After several cancellations and changes my flight to Cairo got completely confusing and although I thought I could get there without having to overnight anywhere along the route I ended up having to stay the night in Kuala Lumpur airport. The plane had arrived at the large Terminal One and my connecting flight to Kathmandu was from the smaller Terminal Two. When I found I had to stay overnight I went to the only airport hotel there and found it to be an expensive place with only deluxe rooms on offer. So I returned to terminal one and found a capsule hotel in the airport. It was a wonderful futuristic colour coded maze of sleeping boxes on two levels. It reminded me of a Brancusi prison but I loved it.
I had hoped to leave the airport and visit a Buddhist cave just outside Kuala Lumpur but in the end I was advised by the tourist information people that it was not a good idea just in case anything delayed my return. So I hung around ate some very good airport food and even had a beer. My flight was among ones use by migrant workers on their way to the middle east many of them wearing the same coloured T-shirts or baseball caps presumably so they can be identified they got lost in the crowd.
When I got to Kathmandu I was surprised to find the airport had not really changed much since I remember it almost half a century ago. The place was absolutely packed with lots of migrant workers and their families seeing them off. These workers were not organised into identifiable groups like those in Malaysia. Instead it was chaos. I had to push my way through the crowds and discover my way to the departure area which was just above the Arrivals hall but meant having to enter Nepal to make the short walk to reach it.
My seat was next to a couple with a six month old baby which cried throughout the night as we flew towards Cairo. I didn’t really mind it was the luck of the draw and young children cry. There have been plenty of times when I felt like crying myself. But it did mean I arrived very tired and also slightly sick from something I’d eaten.
I needed a Visa to get into Egypt and had been advised to apply online. The online application was one of the worst I’ve seen and when I finally finished it and paid my money I later received an email saying that he’s been rejected because the clarity of the passport photograph was not good enough. I knew I could get a Visa on arrival but was nevertheless a little nervous because of the problems I had had with my online application. When I arrived in Cairo without a Visa it was a while before I realised where I had to go to get one. I asked a couple of people but they just pointed me vaguely in the direction of some counters belonging to banks. Then I noticed beneath the bank counters the sign saying visas. But they would not take card payment and I didn’t have enough US dollars so reluctantly the person behind the desk took my British pounds and short changed me. There was no filling in forms, photocopying my passport or anything like that. They simply took my money and handed me a slip of paper saying Visa, and that was it. The oddest Visa application I have ever seen and presumedly just a moneymaking device. It was around midday when I arrived and I’d ordered a taxi via the hotel to take me there. So I was really pleased to find my driver waiting. He seemed pleasant enough man and chatted about all the things we could see as we drove across town to reach my hotel in Giza. He stopped bought some little bread like snacks and offered me some. We arrived at my hotel and I hand it was down a very seedy looking alleyway not at all like looked in the pictures when I booked it. After we got there my driver demanded a tip on top of the rather pricey fair I’d paid already. He didn’t get one. I would have used him the next day to take me into town to see the museum but I don’t like being tricked into giving tips or having them demanded. When I entered the hotel there are three young men hanging around the desk. I signed in and paid for two nights. I was exhausted and just wanted to get to my room but before I was given my key I was given a hard sell on the various tours the hotel offered. I had to insist again and again that I just wanted to sleep. The room itself was a little scruffy otherwise fine, very good hot water shower and had air conditioning but the view from the window was spectacular. Just over the top of some buildings still being constructed were the pyramids glowing in the sunlight.
Later after I and had some sleep I went down to the reception and ask for some help to find a cash machine. I was pressured do use their friends to change my money but I insisted I wanted to go to the bank. They asked a young boy to show me the way and he took me to a money changer at first. I insisted I wanted a real bank and he took me further on to something like a bank but without the conventional ATMs for withdrawing money. Still very tired I just returned to my room and slept. The following morning I breakfasted on the roof of the hotel and then at 7 am I set off to walk to the pyramids and find somewhere to get some money. It turned out is it there were some proper ATMs belonging to the big banks just a little further on from the place I had been taken the day before. I was able to buy entry to the pyramids with my card and once inside there were very few other people around as it was early morning and I had the whole place almost to myself. It was an extraordinary experience and I don’t think I could’ve found a better way of seeing the pyramids. Although I hadn’t to write ticket I was able to go inside the pyramid of Kufu by slipping the guardian a few notes and being sworn to absolute secrecy. There was little to actually see inside the pyramid but the long descent and they empty and decorated rooms nevertheless gave you something the feeling of what it must have been like to have descended into darkness and discovered chambers packed with grave goods and perhaps even a mummy in its sarcophagus.
As I was leaving all the tour buses began to arrive along with all the tour guide, the camel rides, the little horse and carts stop. The whole tourist circus.
After the pyramids I found a shisha cafe and drank mint tea. It also had a good Internet connection and like my hotel where I can hardly send a text message. And I wondered around the streets a little had an excellent mango juice, came back to the hotel slept and wrote this.
Tomorrow I have put a different and I hope better hotel close to the Egyptian Museum.
My new hotel was just opposite the museum and on the second floor of an old block of apartments and offices with a wide grubby staircase and a lift that only sometimes worked. The room was clean and bright with a tiny balcony but not cheap. The only downside was the poor internet connection.
I was disappointed with the Cairo Museum. Because of its fame and the priceless artefacts it houses I was expecting something like the British Museum, The Louvre or the Pergamon. Instead it was a Museum from the 1940s. Very poor labels and signage, no internet access, no pleasant cafe you could retreat to. There were café’s outside selling overpriced and poor quality food and drink. I ordered a lemon tea and was given a plastic bottle of lemon flavour tea. The collection was at times chaotic with empty cases and artefacts left lying on the floor. People were touching the sculptures and having pictures taken with arms around them. It was almost obligatory to pay for a human guide but I did not want to; I knew what I wanted to see. The Narmer Tablet, the statues of Akhenaten, the new treasures from Tanis and of course those of Tutankhamen. The mask of Tutankhamen lived up to expectations but was in a small room with other finds from the tomb and well exhibited, unlike Njephrattiti’s head in the Pergamon. I had just turned away from staring with awe at the golden death mask of Tutankhamen, which has to be one of the most famous faces in the world, when I heard a loud American voice behind me say, Who’s that? Her Guide replied Tutankhamen. Who? Tutankhamen. Oh, whatever.
I came away felling the whole museum field as if it had been put together by a group of bored teenagers.
My attempts to take the easy way out and go on a tour to Luxor came to nothing so I tried to book my room for another night. I was told there was only a more expensive room available, which I doubted, but I had little choice. The room was almost identical to the one I’d moved from and it turned out that it did not include the meagre breakfast the was included in the first booking. I walked to the station to buy a ticket for a train to Luxor the next day. Finding the ticket office was not easy as No sings were to be seen until a few yards from the office itself. I could not buy an ordinary ticket but had to buy a foreigner’s ticket and was told there were no tickets for Luxor and that I would have to but one for Aswan, even though the train stopped at Luxor. Again I suspected it was some kind of scam. The only pleasant incident was when a friendly policeman showed me the correct entrance to the part of the station I need Ed and took me to a Tourist Information Office. The woman there, who could speak no English, gave me a useful map and brochure and was so delighted that a customer had finally found her she took my photo.
I left my hotel and arrived at the station an hour and a half early hoping to have time for a coffee. Finding my train looked easy. There was a big departure board with platforms and times on it, including my train on platform two. Luckily I decided to check and found that my platform was not the one on the sign. There were no platform numbers I could see, even in Arabic. After half an hour of searching I found my train on platform eleven. I suspect that there had been some confusion about the Roman numerals 2 and II. At last I got on the train and there was the problem of finding my carriage and seat. Naturally there was someone in my seat who pointed me to the next carriage where there was a vacant seat 21 so I assumed it had been my mistake until at the first stop at Giza young woman got on to find me in her seat. So with the help of the conductor we had to go and turf the man out the seat he had usurped.
I am now writing this in my very shabby first class VIP carriage rolling south up the Nile valley past fields of maize, beans and rice fringed by date palms, through earth brick towns of three storey houses, almost every one in the process of having an extra storey built on
I had hoped to leave the airport and visit a Buddhist cave just outside Kuala Lumpur but in the end I was advised by the tourist information people that it was not a good idea just in case anything delayed my return. So I hung around ate some very good airport food and even had a beer. My flight was among ones use by migrant workers on their way to the middle east many of them wearing the same coloured T-shirts or baseball caps presumably so they can be identified they got lost in the crowd.
When I got to Kathmandu I was surprised to find the airport had not really changed much since I remember it almost half a century ago. The place was absolutely packed with lots of migrant workers and their families seeing them off. These workers were not organised into identifiable groups like those in Malaysia. Instead it was chaos. I had to push my way through the crowds and discover my way to the departure area which was just above the Arrivals hall but meant having to enter Nepal to make the short walk to reach it.
My seat was next to a couple with a six month old baby which cried throughout the night as we flew towards Cairo. I didn’t really mind it was the luck of the draw and young children cry. There have been plenty of times when I felt like crying myself. But it did mean I arrived very tired and also slightly sick from something I’d eaten.
I needed a Visa to get into Egypt and had been advised to apply online. The online application was one of the worst I’ve seen and when I finally finished it and paid my money I later received an email saying that he’s been rejected because the clarity of the passport photograph was not good enough. I knew I could get a Visa on arrival but was nevertheless a little nervous because of the problems I had had with my online application. When I arrived in Cairo without a Visa it was a while before I realised where I had to go to get one. I asked a couple of people but they just pointed me vaguely in the direction of some counters belonging to banks. Then I noticed beneath the bank counters the sign saying visas. But they would not take card payment and I didn’t have enough US dollars so reluctantly the person behind the desk took my British pounds and short changed me. There was no filling in forms, photocopying my passport or anything like that. They simply took my money and handed me a slip of paper saying Visa, and that was it. The oddest Visa application I have ever seen and presumedly just a moneymaking device. It was around midday when I arrived and I’d ordered a taxi via the hotel to take me there. So I was really pleased to find my driver waiting. He seemed pleasant enough man and chatted about all the things we could see as we drove across town to reach my hotel in Giza. He stopped bought some little bread like snacks and offered me some. We arrived at my hotel and I hand it was down a very seedy looking alleyway not at all like looked in the pictures when I booked it. After we got there my driver demanded a tip on top of the rather pricey fair I’d paid already. He didn’t get one. I would have used him the next day to take me into town to see the museum but I don’t like being tricked into giving tips or having them demanded. When I entered the hotel there are three young men hanging around the desk. I signed in and paid for two nights. I was exhausted and just wanted to get to my room but before I was given my key I was given a hard sell on the various tours the hotel offered. I had to insist again and again that I just wanted to sleep. The room itself was a little scruffy otherwise fine, very good hot water shower and had air conditioning but the view from the window was spectacular. Just over the top of some buildings still being constructed were the pyramids glowing in the sunlight.
Later after I and had some sleep I went down to the reception and ask for some help to find a cash machine. I was pressured do use their friends to change my money but I insisted I wanted to go to the bank. They asked a young boy to show me the way and he took me to a money changer at first. I insisted I wanted a real bank and he took me further on to something like a bank but without the conventional ATMs for withdrawing money. Still very tired I just returned to my room and slept. The following morning I breakfasted on the roof of the hotel and then at 7 am I set off to walk to the pyramids and find somewhere to get some money. It turned out is it there were some proper ATMs belonging to the big banks just a little further on from the place I had been taken the day before. I was able to buy entry to the pyramids with my card and once inside there were very few other people around as it was early morning and I had the whole place almost to myself. It was an extraordinary experience and I don’t think I could’ve found a better way of seeing the pyramids. Although I hadn’t to write ticket I was able to go inside the pyramid of Kufu by slipping the guardian a few notes and being sworn to absolute secrecy. There was little to actually see inside the pyramid but the long descent and they empty and decorated rooms nevertheless gave you something the feeling of what it must have been like to have descended into darkness and discovered chambers packed with grave goods and perhaps even a mummy in its sarcophagus.
As I was leaving all the tour buses began to arrive along with all the tour guide, the camel rides, the little horse and carts stop. The whole tourist circus.
After the pyramids I found a shisha cafe and drank mint tea. It also had a good Internet connection and like my hotel where I can hardly send a text message. And I wondered around the streets a little had an excellent mango juice, came back to the hotel slept and wrote this.
Tomorrow I have put a different and I hope better hotel close to the Egyptian Museum.
My new hotel was just opposite the museum and on the second floor of an old block of apartments and offices with a wide grubby staircase and a lift that only sometimes worked. The room was clean and bright with a tiny balcony but not cheap. The only downside was the poor internet connection.
I was disappointed with the Cairo Museum. Because of its fame and the priceless artefacts it houses I was expecting something like the British Museum, The Louvre or the Pergamon. Instead it was a Museum from the 1940s. Very poor labels and signage, no internet access, no pleasant cafe you could retreat to. There were café’s outside selling overpriced and poor quality food and drink. I ordered a lemon tea and was given a plastic bottle of lemon flavour tea. The collection was at times chaotic with empty cases and artefacts left lying on the floor. People were touching the sculptures and having pictures taken with arms around them. It was almost obligatory to pay for a human guide but I did not want to; I knew what I wanted to see. The Narmer Tablet, the statues of Akhenaten, the new treasures from Tanis and of course those of Tutankhamen. The mask of Tutankhamen lived up to expectations but was in a small room with other finds from the tomb and well exhibited, unlike Njephrattiti’s head in the Pergamon. I had just turned away from staring with awe at the golden death mask of Tutankhamen, which has to be one of the most famous faces in the world, when I heard a loud American voice behind me say, Who’s that? Her Guide replied Tutankhamen. Who? Tutankhamen. Oh, whatever.
I came away felling the whole museum field as if it had been put together by a group of bored teenagers.
My attempts to take the easy way out and go on a tour to Luxor came to nothing so I tried to book my room for another night. I was told there was only a more expensive room available, which I doubted, but I had little choice. The room was almost identical to the one I’d moved from and it turned out that it did not include the meagre breakfast the was included in the first booking. I walked to the station to buy a ticket for a train to Luxor the next day. Finding the ticket office was not easy as No sings were to be seen until a few yards from the office itself. I could not buy an ordinary ticket but had to buy a foreigner’s ticket and was told there were no tickets for Luxor and that I would have to but one for Aswan, even though the train stopped at Luxor. Again I suspected it was some kind of scam. The only pleasant incident was when a friendly policeman showed me the correct entrance to the part of the station I need Ed and took me to a Tourist Information Office. The woman there, who could speak no English, gave me a useful map and brochure and was so delighted that a customer had finally found her she took my photo.
I left my hotel and arrived at the station an hour and a half early hoping to have time for a coffee. Finding my train looked easy. There was a big departure board with platforms and times on it, including my train on platform two. Luckily I decided to check and found that my platform was not the one on the sign. There were no platform numbers I could see, even in Arabic. After half an hour of searching I found my train on platform eleven. I suspect that there had been some confusion about the Roman numerals 2 and II. At last I got on the train and there was the problem of finding my carriage and seat. Naturally there was someone in my seat who pointed me to the next carriage where there was a vacant seat 21 so I assumed it had been my mistake until at the first stop at Giza young woman got on to find me in her seat. So with the help of the conductor we had to go and turf the man out the seat he had usurped.
I am now writing this in my very shabby first class VIP carriage rolling south up the Nile valley past fields of maize, beans and rice fringed by date palms, through earth brick towns of three storey houses, almost every one in the process of having an extra storey built on
The Valley of the Kings and Karnak