Terrorist bombings, Ramadan and an attempt to fit the whole of an arabian country into the kids five day school break – yes you guessed, it is the Forsyth family whirlwind tour of Egypt.
Cairo – day 1 and day 2
We flew from Edinburgh into Paris and Mike flew out with a 70 quid decorative bottle of XO brandy to fortify the alcohol free days of Ramadan, sadly this caused a little more trouble than it was worth as it showed up on every security scan as very similar to a chemical bomb and Mike was searched at every occasion under the trembling trigger fingers of the armed guards.
We flew into Cairo (where the hotel touts are operating within the secured area and just about as you get off the plane), and we were whisked to the ‘Michael Palin tried to sleep here’ Windsor Hotel, which is overtrading on the Palin link but has the best bar in Cairo and some very seedy cafes selling sheesha smokes. A visit to the pyramids was on the sunrise schedule and we got there surprisingly by stepping on the wonderful Cairo underground which deposits you in slum filled Giza suburbs where we grabbed a taxi to take us to the empty desert setting (it was very early) of the pyramids (which emerged out of a side street that we turned into).
The Sphinx (with shiny paws), the great pyramid of Cheops (but not allowed to climb up it), photographs with armed guard (how could you refuse), turned a corner to see 50 coach loads of tourists marching towards the pyramid tunnel entrance so we diverted for a walk across the desert to the next pyramid and hence to the next one which had the distinction of being the September 11th attack of ancient times, whilst snarling at all the camel touts menacingly offering cheap rides. And back to the underground in a flash before the sun made walking impossible and still more tourists are rushing in – have these people not heard of terrorist attacks?
We lunched on top of the Cairo Tower, built using american money to snub the americans – the money was destined for building weapons or feeding the populace but instead ended up feeding us in its rotating restaurant. Suitably fortified it was time for an assault on the Egyptian Museum – where all the treasures of Tutankhamen lie as well as a good days worth of viewing ancient artifacts, but not photographing them as all cameras regardless of size, cost or love are exchanged for a bit of wood with some rough arabic writing on. Compressed naturally into an hours jog before it closes early for Ramadan – but a wonderful museum. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the Islamic part of Cairo and watching the time shifted macabre mannequins in the clothes stores, before retiring to a sheesha bar in an attempt to breathe easier through the smoke rather than through the Cairo smog.
We had a midnight flight so no sleeping that night – and landed (if you call what woke us all up a landing) at Aswan sometime after three am to be greeted by an empty airport and no taxis.
—-
Aswan – Day 3
3:15am Mike was thrown out of the ladies toilet by a japanese woman who was fresh from the sumo wrestling training camp – who on earth designs two toilet doors together with one having a large queue of woman and makes the other one a ladies toilet whilst hiding the mens toilet at the other end of the airport? The architect of the Aswan airport – that’s who.
3:20am Armed Tourist Policeman throws us out of the airport building but calls a taxi for us – a dodgy looking Nubian whisks us to the Old Cataract Hotel being the only hotel that we read about on the flight.
3:30am Armed guards at the Old Cataract Hotel take one look at us in our rough travelling garb and eventually let us through to reception where the tired kids fall down onto the reception sofa and fall asleep. Mike starts the negotiation with ‘Did you get my Internet booking ok, I didn’t get a reply from you?’ – negotiations were not going well as they don’t really like riff-raff at the Old Cataract and we didn’t present the most fetching image – sorry we don’t have rooms (for the likes of you his eyebrows said). Mike tried the ‘do you have any suites’ gambit – the eyebrows changed instantly to dollar signs and the receptionist even managed to troop out a ‘certainly sir’.
3:40am Once we had established ourselves as possible residents the job was to get the rooms instead of the suites – that required the ‘walk out with your bags and wake up the kids’ gambit. That worked – he came running after with deflated eyebrows – a man beaten by a superior negotiator. Even better was that they gave us the rooms right there and then so we could get some sleep before breakfast – so one and a half days for the price of one – the thieving arabs would be proud.
8am Superb breakfast, including the ominous Doom juice, in a magnificent Cordoba mosque inspired arched hall, booked our minibus for the next morning to Abu Simbel, off to the excellent Nubian museum and back in the midday sun for drinks and swimming in the hotel pool – this was really getting into the spirit of a relaxing break so Mike really had to do something about that.
3pm Grab a felucca from the Nileside – which consists of a short motor boat ride over to Elephantine Island and then a precarious transfer over half a dozen other feluccas across wobbly gangplanks to slump exhausted from the heat with Mustapha and Serro (you can’t make up these names nor their faces one which was lightly grilled and the other accidentally left overnight in the oven). The felucca sail was unfurled and we swept across the face of Elephantine Island and down the Nile at a fair rate of knot, well that was until the wind stopped entirely on the way back.
Mustapha took advantage of a captive audience to show off his ‘other job’ – making necklaces from semi precious stones. This proved fortuitous for him since he wasn’t to know that we had a budding geologist in the family. So not only was Kim interested in the pretty colours and the way they uniquely sparkled
in the Egyptian sunlight (not quite the same in the Scottish mist though), Stuart was also interested in how many semi-precious stones he could get on one string to take back to his Geology class.
Ali, who can never resist a shopping trip, also joined in, so between them they spent more on the necklaces than we did on the boat trip.
Other felucca were being towed by motor boats and we saw some with their oars out – but Kim and the kids were too engrossed in the Aladdin treasure box laid in front of them to notice. They noticed pretty soon when we had to row back though – and row back we did and all of us did – although we suspect that Kim’s rowing was more posing for the camera than putting her back in. The rowing got a bit more hectic when we realised that not only were we becalmed we were fast becoming benighted too – and as much as I wanted to believe that there were no crocodiles north of the Aswan Dam – I wasn’t going to entirely fall victim to a statistical error. We were eventually rescued by a motor boat to take us back to the Old Cataract jetty and more importantly to the terrace bar.
5pm Time for a beer and then a taxi to the Sound and Light show at Philae, the site of the latest hieroglyphics, which is on an island – so we had no intention of rowing there. The light show was good and the sound part was immensely cheesy with everyone falling asleep at one point – but the boat trip was a highlight – especially when we had to rescue a stricken boat by tying our motor boat to it and chugging it back to the shore. The Aswan Dam in the dark looked splendid casting light upon the water with crocodile shaped dark patches.
9pm Back to the hotel bar and a sheesha pipe which Ali knocked over onto Mike’s leg (for those who don’t know the sheesha consists of large lumps of burning charcoal). The evening was finished off with Mike swatting a fly and cracking the top of his hand on the back of Ali’s chair (not Ali’s head as other people in the bar must have thought). Early to bed where Kim discovered her nighty artistically laid out with her platypus water supply bag (for her rucksack) laid out on top like a colostomy bag. The fact that this was all done by a male room attendant made it even more unnerving.
—
Aswan Day 4
3am My blackberry leapt into life waking me and the rest of the corridor with a rousing march.
3:30am Half asleep kids marshalled into the minibus with the breakfast boxes from the hotel and then into the military convoy for the road to Abu Simbel (near the Sudan border). The soporific trip itself consisted of lengthy straight desert roads in an unairconditioned minibus with occasional stops to rescue other vans (which meant our driver getting out and scratching his head and saying encouraging arabic phrases to the destitute passengers and then getting back in and leaving them), and with occasional stops to add oil worryingly to our engine. There were patently not enough of the latter stops as the minibus lurched to a complete halt miles from anywhere (apart from a few military signs saying, I presume, do not stop here due to minefields). We were rescued shortly after by another minibus with an irish couple who were breakfasting late and conversed periodically through mouthfuls of cake.
7:30am Abu Simbel – on the banks of the Aswan Dam created the world’s largest artifical lake which threatened to ruin the ruins.
The temples of Rameses and his bidey-in Nefertiti were raised several hundred metres (whilst the lake was rising working behind a hastily constructed protective dam). As with the pyramids this is more of a contextual visit as the images of the statues are so well known – that it is really only interesting to see size and position and meet the challenge of trying to photograph them without Mike getting in the way (I was shouted at in French by someone who assumed that her field of view had to be kept clear of the other thousand sweating tourists, so deliberately shadowed her picture taking by leaping in front of the statues at inopportune moments). Kim and the boys ended up being trapped in ‘tat’ shops and negotiating the arabs down so heavily that Stuart was offered a job in one shop.
09:30 – time to get back into the convoy and make our way back in our fixed minibus. Time to catch up with the bottles of water and guide books and snooze in between singing ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport’ for no better reason than we knew the words.
1:30pm Off to the railway station to see about a train to Luxor. Trains in this part of the world are heavily guarded after the Luxor massacre and tourists are limited to the ones they can take. Well normal tourists we naturally caused complete chaos at the station with the ticket wallah pretending he didn’t know there was a train to Luxor and the tourist policeman confiding that if we turned up at 3:30 it could be dangerous (not for us but for him) so needless to say we snuck on the train at 3:30 and paid a 2 pound bribe to the conductor to let us travel on an unarmed train (as time went on this started to look less like a good idea as our carriage started to fill with unsavoury characters).
Whilst waiting for the train we wandered around the Aswan bazaar which is also known as the ninth circle of hell. Fascinating whilst being constantly sold hats, sheeshas, scarves, sugary food and water anytime we slowed down to a gentle jog. At one point the kids and Kim were busy assembling a sheesha pipe from the contents of half a dozen others whilst negotiating on the fly, when Mike appeared in a fetching blue skullcap followed by two arabs waving white scarves. “Kim what do you think?’ was replied with hysterical laughter and Mike continued to swear at the scarf salesmen. He returned shortly after with one scarf wrapped around the skullcap.
The train journey consisted of trying to peer out the filthy window at the slowly moving countryside as we followed the Nile up to Luxor. At Luxor we booked into the Old Winter Palace following the traditional negotiating for a room when we hadn’t booked one – the gambit this time was ‘The Old Cataract recommended you and said you would give us a very large discount’ which seemed to work along with threatening to move out to the New Winter Palace (which has the recommendation that at least you cannot see the New Winter Palace from its rooms).
Sightseeing was far from over though and we trooped around the Luxor Temple and ate in a restaurant with sparks falling from some welding being done in the other corner. Ali also spotted how the New Winter Palace bar staff make Fresh Orange Juice – take one bottle of orange juice put it in a blender and voila one glass of fresh orange juice. The New Winter Palace bar was also full of riff raff (mainly from England) so we took ourselves back to the elegance of our Old Winter Palace.
And so a long day ends with Mike making his chemical weapon brandy bottle look less filled with chemical weapons for security reasons.
—-
Luxor Day 5
Twas here that a coach load of tourists were machine gunned and stabbed to death, we decided to look even less like tourists now, however our disguise was not working and we were instantly spotted leaving the Old Winter Palace and nabbed by a friendly taxi driver who has no business thanks to buses but loves independent travellers and was only 10 pounds per day. So we were wooed and ended up clambering over boat gangways again and crossed the Nile to the Collosi of Memnon (who used to make wonderful sounds due to temperature and wind, attracting people from all over the ancient world thinking the gods were speaking to them – some engineer thoughtlessly fixed it and the romance died). The hot air balloons seemed to be taking ages taking off with tourists packed with full english breakfasts so we decided to give that a miss (since the only view you would get is of desert and the top of tourist heads).
Mohammad our driver told us that Nefertari’s tomb was closed which rang the scam alarm bell so we forced him to take us to the ticket office where we found out that he was not a lying greasy arab after all and it was indeed closed for maintenance. The problem with so many lying cheating greasy arabs is that it taints the reputation of the really nice and friendly ones – perhaps T shirts would help.
In any case it was off to the Valley of the Kings and the entire reason for coming to Egypt was that on the Orkney ferry Mike picked up a book on Tutankhamen and knew he had to come to visit the tomb – for no better reason than it was a damn sight warmer than Orkney. And so we visited the tomb where King Tut’s mummy still lies – his golden bits being resident in the Cairo Egyptian Museum (wake up now I mentioned that several chapters back). Still Tut fared better than Osiris who was chopped into 16 bits and whose penis was eaten by a crocodile. We saw Howard Carter’s house at the entrance and quite how he managed to work with so many tourists milling about puzzles me to this day, of course it was cunning to actually hide the tomb for years by building the excavation workers houses on top of it – that certainly fooled everyone else.
We wandered around to where the tourists were put off by a huge staircase and found out why it was unpopular – the tomb was closed up there. Still it was nice to escape the german, american and japanese accents. The tomb of Rameses II was magnificent – the paintings were superb and the baksheesh requests overwhelming. Valley of the Kings tick handled, so it was off to the Valley of the Queens which seemed to be only visited by lesbian tour groups, in any case we braved the line of shops (one asked my name as they use that as leverage to make friends and then sell you an alabaster light up head of Queen Nefertari – I replied “Satan”, he then confidentially asked “and what is your other name?” – I replied ” I have no other name”, and then enjoyed the trip back with a small shopkeeper shouting Satan! Satan! Satan! see my Alabaster whilst bemused lesbians looked on. The kids were talking in french and german in an attempt to trick the constant sales techniques and Stuart was giving his constant geology lecture when we got to a rock we didn’t recognise
We visited the splendid Temple of Hatshepsut, site of the massacre and kept ourselves in site of cover at all times, whilst eavesdropping on the English tour group guides.
Crossing the nile we had engine failure and had to clamber back over another boat to make our journey back to the hotel and the swimming pool where a jolly time was had by all – especially the kids trying to drown Mike, who could only swim with one hand now as his swollen hand was looking rather menacing and the medicinal beer was not really helping.
In the non stop punishing schedule we headed off to Karnak only to find it closed and to save time we booked ourselves on the German sound and light show to see the temple. Dining at the side of the nile before the show Kim and Stuart managed to feed most of their meal to the starving cats under the table as we watched the Nile cruisers discharge their ballast tanks into the river.
The German sound and light show felt like a Nuremberg rally and we were the resistance pretending to be germans by saying the occasional Ya, Nein and Muder var ist die Kinder? There was lots of Fuhrer and Reich in the commentary and what sounded like derogatory comments about Englandars which I reported to British Intelligence in our hotel in Alexandria. Eventually someone decided to converse with me about a good place to take a photo and was a bit bemused when my reply consisted of Ya, nein and Muder var ist die Kinder?
Still we rounded off the evening with a walk back into town through small children playing football in the dark streets, we didn;t offer to give them a game as Scotland has enough shame in that area, and a tour of the mummification museum – so if you have any relatives you want to preserve consider our new CMS – Calligrafix Mummification Services.
And so to bed for the early flight to Cairo tomorrow.
—-
Alexandria Day 6
Early flight meant getting a taxi to Luxor airport. That also involved finding one at 4am which seemed to tax the hotel – why would you want a taxi at this time of the morning as if the daily flight to Cairo didn’t exist. In any case it took a good 20 minutes to eventually get some taxi driver out of his slumber along with his very smelly friend who decided to share the journey. When we got there I gave the fair fare only to be told that it should be a vast multiple of this. I am not at my best in the morning, people have told me this and do tend to avoid me – if only they had told the smelly taxi driver this. After a tirade of his mother being a camel and threats of the tourist police, along with my best egyptian obscenities – he took off with his camel tail in between his legs and we retired to get my bag searched again for chemical weapons and left for Cairo.
We reached Cairo in smog which meant the landing was done by computer and so was smooth and we were left in what looked like an underground car park after collecting our luggage only to be descended upon by a group of people grabbing our luggage. These porters were also unaware of the advice of Mike and mornings and also received full blast of obscenities and a sharp left boot. So we escaped and made our way to Information – where the chap was in the middle of prayers. We retired to a respectful distance and he summoned us – we wanted a plane or train or boat or bus to Alexandria – being an airport he chose the bus and marched us at top speed across the car park to what looked like war bunkers with people who did not speak any form of english and said “get bus here” and disappeared with a fistful of baksheesh.
We gave up buying tickets, hey we tried several times in different languages with friendship messages on all channels – but to no avail – we eventually reasoned that we would get tickets on the bus. The bus driver seemed to understand this too and summoned us on board. That was when the ticket chappie came up roaring and shouting at us – he obviously is not good in the mornings either – since the morning was wearing on Mike was a bit better and managed to wave money and get tickets through a completely unnecessarily bureaucratic process involving at least 5 people for 4 bus tickets costing in total 10 UK pounds.
During the bus journey a lovely attendant came up and sold us juice and crisps and disappeared into the bowels of the bus where there was also a toilet. Mike didn’t have anything as it was Ramadan and besides was saving himself for a spot of tiffin at the Cecil hotel in Alexandria, which was our next ‘The Old Cataract Hotel recommended us and said you would give us a large discount’. The Cecil not only bought that but gave us a customer loyalty card for even more goodies and discounts and the price of the 5 star hotels were starting to get better than bed and breakfast in this country. The Cecil is a splendid hotel overlooking the corniche and harbour – we were slap bang in the middle of the harbour view and it was splendid. The taxi ride to the Cecil was what put me off driving in Egypt – it was truly horrendous – the driver was immensely skilled and missed other vehicles at high speed by millimetres – he also managed to miss pedestrians who uncannily threw themselves out of the way too. In middle of the chaos some chap had broken down and was busy learning some new choice obscenities from Alexandria’s finest – still Allah provided and his engine started again.
We walked out around the town, coffee at one of the coffee shops and shown around their restaurant by the owner who was a greek christian and served appalling coffee. On to the closed Graeco-Roman museum near the Obese and Dental Clinic and ending with a lovely walk along the corniche to the site of the Pharos Lighthouse (demolished of course but with bits of granite left to lean against). The nice thing that sunset had happened and everyone started to get their picnics out and offering us a place at their breakfast – Ramadan is a nice time at sunset when the party starts and families settle down to eat and drink. The new Alexandria Library is a wonder of modern architecture but like all good libraries was closed.
We found the Spitfire Bar which is run by 5 egyptian brothers who showed us their family snaps and played Bon Jovi and served good beer. We relaxed there for a few good Stellas before trundling up to the rooftop of the Cecil for a Chinese meal, with orange cockroaches dancing in the candle lights, overlooking Alexandria.
Mike sat with brandy on the balcony mesmerised by the endless traffic on the 6 lane corniche and the lack of serious accidents – when an ambulance headed at full speed down the wrong carriageway – all the cars swerved out of the way and it made good progress with what I could see little collateral damage (although he could be simply rushing home for his meal). The sound of the traffic, the sea and kim snoring was an exotic aural mix.
—-
Alexandria Day 7
Early one morning we went to El Alemain – at 5am our driver Mohammad (they are not very imaginative on their first names) was waiting for us in the Avis car and drove us through scary Alexandria traffic along the 120 km of deserted holiday villages on the Alexandria coast to El Alemain cemetery and museum.
We admired the elegant architecture of the British mausoleum and wandered aimlessly among the stones looking for dead relatives and found very few although there was a Forsyth flight officer, and a few Forsyth privates (they get everywhere) and reasoned that Mike’s ancestors would be in the Monty bar at the Cecil in Alexandria during any conflict.
For comparison we went to the German one which was very Nubelungenlied with large black crosses, black eagles and stone sarcophagi – we should have gone to the Italian one in retrospect as we would have probably got a decent espresso and a pasta lunch. We decided to continue with the driver who took us through the slum areas, poverty stricken fishing villages, Alexandria iron works and to see the Nile reaching the sea. We reached the Graeco-Roman museum with half an hour to jog around to see the ancient barbie dolls (used to show off hair styles) and a bath which with optional lid turned into a handy sarcophagus and went down the catacombs where we lost Alasdair in the darkening maze of tombs. We were impressed by the american woman who we saw at the Pompeii pillar who said “ok thats the pillar and the sphinx lets go” – who was obviously on a more pressing schedule than us, perhaps she had been to the Italian cemetery too.
We took time to visit the gardens of King Farouk and ate his fresh dates, visited his hotel where he met with the people who were not allowed in his gardens or palace – and under high security visited the outside of the palace (high security because of the Hilton hotel beside it cowering behind security guards set since the Taba explosions). Farouk was a wayward playboy king who was thrown out of Egypt but they all seem to love him.
Back to the Spitfire bar where we were now regulars, a quick look for belly dancing outfits for Stuart’s girlfriend, a fabulous espresso in a great coffee bar and then it was dinner in a chain restaurant and we retired exhausted to Monty’s bar.
—-
Ismalia Day 8
We left the Cecil early and got a bus to Ismalia – which took a stunning 4 and a half hours across heavily militarised areas to the Suez canal. Ismalia was where our neighbour Sheila was stationed in the fifties and she used to sail on Crocodile Lake. We swam in the lovely pool and drank beer and hired a pedalo which the attendants were somewhat concerned about me mentioned pedalling to the suez canal and would wave and blow whistles anytime we headed in that direction. Ismalia is the home of the builder of the Suez canal and we visited his home but he wasn’t in. We went to the canal and a nice policeman organised a ferry ride for us across the canal – the captain invited us up to the control room where we all took turns in turning the ferry to the obvious concern of the military brigade onboard – Alasdair had the privilege of letting the ferry ramp down so they could motor off into Sinai. That part is where the Egyptians are proud to have attacked back against the Israelis who held Sinai – using water hoses ordered from Belgrade for the Cairo Fire Department – the hoses knocked down the sand defences and thousands of Egyptians commandos (who I assume didn’t need to black up) stormed the defences. What they don’t then mention is that they were driven back but the UN and the world cried shame and stopped selling the Israelis chemical weapons so they withdrew back to Palestine leaving the Sinai free for later terrorist atrocities. There is a wonderful ‘Welcome To Egypt’ sign in the sand there, reinforcing the fact that the Sinai is Egypt.
—-
Cairo Day 9
We had a taxi to the airport booked at 5am and sure enough there it was – taxi was pushing the definition of the word – previously a taxi in Ismalia seated two people and had all four of us with our luggage hanging out of various doors. This one was large it just wasn’t finished. It had no ventilation or airconditioning and exhaust fumes seeped into the back. We eventually prised a window open and our efforts came to the drivers attention who produced a window handle from the glove pocket. In addition it was foggy and Mike was in the front with no seat belt (the belt having being in pieces and was held across my chest just to get past military checkpoints. The driver then drove at high speed in minimal visibility and seemed to be praying to Allah a lot of the time whilst missing other vehicles by inches. Well if the praying worked it was good enough for me and we eventually arrived at the airport raided the tourist shops and escaped to Paris where we found out that Egypt was actually very cheap and warm and had service.
Naturally back in Edinburgh we had forgotten where to park the car – so the car park attendants had the amusing sight of 3 people running around in different directions in the drizzle, while one in a strange hat was sitting on the luggage drinking what looked like the remnants of a chemical weapon singing Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport.
