Egypt Trip (Episode 8)

Day 8 Aswan (12 Nov 2010)
This is a boring day where we have nothing to do, and they expect us to join the optional tour. Isis is very good at adjusting the time here and there and bring us to factories here and there. We don’t mind because they always serve us karkade drink, haha. But to pay to visit the Nubian kampung just to see the normal house and school, no one is interested.

Aswan Market
We went to Aswan Market in the morning as the felucca didn’t come on time. We just walk walk see see and take photographs as we didn’t bring out the camera the night before. But this time we managed to walk all the way to the end and bought some papyrus paper as souvenir.

#BAD EXPERIENCE (1)
When we bought the papyrus paper, the person does not have any change to give back to us, so he has to go around and ask his friend for change. There is this particular person that gives him the change, and he casually asked Jon “where are you from?” As they begin to chat, he slap on Jon’s neck a few times (on friendly ground) and Jon found it very agitated but do not know what to say or how to react. They just seem very friendly and natural, what can we do? Our first reaction is to check the wallet and thank God every penny is intact.

While waiting for the rest to come, we walked into a bookshop and found a very interesting book, it is called “Egypt then and now”. It has very nice illustration about most of the tourist site, with a photo of it’s current outlook as the base, and on top of it you can place a transparent cover to see how it is like before (with the original colour and missing part).

Felucca Ride
We went to a restaurant in a small island in the middle of the Nile river, I felt like we were in Africa, with the open window and the natural scenery and birds flying around. Then we took the felucca ride, it is a sailing boat with no engine and it takes 2 people to manoeuvre the steering and the canvas sail.

Sleeping Train
After lunch, we went back to the cruise to rest before we transfer to train station for overnight journey to Cairo. By then only we found out that there is no shower facilities in the train, and we can’t bath for one day? All of us take turn to sneak into the toilet and lap badan with the small tiny hand tower and took out our overnight items as there may be not enough space to open the big luggage.

Yes, we are right, the moment we went into the train cabin, we got a shock of our life that it is so small.. after fitting in all the luggages, we basically have no more place to turn around. But magic happens when the staff opens up the double deck and suddenly it looks like a decent sleeping room with basin for wash up.

Good thing is that we are so used to eat sleep eat sleep, both Jon and I slept our way through the night. I do not want to talk about the toilet (please)

Opps, almost forgotten the “except us” story, see there is a basin for us to wash hand, but the water is boiling hot, we tried all other cabins, theirs are okay. So we asked the staff to come and fix it, he even bring a technician to fix it for us. But it is still hot. And I started to get depressed “ why everyone gets double bed except us? Why everyone gets to watch fox movie except us? And why everyone gets cold water except us? Pai Mia..

Along the railway, we see a lot of people still wash clothes at the river, and the houses are built “half way” with the unfinished roof top, tour guide said that they will continue to build again once they have the money, because they like to stay together as a big family even the son gets married. And marriage among the family members is very common and Egypt, that’s why a lot of time you see abnormal child in the family.