Hi everyone -
When last I wrote, we were leaving Mumbai in India for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Sadly up until one week before we left India, I still had no idea where Dubai was on a map. I sincerely believe that after this trip I will have gained the geographical knowledge equivalent to the average 6th grader.
There was a massive change moving from the backwaters of India to one of the most modern cities in the world. The first thing we noticed was how wide the streets were and how CLEAN the place was - something in very short supply anywhere in India. The other thing I noticed was the diversity - there were many, many types of people including Africans, Arabs (wearing full "sheikh" gear I've only seen on TV when Bush visits his friends the Saudi royal family), Indians, and many, many Asians as well. It seems that Dubai does not have enough people to do all the work, so they import labor and intellect from all over the world. It's ultra-modern with amazing buildings, brand new busses, huge mega-malls, and skyscrapers all separated by patches of desert. Everything is the biggest, best, or first. For instance, they are building a map of the world in the sea of the shore to join a huge apartment, shopping, office complex being built around a fake harbor on reclaimed land. We passed the world's largest flag and the construction site of the largest indoor snow/ski park. Just because they can. One of Deanna's friends took us out for a night and we found it to be much swankier than anyplace else we've been on the trip so far - tons of nice bars, nightclubs, lounges, top-end restaurants - all full of ex-pats living it up. It made me think of LA actually...
One fun experience was our trip to the Burj al-Arab - as they call it "the world's first 7-star hotel". Technically it's classified as a5-star deluxe, but many magazines have named the place the best hotel in the world and with a personal butler for each suite I can believe it. If you've seen the picture of the hotel, it looks like the sail of a ship standing in front of the sea - except this sail is taller than the Eiffel Tower and changes colors as you watch. Deanna and I - wanting to see the hotel and arrive in style - took a public bus and got out in front of the hotel...at least our vehicle was bigger than most of the limos that drop guests off. We walked up to the very friendly security attendant. He (very nicely) asked if we were hotel guests when it was painfully clear we were not. The showed us the"visitors" guide showing the guidelines to entering the hotel. First, you have to make a reservation at least one day in advance (to visit the place). Second, you have to guarantee that you'll spend $50 per person on food or drink at any of the eating/drinking establishments in the hotel. Finally (the death knell for me) was the dress code. No sandals, tennis shoes, shorts, T-shirts...basically the only clothes I own at this point. We thanked him for his help and assured him that next time we were in Dubai we would stay as guests.
From Dubai, we flew to Cairo. Not nearly as modern or over the top as Dubai, it's still a very fun place with great food (shwarma - meatgrilled on a spit...yum), horrible traffic (we've seen more accidents here than the rest of the trip combined) and amazing sights. In addition to seeing the oldest monument in the world (Pyramid of Zoser -3100 BC - over 5,000 years old!), the incredible pyramids at Giza (and the highly claustrophobic climb inside), the Sphinx, the blackened, shrunken mummies that still have hair in the Egypt museum, and an entire city built to house the dead - Cairo is a vibrant city with tons going on.
One problem we have run into is the incredible amount of bureaucracy in this area. We went to the Syrian Embassy to get a visa...a bit of a daunting experience in the first place as one of the gentlemen we had the pleasure of working with clearly did not like Americans. They told us that they would issue us a visa, but only if we were "Egyptian residents" as they were only set-up to service Egyptians. We, of course, assumed we would not be visiting Syria until they told us we could become "residents" by visiting Egyptian immigration and paying $4! A bit confused, but wanting to check it out, we went to the incredibly large, confusing, and mostly Arabic signed Egyptian immigration office to join about four-hundred other confused people there for a multitude of reasons. From window 38, we were told we needed an application, which we got, filled out, went to window 14 only to be told we needed to pay at window 43 before we could come back to window 14 and that we needed photocopies of our passport which we could get outside the building and then wait at least one hour to get processed. Three hours, endless frustration, and many, many questions later we had our 6-month "touristic residence" stamps. Of course, at that point, the Syrian embassy was closed for the weekend (here Thursday and Friday) and we would have to wait until Sunday. We did eventually get a 2-week visa to visit Syria for the extremely low price of 660 Egyptian pounds ($120) which I'm sure has the added "F America" tax.
From Cairo, we took an overnight train (for once a fairly nice experience) to Aswan in Upper Egypt (which is southern Egypt but the "upper" Nile hence "upper Egypt"). From there, we had the pleasure of getting up at 3AM to join a bus convoy (apparently there have been problems with tourists being attacked in the distant past) to Abu Simbel near the Sudan border. Abu Simbel is simply incredible. There's four huge sitting statues (100 ft tall) of Ramses II in front of his temple and the hieroglyphics and carvings on the walls are simply amazing. As Deanna said, it's almost surreal how big and well-preserved these pieces are...like Vegas but for real. The negative part of the trip was the 3AM wake-up and seeing countless (otherwise educated) people posing like idiots in the "Walk like an Egyptian" pose. A great way to absorb the single most impressive sight in Egypt.
In Aswan, we got to experience the downside of Egypt a bit more. First was a horrendous experience just trying to get a towel from the front desk at our "hotel". We asked once and were told that they would be available after 5pm. We asked at 5pm, and someone was sent up with 2-rolls of toilet paper. We asked before we went to dinner, when we came back from dinner and were told 5-minutes. Two hours later, I went down to the desk and was told where they got towels was "closed". The next morning, we asked for towels and were told "we'll try". That afternoon, they brought up...lo and behold...two more rolls of toilet paper. Sigh. At least no one asked for a tip.
We're now in Luxor, home of the Valley of Kings, Queens, and Karnak Temple which we're looking forward to very much. So far, we've only seen the mummification museum where we got to see all the instruments used to scrape out the brain and jars to keep the organs when they've been removed from the body. But the highlight of the museum has to be the mummified cat on display - really creepy but very cool.
We may be visiting a desert Oasis and then going to the Sinai peninsula to follow in Moses footsteps and perhaps do some diving in the Red Sea.
Hope everyone is well. I've uploaded all of the India pictures on the ofoto site in case you have a few hours to pass instead of working.
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