Well we left Turkey to catch a redeye to Cairo. We arrived in our hotel at 3:30am and had to get up to be ready for 9:30 having eaten breakfast and made ourselves presentable. That morning I was looking for my camera in my small backpack that I carry around everywhere. I couldn’t find it anywhere; I tore both my small backpack and my duffle apart and started to panic. I knew it wasn’t in my big backpack because that thing is stuffed full and incredibly organized. So after a night of not sleeping enough, not being able to get money and owing people money from Turkey, I started to have an emotional breakdown.
This is the second time I have had one of these and they are inevitable in a stressful situation such as the one I am in. So the camera was nowhere to be found, and I was pretty sure that it was gypsied (stolen) in the airport. Les, my teacher let me borrow one of his extras but it was hard not to just sob while on the bus on the way to the Great Pyramids, but I was on the way to the Great Pyramids, so how upset could I be? There was nothing I could do about it. Security followed us around the entire time we were in Egypt for out safety. They blocked cars from hitting us at times. There was one complete badass that had a gigantic gun and reminded most of us of Ven Deisel. He was super smooth.
We went inside one of the smaller pyramids and saw a tomb, climbed up on part of it on the outside, rode camels to get a different view, saw The Sphinx, went to the Egyptian Museum, road the coach for 3 hours to Alexandria and PASSED OUT! The Great Pyramids of Giza are actually in the right on the edge of a city (Cairo), do not be fooled. There are buildings right off the side of the plateau where the Pyramids are located, they are not in the middle of a desert as I had assumed previous to visiting them. This day was unbelievable and definitely unforgettable, but so exhausting. And the fact that I had lost my camera right when I finally figured out how to take good pictures with it made me so frustrated on top of the fact that our guide was infuriating. He repeated himself probably 3-4 times, treated us like kindergartners or senior citizens, there isn’t much difference sometimes.
The next morning we explored Alexandria. We saw a random pillar on the middle of a rock on top of on underground library, we went to a “castle” made out of concrete that only had about 3 original pieces left on the sea front, was herded into a papyrus making store that showed us how papyrus was made and then surrounded us with salespeople to get us to buy “hand painted” papyrus and quite a few took the bait. Then we finally went to an architectural award winning library that pictures don’t do justice. The space was huge but it was terraced in such a way that each space felt intimate and never overwhelming. The ceiling had sun responsive panels to shield the correct amount of light to make the inside the perfect lighting for reading.
We then took the coach back to Cairo to get on an overnight sleeper to Aswan, Egypt that was FRIGID the entire night. That night I slept with my long underwear underneath my yoga pants, a camisole, T-shirt, fleece zip-up, North Face jacket, scarf, and hat underneath the thin covers. The food was somewhat questionable for dinner and breakfast but was hungry enough to eat it. As you may have noticed, I did not like this part of the trip much. It was a rough couple of days and I realize I am mainly complaining. But don’t get me wrong, I was still enjoying myself; just most of what happened was negative for a few days. The Pyramids were great to see and it was sweet riding a camel, but the entire time we were in these two cities, we were being hassled for money. People try to charge you for saying hi to you. They try to drag you into their stores; they follow along side of you when you are walking past. It was infuriating and that was the part I hated most about Egypt.
When arrived in Aswan the next morning we went around to a dam to see the dam fish and the dam dogs sleeping. Then we went to a temple by a small boat, then boarded our cruise ship on which we would cruise The Nile for a few days. That evening we visited a spectacularly lit temple with interesting hieroglyphics. At this point Sam, our guide had gotten a stern talking to by the teachers and had stopped herding us around and started letting us have time to sketch and wander rather than him talking to fill the time like he has had to do with previous tour groups. The next morning, we rode chariots to Edfu, a temple. But in order to walk into the temple, they forced you to walk through a bazaar. This reinforces the suspicion that all the tour guides and shop owners work together to sell the most stuff and make the most money. While walking in a man took particular interest in my and put a scarf around my neck. We were told to never accept these “gifts” because they want money, it is not a gift. I didn’t know what to do so I kept walking with the scarf on, thinking he was still back where I saw him last, then he runs up behind me and takes the white scarf that I’m wearing and replaces it with a pink one. I get to the entrance to get into the temple and the people around me are telling me to give it back or set it down. So I look around and the guy is still standing in the back of our group staring at me, so I give him the scarf and walk away. But on the way back, I decided it would be wise to walk next to Ryan a 6’9” grad student when we walked back through to get out. The guy tried to drag me into his shop, saying I promised to come back in. I kept saying I had to go, I didn’t have time and Ryan had to push him away more than once... terrifying. Luckily Ryan was there to help. Sailing on The Nile was so relaxing. I spent the afternoon doing an assignment then I decided to do some sketching on the deck, looked in the bottom of my back, and what did I see? MY CAMERA!! It had snuck underneath my trace paper pad at the bottom of my duffle, I was embarrassed, but I was glad to have my camera back. The food on the ship was great. We had a buffet most of the time with delicious soups and fruits. We would sail at times, get off the boat to see a few temples and then board again. We went into the countryside of Egypt, rode camels for almost an hour to see the agriculture and irrigation system that they use.
On the 9th, we got a more pleasant sleeper train back to Cairo, got off the train at 4:30 am and then went to the airport to go to Dubai and arrived there in the evening. Dubai… oh my. I have never seen a city like this one. Large roads with little space for a person to walk; large buildings with ridiculous architecture at times. There are malls galore, large, large malls so people can escape the blazing, summer sun. We went to three malls in the 3 days we were there. We saw the tallest building in the world, The Burj Kalifa that has just opened in the past month and we were supposed to be able to go up into it but the electrical system was down. Abu Dhabi is just like Dubai but they have left a little more room for poorly designed landscape to fill in some of the cracks between sky scrapers. The two cities are beautiful and I feel like slut when I see someone covered from head to toe with a slit to see from. We visited The Grand Mosque which is completely white. In order to enter, the women had to put on solid black burkas and black scarves to cover ourselves. Immediately we lost our identities. We had trouble recognizing who each other were unless we could see our faces. The guys in our group commented about how we were no longer ourselves, we were just “women.”
So on the afternoon of the 12th, we headed to the airport for an 8 hour flight to Singapore. With a 4 hour time change, we arrived in Singapore at 7:30 am to start touring with no rest and astounding humidity that very few of us were prepared for. We spent the entire morning getting on and off the bus to see different sites including a particularly appealing garden that had great circulation paths, trellises, and plants and flowers. I struggled to stay awake on the bus and listen to Goh, our guide as he sang to us, “olay, olay!” he would always say. We were set free at 12 noon to rest or do what we wanted. So stepped foot into the hotel room, stripped off my clothes and passed out for 5 hours until some went to see a sweet bridge and pedestrian path. Instead I did a couple of homework assignments and took a shower. Others went to the beach or to the pool and somehow managed to forget how close we were to the equator and did not apply the correct amount of sun block or any at all on some accounts. We were scheduled to leave for the airport at 3:30 am, so a 2:30 wakeup call was in order. Seeing an opportunity to get a little more sleep, I went to bed at 11 to get in a “nap” while others went to celebrate the Chinese New Year with fireworks. I would have liked to go, but I have seen fireworks and I needed sleep if I were going to function at all the next day. Some were quite… brave? and went and did all of this stuff and did not sleep at all. But I do imagine they were always asleep on the bus instead of listening to the guide, we make our choices.
So we left Singapore for Angkor, Cambodia at 7:45 am. At this airport I was able to have another emotional breakdown because it had been 2 weeks without internet and we had some in the terminal. My computer, as great as it is (Artie), could not seem to muster up the genius to connect to the internet. I would have been fine without it but the hope of having it and then the disappointment of not having it was devastating. So I started to cry in the airport, trying to stifle my emotions just like the past two times this has happened. Feeling sorry for me, two of my fellow travelers let me borrow their computers to be able to at least check my email and wish my brother a happy birthday. And then we set off for Cambodia.
Oh…my…God Cambodia is hot. 95 to 97 degrees with 80% humidity. So incredibly hot. Somehow we survived two days, three temples, and one floating village. We went to see Angkor Wat which is the largest religious monument in the world and is a temple complex with the largest incline of stairs I have yet to see. Tiny tread, large riser. We went to a floating village by boat and saw all of the house boats that float around according to where the fish are at a certain time of year. The lake floods in June to about 20’ higher than when I was there and is greater than the size of the entire county of Singapore. We stopped by a tourist boat where we could buy a few trinkets and I got to hold a very tame python. I had never held a snake before and the feeling of its muscles moving below its smooth scales was quite an experience. Later that night we all went out for a group dinner to celebrate a few birthdays to a buffet and a dancing show. The buffet was… alright. The dancing was interesting. It was a lot of slow movements to Asian music that symbolized a lot of ancient stories I imagine because the commentary was in Cambodian.
I had to borrow a guys shorts because they wouldn't let women wearing shorts up into the tower, luckily there was a guy wearing two? No idea why, but it worked out to my benefit.
The next morning we left for the airport at 5:30 am and flew to Hong Kong eventually after a layover in some random city in Cambodia where we were forced to take ourselves and all of our stuff off of the plane, wait in line for security to rape us and throw away our water, and then get directly back on the plane…… worthless. We had a 5 hour flight with no complementary water or food. Everything cost money, it was like flying an American flight, except we at least get a cup of water. Jet Star…. Boo! So I am currently in Hong Kong and am about to leave tomorrow (or today depending on what time it is there, I am 13 hours ahead of you at this point) and am going to Shanghai, China. Hong Kong is great. I really like the city; there are many islands and peninsulas, and nooks and crannies to explore. It’s clean, people are not threatening and there is a lot of life to the city. We saw the building that Batman jumped off of in The Dark Knight and we tried to figure out which building he landed on, but that was inconclusive. There is a lot of green, they compare themselves with Singapore a lot, Singapore has 3 million people and Hong Kong has 7 million, wow. So for all of you that were worried or simply just curious, that is what I have been doing. I’m sorry it is so long, it was quite necessary, it has been a very fast paced couple of weeks and I hope that I could have spaced out the detail and been able to spread this information a little more evenly. I hope all of you are doing well and please leave comments or questions. Zai jain (goodbye in Chinese).
