Shisha Monday

Sleeping on the trains last night went really well. I did end up having the compartment to myself, so I got a pretty relaxed and uninterrupted sleep. We got into Aswan by around 12pm, so 15 hours on the train. We transferred to our hotel, freshener up, I used the internet briefly, and then it was off to see the Aswan dam mad the huge man made lake behind it. It's very big! It has enough water in it to supply 80 million people for 20 Yeats, apparently. It wasn't very exciting, though, just a dam and a lake. Dams kind of freak me out, so I was happy to leave. Then we caught a small boat to a tiny island with a temple on it. The temple used to be just off the island, but when they built the dam, it went underwater, so they relocated it after about 60 years. It was from the Greek and Roman times, and covered in carvings and hieroglyphs. We were there while the sun was setting, and it was beautiful!

Then we came back to the hotel quickly, and then went for a short walk around the spice market across the road. It had a lot of amazing smelling spices! But nothing I wanted to buy. Then we caught a boat to an island in the Nile... oh, I forgot to mention the hotel is right on the edge of the Nile, its gorgeous! Anyway, we went to an island with a Nubian restaurant on it. Nubians are the native people of the area. We had a selection of Egyptian salad type things, rice with cinnamon, and beef tagine for dinner. It was very nice!

Then we caught the boat back and our tour guide organised a van for some of us to go to a traditional coffee shop. Nearly everyone went, and the guide paid for the whole thing himself, even the coffee shop! At the coffee shop, which was an old Nubian house on top of a hill with sand floors, I had a mint tea and tried smoking the shisha. There were four flavours, but they all tasted the same to me, just sort of sweet. Having never smoked anything before in my life, I have nothing to compare it to. It wasn't horrible, but wasn't anything special. I certainly wouldn't rush to do it again. But, I'm glad I tried it :)

And that is all for today. I'm really tired now. In the morning most of the GroupWise doing a six hour round bus trip to a temple, but I'm staying behind. I'm going to sleep in, have a swim in the pool and organise my stuff for going on the sailing boat for two nights. Sounds much better than getting up at 3am to see ANOTHER temple and spend 6 more hours on a bus!

Pyramids on a Sunday

Well, I ended up having a whole room to myself last night, and it looks like I'm getting sleeper compartment to myself too. Old me would think that was great, but new me isn't so sure. You dent have anyone to talk to! But, on the other hand, there's no chance of crazies. Speaking of crazies, everyone in the tour seems nice. There's quite a mix kf younger and older people, but no older married couples. There's a few older ladies, one who's travelling alone and a couple who are traveling with their daughters. There're a few younger couples, and a couple of single traveller guys, making up a group of 16. Much smaller than contiki! We've had good fun today, and have just set of on the sleeper train for Aswan.

Today I woke up, had a pretty good breakfast at the hostel, met up with the whole group, and then went to see some pyramids! We first went to the great pyramid, which is the biggest pyramid in the world. We were actually able to climb on it! Because of the revolution and political unrest in Egypt, not to mention the bad rep Muslims get, tourism here is way down, so many of the sites were rather deserted. Awesome for us! So, we got to climb on the pyramid and take lots of photos. Then we went to a slightly smaller one and were able to climb down a very small tunnel into the heart of the pyramid. That was cool! Then we went to a plateau in the Sahara where we're could see all 3 pyramids in the Giza area, took lots of photos, plus a group pic. Then I rode a camel! It was amazing. Camels are actually very tall animals, who walk in a very jerky way. I'm glad I only had to ride it for 15 minutes, I'd be pretty sore otherwise! As it is, my camel decided it really like another camel and walked so close to it my foot got a bit squashed. Now I have a bruised ankle on the same leg as my sore knee :)

Then we went to a place and saw them make traditional papyrus. They had some amazing paintings on sale, painted on the papyrus, so I bought a couple. I'm not buying many souvenirs this trip, but what I am buying I think is really quality stuff that the places I'm going are famous for. My painting in Rome, my ring in Florence, my glass necklace in Venice, and now papyrus in Cairo. Very cool!

After that we drove 45 minutes to the step pyramid, which is the oldest pyramid in the world. It's nearly 5000 years old! In that area there was also and amazing tomb that still had really well preserved wall art carved in the stone walls. In some areas there was even some colour preserved, and the hieroglyphs were fascinating. That may have been my favourite thing in the whole day. Sometimes the huge magnificent things are almost too overwhelming, and it's the smaller details that make a more lasting impression. The pyramids were simply amazing, though.

It was about 3.30 by then, and we got taken to a restaurant for a Kate lunch. We had mixed grilled meats, Egyptian style, fresh Egyptian bread, babaghanoush, and fresh mango juice. It was all nice, but the mango juice was so so so good!

Then, it was back to the hotel to freshen up before riding to the train station, boarding the trains, and here I am. We got a train dinner, which was like the meals you get on an aeroplane. My little room on the train has a door and a little sink, and towels, and everything! For someone who's only experience of sleeper trains is China, this is luxury! I'm quite easily impressed, it seems :)

So, today has been a lovely day. I'm hoping to get an internet connection tomorrow morning at out next hotel. If not, I'll have to go and find a coffee shop with free WiFi in the afternoon.

That's all in terms of activities. Some of the group is going to hang out in the club adjust now, but it's nearly 11pm, so I'm going to try and sleep.

In terms of deep and meaningful thoughts, not much! I've been finally too busy to overanalyse :) it is getting a bit tricky to answer all those questions people ask when you just meet them, though. Where are you from is easy, but where do you live is hard. I don't live anywhere right now. What do you do is easy, where do you work, the answer is nowhere, which weird people out. Where are you going next is easy, how long, what will you do there and why is not! Um, dunno how long, no plans of what to do, and well, I meet this guy a week ago... so I have no home, no job, and am travelling to a country with no plan and no set duration to see a guy I met in Italy. It makes perfect sense to me, but I think it sounds kind of odd to others.

Ok, bed time!

Started the tour Saturday

I checked out of my central Cairo hostel this morning. I'm not sorry to see the end of that place. Tiger print bedspreads, loud street noises and a bunch of huge bugs that crawled out the drain in the bathroom every night. There's a reason some of these places are cheap :) the new hotel is utter luxurious in comparison. I've not time to enjoy the huge gardens, gym, or pool, but I am enjoying the clean bathroom and double bed. It seems I've got a room to myself tonight. That or the other person isn't arriving until late and is going to wake me up in the middle of the night.

Anyway, while today is day 1, we don't actually do anything until tomorrow. I was lucky enough to get here in time to go on an afternoon tour of Cairo with four other people who are also on the tour. Apparently there'll be about 17 people all up, but I guess they hadn't arrived yet. The tour was good, but it was nearly entirely look at churches and mosques. I'm so over religious buildings after Italy! The other four people were Australian and were nice, but not overly friendly or anything. I think it'll be hard to beat, or even match, the social aspect of the contiki trip. The more I think about that trip, the more I realised I enjoyed it. I'd definitely consider doing another in the future.

So, religious sites in Cairo... really really old churches and mosques and stuff. Very beautiful, very dusty. From the van I also saw pyramids and the Nile! The pyramidal are first on the list for tomorrow, and I'm pretty excited to see them. I could have gone to a light show tonight where they shine multicolored lights on them, but it sounded pretty tacky. I'd rather see them normally, I think.

Only problem with this hotel is that they don't have free WiFi. I mean seriously, in this day and age, who makes you pay for WiFi with your room? I can pay $20 a night and get it free, or $180 and have to pay? Cheap buggers. But, I think I'll buy some time tomorrow morning, because tomorrow night we're in a sleeper train, and I want to hear from my mum and stuff.

That's all :)

Hiding in my room Friday

I've been inside most of the day today, but it got to lunchtime, and I needed, well, lunch. I figured if I walked to a bakery I'd seen in the opposite direction from the protests, it'd be fine. I had a little wander around, then went to the bakery. It was really flash, but all the prices were in Arabic. Still, I picked out a couple of nice looking things mad bought them. I got what I guess is an Egyptian version of pizza bread with different spices and stuff on it. It's really nice! And then what seems to be deepfried doughnut, soaked in syrup and filled with cream and pistachios. So sweet, but nice too. And it all cost me under a dollar!

But anyway, then I went to leave the bakery, and there was a protest march going on right past the door. No one seemed worried like last time, it was just a big bunch of people walking sown the road chanting, clapping, and waving flags. Still, I didn't really want to be anywhere near it, so I justvwaited for it to be gone and turned down another street and made my way back home. Reports predict increasing numbers of marches and probably escalating violence as the afternoon continues, so imma just stay here in my hostel. Tomorrow's hotel is ages away from here, out in its own grounds and stuff, so I'll be pleased to get out there. Though, I feel safe enough here, just not outside :)

In other news, Matt booked my US tickets! I'll be there in the evening of the 19th of December!

Sam's five things about staying inside and not getting injured in political riots:

1) it gives you heaps of time to email all your friends and family and facebook stalk everyone you know. And everyone they know.

2) I'm really really clean now. Showering becomes fun.

3) the air in my room doesn't smell like cigarette smoke or car fumes and it's nice and cool.

4) maybe my knee will finally get its act together.

5) I'm going to REALLY appreciate this tour! Even if it sucks and the people on it are horrible, at least I'll be doing something and not alone. Though, the people must be pretty ok sorts to be travelling to Egypt just now.

What I want (countering the guilt)

WARNING! Introspective crappy personal post ahead.

I feel incredibly guilty about Andy. And I feel guilty towards both myself, and to a certain degree, Frank, for feeling guilty in the first place. What a mess of emotions.

I fell so quickly and completely out of love with Andy. All it took were some conversations with other people about him and my issues, and all of a sudden it was gone. When Frank's said to me something like 'so why are you with this guy?' and all I could come up with was that he was nice. Which is unfair. he has a lot of excellent qualities. What was telling was that I couldn't/can't think of them. What I admired most about him was his strength, and when he broke up with me because of his parents, it destroyed something. I know he tried to fix it, but I think my respect was already too far gone. What's a rationalisation, and what's real? This is not a list of what was wrong with that relationship. Perhaps when Andy told me that it wasn't that I didn't want to get married, I just didn't want to marry him, he was right. We'll come back to this marriage issue another day.

But, here's what I do want. And it'd do me well to keep this in mind as I move forward.

I started writing a list. This is Sam's five things, after all, and who doesn't love a good list? But I think what I want can be summed up more simply than a list.

I want a partner.

I've never really felt that before. I think my mum and dad have it, but I haven't. Up until Andy, the guys I dated were not my equal in some way. They were happy to let me do the work, or the thinking, or set the pace, the tone, whatever. Not that they were less than me, I just never felt like we were working together as a team. I want to be a team. Andy was too far the other way. He wanted all the control. He told me once he thought we could never work out because I was too strong. There was no sense of sharing or joint decision making, really he wanted to make the decisions and have me be happy with them.

I'd say my family is a model of what I want, which gives me hope I can have it too (or again). Mum and dad are partners with different strengths and ideas who work hard together. Our family as a whole is a team, each putting one another first when need be and working together. Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow, and sometimes you're carried. Idealised, yes, but basically true.

So, now all I need to do is find my partner. Right?

I smell like cigarettes Thursday

Today I decided to spend most of the day pretending I wasn't alone and scared in Cairo. I went to the City Stars shopping mall way over the other side of the city. It's the biggest mall they have, and was pretty nice. They had all stuff I recognised, and no one bothered me at all. Not an Egyptian experience at all, but that wasn't what I wanted anyway. So far I'm not super keen on this whole Egypt thing, and there's supposed to be some more problems tomorrow, so I'll probably just hang around close to my hostel for the day.

I did have one 'you're in Egypt' experience today, and that was my taxi ride back from the mall. There are no seat belts in the back seats of cars here, so you have to brave that, and the traffic is crazy. Then I realised that my taxi driver had a tv for a rearview mirror and was watching 'The Avenger' while driving, and smoking, despite the big no smoking sticker on the front window. He also had some sort of gangster rap/dub step CD playing rather loudly, and then proceeded to get lost in the streets around my hostel and drive around asking for directions. Which cost me like an exta $3! I'm feeling a bit sick now from the driving and smoke, but I'm ok. On the bright side I got a couple of nice new clothes, and some moisturiser. I don't know what's in the water of these countries, but it's harsh!

So, what else is going on? I'm inching day by day closer towards booking my tickets to the US. I think I'm going to fly direct from Cairo, but book myself a niceish hotel in a nicer area for a couple of days instead of a hostel for the time between when my tour ends and I fly out. Just to preserve my sanity.

Here's five things for Thursday:
1) I had Starbucks. It was good. I'm not sorry.

2) I had a good look around a huge Egyptian supermarket. There wasn't much weird stuff, sadly, but it was interesting.

3) I survived two taxi rides through the city. It really is best not to look.

4) I actually bought something while I was shopping :)

5) I felt safe today.

Cairo's not making a great first impression Wednesday

All I wanted to do today was go to the museum. I finally mustered up the courage to leave my hostel to brave the streets alone. I'm in the downtown area of Cairo and it's very busy, dirty, dusty and loud. I don't mind so much, you just have to be careful not to fall down the holes in the sidewalk. It's not even too hot, just t-shirt or light cardigan weather, which is nice. I haven't even been majorly hassled on the street, just a couple of people trying to talk or ask me into their shops, nothing very annoying.

The problems arose when I got down the end of the area to visit the museum. I made it down there and it's on the other side of like a billion lane highway thingies. I stopped to ponder my options and a guy asked if I was trying to get to the museum. I said yeah I was. He said 'oh, don't go right now, there's a demonstration just down there. It's very dangerous. It should be over in half an hour, come see my gold shop while you wait'. I was like... hmmmm, right, no thanks. But then I continued down the footpath and there was all this barbed wire hung across it and people in a huge crowd on the other side of the street with flags and stuff. So, I left.

I walked around for about an hour, just exploring the area. Nothing very exciting, just tiny shops and souvenir places. Then I decided to go back down and see if I could go to the museum yet. Again, I'm pondering my road crossing options and a young guys comes up and is like 'it's group time at the museum now, if you come back at 2pm the groups will be gone and the tickets will be cheaper. If you go now it'll be really crowded'. Ok, thanks. So, I went and got some lunch.

Then, at 2pm I AGAIN try to get to the museum. A guy tells me I can cross the road at the subway station, can I please come see his paintings. I tried to find the subway, failed, so had to cross the 6 billion lane highway. It wasn't so bad if you don't mind near-death experiences. So, I now made it to the same side of the road as the museum. I walk alongside it looking for the way in. The entrance is barricaded. With armed guards. Super. Yet another guy comes up and asks me where I'm going. I said I'm trying to go to the museum. And then it got scary.

He was like 'no, you have to leave here, its very dangerous... everyone else is leaving', and as he said that, people stated running away down the street, shops started closing and pulling down rolling metal doors, sirens started.... So, he leads me away down the street telling me there's a demonstration going on and it's not safe. He took my hand and rushed me across the road and down the street. People are running down the sidewalk past us, and he's going 'where is your hotel? Can you get back to your hotel?'. Then he was like 'come in this shop, you'll be safe'. I was afraid, but I wasn't going in any tiny shop with him. I was just like thanks for the help, I'm going now, ducked down the nearest smaller street leading away from the problems and walked really fast. As I got away from the main area things calmed down, and up by my hostel things seem normal. Well, I guess they are. I won't be going back down there again.

So, now I'm sick, dusty, scared, and the internet just stopped working. Bah!
What do I do now? Hide in my hostel and eat at the McDonald's across the road until my tour starts? I've got a day trip to Alexandria tomorrow, which I'll go on, but what do I do with Cairo? As I said, not a great first impression and apparently Friday is a dangerous day too.

As you can imagine, I'm not feeling very comfortable. So, scared, sick, sore knee, and don't want to get shot in the head by Muslim extremists - I think I'll just chill in my room for the afternoon. Mum, don't freak out. I'm ok.