Buildings

Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo. Built by the Fatimid Dynasty, 970 AD.


View from minaret. Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo.


Burj Al-Arab (the Arab Tower), the world's only 7-star hotel in Dubai. There was so much humidity, and we were on a bus, so I couldn't get a better picture. The hotel is designed to resemble a sailboat. Rooms are $5,000 per night.


More buildings in Dubai.


Humayun's Tomb, Delhi, India. A fine example of Mughal architecture, 1592 AD.

baksheesh: egypt not all pyramids and roses

As I raise my camera to take a picture of Queen Hatshepsut's son suckling from a sacred cow at her temple in Luxor, a temple employee sidles up to me...
Man: "That is a cow."
Caroline: "Yes, thanks. I know."
Man: "Baksheesh now."


"Baksheesh" is part of getting around Egypt. It is a tip (or sometimes a bribe!) for services rendered. These can be anything, from having a door opened to being given directions. At first, we were getting pretty irritated at the constant demands for baksheesh, particularly since we were never carrying around the right change. However, after 2 weeks in Egypt, learning to hoard small bills like there's no tomorrow, and realizing that every other Egyptian is also a baksheesh target, we're settling into the swing of things. Now, when we anticipate someone is going to impose their help, we run away, or say "no guide", or if we actually want to have our elbows held by an 11-year-old while walking down a ramp, we'll slip him some cash.

Only a fraction of our Egyptian baksheesh experiences:

• Yesterday, we actually saw a man rush to close a door in a museum so that he could open it for us!
• In the tomb of Ramses III in the Valley of the Kings, the tomb attendant fanned tourists with a square of cardboard. "Hot. Fan. Baksheesh."
• We took a felucca ride with Mohammad and his two teenage friends in Aswan. Pleasant conversation ensues... Jerome asks: Are you the owner of the boat? Mohammad: No, the captain. Good captain. Baksheesh later. Jerome: Uh, ok. Mohammad: Do you want some hash?
• Security is quite high in Egypt for tourists due to several terrorist attacks in the last two decades. The tourist police are on duty at many hotels and attractions. I can only assume they aren't paid very well.... After booking ourselves on a Nile Cruise, one tourist police guy outside declared "Give me five money. Baksheesh." In this case we refused. What, for letting us walk by you? Give me a break! The next day we noticed he was cruising down the Nile with us, an AK-47 assault rifle slung over his shoulder. Another tourist police officer at the Red Pyramid near Cairo kept trying to force his camel into the field-of-view of our friend Andy's camera in order to demand his baksheesh. I don't feel very safe in this country.

Finally, two days ago our bad baksheesh karma came back to haunt us. We got a tour of the beautiful Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo from the caretaker and muezzin, Said.


Oh, crap. Our smallest bill is enough for a night in a (cheap) hotel room! We had to baksheesh the guy for every baksheesh we had avoided for the whole trip. He still asked for more. "For Ramadan." Sure. On the upside, Jerome was snatched aside and had the entire call to prayer sung just for him!

Giza again

We couldn't nick the golden mask at the museum (see below), but we can steal a few pictures taken of us by our Australian travel buddies.


This is the largest of all the pyramids.


Travel buddies thrilled just after finding a lucky horseshoe in the sand at Giza!

Face to Face With King Tut

Yesterday we had an experience that summed up one side of things in Egypt. We were in the National Museum in Cairo, viewing the iconic mask of "King Tut" -- the big and bright gold one, which is on every advertisement of Egypt -- when all of a sudden four guys in plainclothes approached the display case, heaved up the glass barrier, and grabbed out the mask! The Italians in the room made a tsunami-like movement towards the four guys either to figure out what was going on or to touch the mask themselves, which some of them seemed to accomplish. The guys holding the mask, now accompanied by one guy in some kind of uniform, responded by making their way quickly to another corner of the room and then put down the mask on another display case. At this point, we still had no idea what was going on, and by the looks of things thought that a heist was in the works. That wasn't the case however. Apparently the staff at the museum wanted to repair the glass exhibit case and decided that they should do so in the middle of the day and without clearing the room, taking precautions with the solid gold mask, and sending in more muscle than a few small and disheveled guys in jeans and T-shirts. When we figured out the situation, we decided to join in on the fun, and made our own rush for the mask and managed to see it face to face, without a glass barrier, for about 10 minutes.

Ancient Wonders Still Really Cool

Caroline at the Step Pyramid in Saqara, the very first pyramid and the oldest human-created structure in the world.


At the Sphynx and Great Pyramids in Giza.


"Look how big it is, and how straight the lines are!"


Caroline unknowingly providing perspective for the picture.

A few pictures from Aswan and Luxor

Temple of Philae, Aswan


Temple of Philae, Aswan


Big pharoah statue at the Temple of Karnak, Luxor.


Temple of Queen Hatshepsut


Exploring the hugeness of the 134 columns in the Temple of Karnak, Luxor.

Taking it up a notch or 5

From the Sinai we took a very fun and terrifying speed boat across the Suez Gulf and then caught a terrible 10 hour bus ride to Aswan in the far south of the country. Our plan was to take a sail boat up the Nile to Luxor but when we saw the dodginess of the "faluccas" we let our Australian friends talk us into a 5 star cruise on a Movenpick boat. We stuffed ourselves on the buffet for three days and saw a number of great Egyptian temples, with tonnes of hieraglyphs and columns. Roman and Greek architecture was clearly based upon and inspired by Egyptian design. The area around the Nile is very green and lush, and contrasts starkly to the barren deserts which surround the narrow strips of life along the river.

The Pyramid Adventure Begins

Today we leave the tourist enclave of Dahab -- where we enjoyed fresh fruit juices for $1 by the Red Sea for four days -- for Aswan in southern Egypt to begin our adventures through the sites of ancient Egypt. We are traveling with our Australian friends who host a much better blog here.

When we get to Aswan we will try to find a boat to take us up the Nile to Luxor.

Hello, Goodbye Jordan

We just arrived in Egypt after three nights in Jordan. The first two were spent at Petra, home to the famous Nabatean ruins, and the last one at Wadi Rum, an incredible desert nature reserve where Bedouin lived until very recently. At the reserve, we hired a guide, Salim, who drove us around the massive sand dunes and fed us at one of his camps. We slept under the full moon in the desert, and this morning took the ferry across the Red Sea to Egypt. Now we are in Dahab, a divers' hangout that once was very laid back but that now is overdeveloped and not very chill at all. We're tired right now, so maybe our first impressions will change after a day of snorkelling tomorrow. We met some really nice Australians who seem to be our alter egos: they have travelled the same route as us, and are pretty much going to the same places over the new few months. Besides being tired from our trip today, everything is going well and we're excited to leave for Dubai and India in mid-September.