cool and I wanted one but I was suckered by this lady and didn’t even get exactly what I wanted so that sucked. But! Live and learn. A lot of this traveling has been live and learn, a lot has gone kind of wrong but I’ve defiantly learned a lot on how to travel and about life and all that. it definitely has not been a vacation but a learning experience! Is what I’m getting at I guess.

So walking down to the Sphinx with a guy – is a good idea because just no matter what there’s a lot of negative attention and I really didn’t have too much of a problem. I know some who did, but I was pretty lucky, sometimes I was kind of rude but most Egyptians are really very nice and all of them genuinely want to have a conversation- the middle east in general is all very big on hospitality, shop keepers offer you a drink and all that, I was very much in a mind set that I was trying to be swindled and I need to get out! And all they want is my money! I shouldn’t waste these people’s time if I don’t want to buy anything and they shouldn’t waste mine because I would rather be… whatever. And that may or may not have been the right way to go about things, but the girls I was with would always go in and I just felt very trapped. And like then I would owe something or be obligated or whatever, but that’s off the point again, people were nice but it’s a different culture and one definitely had to be aware of it at all times or one is an idiot.

soooOOOooo the sphinx was really cool – but I didn’t really realize it until later, honestly it was a little smaller than I expected, it was kind of dug out though and what captured my attention most was that all these tourists taking pictures right on the edge… everything getting a picture ‘kissing’ the sphinx… really dangerous! It was like a 40+ foot drop, it was really huge, just not pyramid huge I guess, also I was a little frazzled because 15 some little school boys were surrounding us and asking questions, which happened a lot and was cute but was a lot. What I liked most about Cairo was that night at the sound and light show, which we went to after lunch at 5pm! !! (lunch is usually 2-3pm, dinner 11ish, it’s nuts) but so after the sphinx we got lunch – all food in Egypt was a giant buffet with a dessert table and it was horrible, because it was all pretty good, then it was 7pm so we went to the best thing – the sound and light show!! !!! most didn’t like it but I loved it, you sit on chairs in a big open area in front of the sphinx in front of the pyramids, and it’s dark and not hot but not cold, there’s a nice breeze, you can see the stars, and then there are these big voices coming from somewhere teaching some history and some green lasers and projections onto the sphinx and a stone wall of different old Egyptian things and… it was awesome. Because! The sphinx would talk and it would be like “I saw Cleopatra float down the Nile! Alexander the Great stood before me in wonder! Napoleon came to see me in the night! I watch the sun rise over the Nile each day and see it set at night…etc” and it makes you think like… well it makes you think like “damn, that’s amazing” beeecccaauussee, wow! That is amazing. It gives me chills every time I say that in my head, this big booming sphinx – booming from somewhere to the right, kind of tackey – “I SAW CLEOPATRA FLOAT DOWN THE NILE…” it’s nuts and awesome. And I kind of thought of in 500 years they will be like “Emily Basten sat before me in awe” and some girl will be like “that’s awesome.”

Then we went finally to our hotel – so nice! Though I have forever been tainted by what a truly nice hotel is after being in Zejuanteno (?uh Mexico) with mom and jack, but this was a really nice hotel and on the Nile and I hung out with some friends from a different SAS trip I opted out of going on and did hookah for about 2 hours and then jumped in the really warm pool and then went to bed around 12:30 in preparation for leaving the hotel at 4:30am! It was a wonderful PERFECT day, I loved Cairo, LOVED it! And we went back the last day for the Egyptian Museum – which also was just perfect and amazing.

Early the second day we arrived in Sharm el Sheikh, after lunch at our hotel, the mountain Marriott, across the street from the sea Marriott… haha on the desert, but the beach was across the street and it was wonderful. Anyway… just after lunch we went on a jeep safari through the desert to some not camels where we rode them to a Bedouin village, where they gave us really really amazing tea and they made us a thin bread while we hung out under tents sitting on blankets. Very cool. we spent the rest of the day resting a bit and hanging out by the beach. That night we walked around, to and around downtown and then sat for an hour or so in an outdoor street café called Aladdin’s where men were dancing and there was music and it was really wonderful! A gigantic Egyptian man finally convinced me to get up and dance and I was really nervous because I am not a good dancer, but we danced a whole dance and it was really fun. There was this little boy, 13 probably, and he was dancing all over the place, they lifted up in the air and he danced and, very cool.

Sharm el Sheikh – I don’t know if I mentioned, very touristy, where all the Egyptians and Europeans go to vacation, it’s not like Egypt at all and it’s not even in Africa! It’s in the Asia part of Egypt. So that was kind of bugging me. the third day we headed to Ras Mohamed, a national park… which was interesting because you think moose and forests but this was desert and you think “what needs preserving??” but actually that’s me being a jerk, there was an earthquake there and there’s this part in the middle of the desert where there’s still a big crack and there is water in there and the concept is “where did that water come from?” and there is a magic lake, the water is so blue! At the lake everyone in your group is supposed to all hold hands, make a silent wish, take 10 steps together, say “Habibi habibi habibi” then all were supposed to start swimming and not get our hair wet for 5 minuets and our wishes will come true if we don’t tell anyone, whew. we shall see. It was freezing cold, which is almost impossible to imagine because I was wearing long sleeve in the desert before that.

Next we went over to the Red Sea for snorkeling!! And it was great snorkeling. The fish were like neon! And the coral was purple and yellow and there was a fish that was crazy that was shaking around, and there was a fish that looked like an easter bunny! And it was awesome, it made my whole trip to Sharm el Sheikh worth it. it was a great snorkeling experience too, I usually have so many mask issues, but it was a flawless go. However, it was secretly bugging me though while snorkeling that I was not looking at African fish, but Asian fish! And in my head I tried to tell myself they were just as well as African fish as they were only across the sea, but still.

So I made the best decision of my life! I was sitting on the bus with Ebony and we were agreeing that this trip was a little to laid back with all the free beach time, and that we thought it should have been a Cairo/Sharm el Sheikh/Luxor because there was just too much time. She said “I wish we would go to Luxor tomorrow” and I said “I’d do that.” and so we did! We made it happen! Which is so wonderful because I could have been unhappy doing the party with people I don’t know in Euro Egypt, but instead I got to go see all the temples and tombs – everything you’ve ever seen and learned about of Egypt! Oh it was wonderful.

We sat down with a travel agent and got on the waiting list for tickets to Cairo (only 2 flights direct to Luxor a week) for a 12am flight that night, 2 hours later we got onto it! and still got to hang out and watch the sun set on the beach! After our 12 am flight we slept that night in the airport – kind of scary but not horrible (the terminal was pretty busy the entire night, so we were never too alone, and I kept my head covered all night) – until our 5am flight to Luxor! So we arrived bright and early at 6am for a full day! We went right to our Hotel that we had reserved online – the Sheraton on the East side of the Nile for 40$ each! We ate a good breakfast on the Nile and set ourselves up with a driver and tour guide for the day for 25$ each, and we set off! A full day of tombs and temples and it was great.

They were all so cool and giant and amazing, I’ll write more later exactly what we did, but it was a wonderful day, we did the west bank side first, the Valley of the Kings, the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, the Valley of the Workmen, Medinet Habu - with the Temple of Ramses III. Last we stopped at these two giant stone guys now surrounded by stuff though they used to be protecting something, and they start with an M… but I am currently… going to finish talking about my day. So a little later in the early evening we went to the two major temples on the east bank, the temple of Karnak and the temple of Luxor, amazing. So massive and complicated and detailed and everything! For the afternoon we had a horse and buggy guy drive us around for 12$ total. We even stopped at McDonalds and I got a vanilla milkshake :)

That night we were pretty tired, so we took it easy a bit, I got stamps in preparation to mail 15 post cards! Which I did. So expect those hopefully in 3 weeks. Haha. Then we walked around a bit and did some shopping. It was overwhelming and by the end of it I was tired and kind of crabby. Egyptian men are always proposing to you and offering to buy you for 15 camels or whatever trying to win you over to buy something or because they do want to marry you for the green card, and it gets really hard, and sometimes it’s funny, at the sphinx I got “buy one get me free” but it’s also often really creepy and I got pissed because at the last shop we were in Ebony was buying a shirt and the guy was offering 10,000 camels for her and he’s like one chicken for you, hahahha. And I got pissed! Because it was like the straw (that brakes the not camels back har har har) and he thought it was funny but it was really mean and he was trying to sweet talk but then was mean and it just didn’t make sense and maybe there was something lost in translation but I was tired and I was wicked WICKED sun and wind burnt from being in sand all day long. And I was hungry because how do you not eat until like 10:30 pm for dinner? The Egyptian food schedule is a little ridiculous, though they all take an afternoon nap and stay out quite late I think.

So we were going to go try some traditional Egyptian food from a restaurant our guide had recommended to us, but we didn’t really know where it was or what it was like and he had implied it was kind of far, and we were a bit tired, so long story short we never really got any real real middle eastern Egyptian food. : ( because we ate at one of our hotel restaurants – an Indian place! And I got a vegetarian dish and it was amazing, and our naan was amazing, so at least I finally got some amazing Indian food! Maybe in Croatia I’ll find Egyptian cuisine. : )

We got to the airport on the 5th day for our 8:40 flight to Cairo. It turned out that the only two seats left on that flight – a very necessary flight for us – were business class! Hahaha, so we flew business class in Egypt! How completely ridiculously extravagant. It was our only option and luckily they were only like 10$ extra, we got a free pop in the terminal, breakfast on the flight, and were first off the flight – which we didn’t think would matter because in every country (besides I guess ours) when you walk down off the plane you get right on a little bus that buses you to the terminal, and everyone packs in and then you bus away, but! There was a business class bus! They 8 of us got in a bus and it took off and… I have to mention here we were very much praying –if I do that – that our SAS group would still be at the airport as their flight got in like 15 minutes before ours and with all the indecisions group travel they would be there and we could get right back on to finish our trip with the included 3hr bus back to the ship (!) the amazing Egyptian Museum (!) and lunch, and so we got off our bus and ran into the terminal and THERE THEY ALL WERE!! !!! !!! it was wonderful. Everything went flawlessly! : )

So we headed right to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo which is probably the coolest museum in the world because there are so many amazing treasures in there, just stuff on top of gold, on top of sarcophagi, next to jewelry next to stone statues – some if even in a case, in a simple glass and wood case. It was seemed like it was out of an old movie or something, so many AMAZING things. A lot of King Tut’s tomb was there, most of it I would say, and there was a special section that had his actual sarcophagus in it and …. And… I stood in front of King Tut’s mask! Stood there and stared at it and soaked in how awesome that is and how awesome it would have been to discover the tomb. Did you know though, all this attention and Tut actually was a nobody Pharaoh for just a few years who died of gangrene at age 19 who had a sneakily hidden small tomb that another tomb had been built on top of so thieves didn’t get to his, but is so famous and the stuff in his tomb so fabulous! Absolutely amazing. It’s funny funny because you know you know of King Tut, but you don’t know why really, so that’s why. (also know that Cleopatra wasn’t Egyptain! Fyi, just awesome) I love museums so I had a great time walking around for about 2 hours and looking at what I could.

After another big lunch we headed back on the bus, I bought a book on Egyptian art and history so I read that, listened to my ipod and looked out the window. I loved it and I loved Egypt. I did just a bit of shopping in Alexandria and walked just a bit outside the port as we got back after 5 – I found an internet café and was swindled into calling my mom on the street for 3 minuets for 5 dollars, but it was good because we at least got to say goodbye this time. This is my shortest entry so far… and I wrote it all in one day, I don’t know what’s going on! I need to start prepping for Turkey I guess. I’m writing this after starting Nietzsche in my philosophy class today. Pretty interesting asking what it means to be great and the Pharos striving to create monuments to human greatness and to Gods and what is modern man’s great life? Sitting in front of the TV eating Pringles and drinking beer, about simple pleasures, not too much pain – not aspiring to human greatness, not aspiring to be remembered or do anything… I mean it’s not as bad as all that but… it was interesting to be talking about that in my class while I was writing, so I definitely had a reaction.

I’ll be getting a few more Egypt pictures together like I said. Also the Halloween and Sea Olympics pictures. I’m looking through my recommended lists for Turkey and my Istanbul book. I have a test the day we get back so I should do some studying now, and I don’t really know what I’m doing I’m worried my friends and I have different turkey agendas, I don’t want to not do turkey to the fullest. We do already have our airplane tickets for Croatia – 2 flights for 60$ total, we’ll be in Dubrovnik, then going to split, flying to the capital city to hang out with a friend of Jess’s who lives there for the weekend, then back to Dubrovnik the last day, it’s going to be awesome. I found out today the boy I really liked has a girlfriend!! :( her name is Jessica and they’ve been dating for 2 years and he thinks that he “got really lucky” in… finding her or whatever. Oh! alas my shipboard love is all a lie. :( it’s actually incredibly depressing. What am I doing with my life!? Haha going to Turkey, now that it’s past midnight, tomorrow! That’s amazing. Must go to bed because I have architecture early tomorrow and a lot of planning and cleaning to do! My room is a pit. <3
Wow, just as I was finishing this we were sailing through a lightening storm, I went out to the back to watch, saw some seriously close lightening, I’m disappointed because I headed for the front of the ship where I assumed it would be better but in route it got AMAZING, and then we drove right into huge hail and wind and everyone came running for their lives back in and I got really wet not even outside. So I missed the big lightening but went and stood in the back when the rain let up a bit and the lightening was so beautiful it felt like my heart could break! Ha, but yeah, so amazing. : )

Something else I should mention about Egypt is the high level of security! You could bring any liquids you want on the plane and all that, which makes complete sense and we should be allowed to do that in the US, and I am very glad my sunscreen didn’t get take away, though I should have used it more, bbuuutt at every hotel you had to walk through a metal detector, and there were drug dogs and scanners that check out every car that pulls into a hotel and there is a very efficient tourism police – our group got our own bodyguard man or two that went with us everywhere, sat in the front of our bus and carried a huge gun. So maybe I have false travelers’ security or whatever but I never felt scared much, I think that the main purpose of the tourism police is that when some bad people see us they obviously see a bus of money and just this guy’s presence is a deterrent rather than a necessity. In the early 90’s there were some bombing and tourist targeted attacks, so, I’m still here and the most political discourse I got into was with two separate guys, one at the airport, one a toothless tomb curator guy in the valley of the kings asking me if I like president Bush by giving a thumbs up and asking “George Bush?”. I didn’t really know what to say because I definitely wasn’t going to be like “He’s great!” but I wondered what saying I didn’t like him would mean in a place where political criticism of their politics doesn’t really happen, I ended up going with a shaking my hand around a bit and then giving a thumbs down with a shrug like face. Haha, the curator – a really cool guy by the way – had a very positive reaction, slapping me on the back and laughing and agreeing and all that, the airport guy was like “why you don’t like George Bush?” but I think he agreed with me and I was overwhelmed and had to figure out how to get my boarding pass and ran away from him kind of. Haha. it was interesting because a number of SASers died their hair dark and we all occasionally pretended to be from somewhere else because it was just easier! Saying you were from America definitely got a very strong reaction because it’s just abnormal, most the tourists are Russian, and the rest are Egyptian or European. People would chase you down at haggle at you more and all that. Very interesting on what it might mean feeling like you have to misrepresent yourself.

Next stop Turkey! I didn’t get the Visa so I think I’ll be staying in Istanbul all 5 days, but we’ll see I guess! I’ll let you know though. : )