Dokki and the Nile Cruise

6.18.10

I've been doing really well with my blogging and getting things up pretty quickly, so I'm proud of myself for that...heh. Anyways I got to webcam, err, half webcam with Jonjon, RJ, Tracy, and Karina today; I couldn't get the hotel's webcam to work but the sound was semi-working. I haven't even been able to call anyone because it's kind of complicated ; oh boy life without a phone and a data plan…my family is probably worried out of their minds but I emailed them to let them know that I'm alright.

So this morning we were semi-bold and just walked about downtown Cairo trying to find that really good bakery that we found the other day at night. Apparently it's like the 85⁰C Bread of Egypt, people from all over come to eat at it! We ended up almost getting lost and making a huge box around the area we were looking for. We kept looking for "the traffic circle with the statue", and we kept finding it, but nothing looked familiar. So it turns out that there are traffic circles with semi-similar statues in the middle EVERYWHERE.

To make things more hectic ,we totally stood out in the bright daylight, we were the only people walking the streets and not working. Also I had my hawk, my shorts, my shades; Viv had her sleeveless top and her shades, so we got so much attention. I get really frustrated when the taxi drivers try to holler from across the street and honk their horns until you look at them. Some of them try to convince you to go to certain tourist locations. Sure, it's business and I actually may want to go to some of these places but they shout and seem so forceful, so I get defensive, especially for Vivian sometimes. I mean, if they were more approachable and nice about things, maybe I'd be more responsive…I like people at night, they're more chill.

So after that we explored some more and ran into some cray cray taxi driver who was getting the lead about us through the hotel. But we successfully stood our ground, still we're tired of people hawking on us all the time.

We then moved over to the Indiana Hotel in Dokki district of Cairo. We actually like the room better than our room in the Cosmo, it's brighter and nicer...but the toilet is wonky and there is no hot water in the shower. Also, it is not located in central Cairo, so there are not as many tourists around, we now stand out even more. But people were less forceful for tourism, which is nice.

We then got really antsy and decided to wash our own clothes to practice for Tanzania; I developed a new sock washing technique that worked pretty well.

We found a mini bazaar that had some fun souvenir things in it. The owner was pretty nice and made us a deal for a Nile dinner cruise + taxi for only ~ 25 USD. Other groups offer that for 75 bucks! So we decided to go on the Cruise because we didn't have much else to do and there were promises of belly dancing, music, open buffet, sooo why not?!

Then we got lunch! YUM!

1 x Medium beef shwarma sandwich
3 x falafel pita sandwiches
= £E 10 (Egyptian pounds) ==> $1.79 USD

CRUISE TIME!
Food was salty...and I wasn't sure if I was eating liver or buffalo...
The top deck of the boat had a pretty awesome view of Cairo, we also noticed the poor visibility. It's very hazy in the distance. We theorized that this is attributed to the sand and wind always blowing around leaving much particulate matter in the air. The sunset felt like a just a distant gradient with no focal point.

The belly dancer lady chose me to come dance with her. She had some tricks with a stick...and she kept grabbing me very roughly by my mohawk, it kind hurt...but it was sort of fun being like the only one able to kinda keep up with the belly dancer and her balancing tricks.

As we came home, we ran into some more smaller souvenir shops….we learned our lesson. Shop around. Seriously, we got ripped all those times before! Anyways we now know that there are alliances and business/commission partners in the tourism industry here. It's sneaky but almost unavoidable. It can be hard to find smaller more affordable shops but they do exist!

Whew! I only have like £E30 left, I need to make it last... One day closer to arriving in Tanzania…. better go practice some Swahili! Kwa Heri!

Alexandria

We weren't late today!

In fact, we got up early and made it to breakfast downstairs before we left for Alexandria. Breakfast was tasty, I'm noticing that we're eating cucumbers and tomatoes a lot, the cucumber is dry but the tomato is quite juicy - they're both so refreshing. I wish I had more leafy greens…

As we headed North West to Alexandria, which is about 200km away, we saw many things on the road: mosques, pigeon farms, date palms, livestock being transported, and new developments for companies and residential areas.

Camels!

There are many booming tech companies coming up over here, I even saw an Oracle building. They all had this sandy color with blue windows, it was a nice color combination, and maybe it represents an oasis of some sort.

Yum!

Alexandria was named after Alexander the great and was a center for trade throughout the Mediterranean sea. On the car ride there Fatma pretty much summarized the entire history from the end of Ancient Egypt, through Greek and Roman influences, through the Persians, Fatimads, Ottoman...all the way up to recent presidents and history of the Suez Canal. The thing that fascinated me the most was the complex intertwining of royal/noble figures  and cultures between the Egyptians, Greek, and Romans. This was greatly displayed at the catacombs in Alexandria where they found tombs that had Egyptian and Greek gods combined. The completely different cultures came together because they wanted to worship their dead so much. The legend of Osiris being resurrected by Isis was depicted on Greek tombs. There were dozens of paintings that showed the hybrid of these cultures. Cameras were not allowed down the catacombs so I don't have pictures, let me tell you, they were spooky and could've been a great place to film a horror movie. On a lighter note, it kind of makes me think of the hybridity of cultures and symbols in modern times. Like in this one UC Irvine Vietnamese Student Association skit, "Lucky". Shout outs to the VSAs!

After the catacombs we went to Pompey's Pillar, which was is kind of a misnomer due to more recent historical facts, however… people don't really seem to mind..so...yeah.. It  also contained some subterranean galleries. Scholars are not completely sure what they were for but they were predicted to be for rituals (Serapis bull-god) and also potentially a library where scrolls were kept in the pockets of the walls.

The NILOMETER, they used to measure output of the Nile here so that they can predict a wet lush season or a dryer season that could predict drought and famine. How cool is that?!?!

Haha, Vivian wanted to take some more light-hearted pictures:

We then headed to the shores of the Mediterranean, near where the bit lighthouse of Alexandria used to be. Though some time ago they tore it down and built a fortress, so it's gone. The view was beautiful! Shout outs to Betsy, Jeff, and Karina who are across the way in Spain!

Alexandria is also a vacation place local Egyptians:

I found limpets! YeS!

Egyptain courthouse...European architecture! Hybrid!

Lastly we stopped at the Library of Alexandria, which was an international collaboration and….OMG. Sorry Cal but it puts The Doe Library /Main Stacks to shame. It's expansive and state of the art, built about 7 years ago from designs that won an international architect competition.

The front of the building has 120 inscriptions from all different languages and cultures, the back there is an infinity pool. There are 7 stories of reading tables, the windows are in the shape of eye lids with designs on the outside that act as eye lashes, protecting the inside from direct sunlight and sloping down to carry the rain away. There's also an internet archive that has like thousands of pico bytes of data and so many resources accessible to the general public. They've digitized millions of books (in collaboration with the library of congress and China) and original ancient manuscripts which are all available to the general public for free at www.bibalex.org. Seriously ya'll check it out! Also, those books that are online can be printed in their book printing machine (1 of 34 in the world, the first being in the Library of Congress). Books can be printed in about 20 minutes  and costs only about 6 USD -- cool! I was amazed. There are also galleries with artists and historical artifacts.

This one is for Jonjon:

Our final picture with Fatma, our awesome and VERY knowledgeable guide.

Wow, today was soo enlightening with the history from the different cultures combining and the grandeur of the library. This library is so awesome, it would inspire me to study within it!

I love nature photos =)

Cairo, Giza, and Egyptian History

WE WERE LATE!

So we had planned to wake up at around 715am, eat breakfast around 815am, and meet our guide, Fatma, at 9am. I guess we were really tired because we slept through both alarms and only woke up to the knock of housekeeping. We're usually not late people so  we quickly got our things together and headed to our first stop, The Egyptian Museum, a very large museum with over 100 galleries of artifacts from throughout all of Egypt's history, from the first inscriptions of civilization through the the Greek - Roman periods  and beyond. There were tons and tons of artifacts, all containing so much history, detail, and culture -- and our guide new it all! Fatma was amazing, she studied German, Russian, and archeology for years to be a tour guide. She knew historical facts, read inscriptions, explained Egyptian mythology, and also presented viewpoints from opposing scholars when there was something that was not yet conclusive. I learned so much about pharaohs, Horus, Rosetta, Tutankhamen, the Nile, … unfortunately, cameras are not allowed inside so I only got pictures on the outside of the museum. All those PBS specials and documentaries came to mind as I explored the museum…

Lotus (representing North Egypt) and Papyrus (South Egypt):

Our next stop was at a government sponsored papyrus gallery (the are other galleries that use banana leaves instead of papyrus to sell to tourists...tricky tricky). Papyrus was the plant that represented South Ancient Egypt, and we learned how it was used to make papyrus paper. It actually a really simple technique but it creates such strong paper! The natural resins and sugars really make that paper stick together. We explored the gallery that contained some stunning art, many of which depicted scenes from events that we learned about in the Egyptian Museum. Things started to connect and we could extrapolate what each painting was about, which pharaohs were depicted, and which gods were represented. The history is so rich and so intertwined...it really inspires me to research more about other histories and cultures, especially my own. The gallery was beautiful but the bigger, nicer pictures were fairly expensive, going for several thousand Egyptian pounds. ($2 is approximately £E10 [Egyptian pound]) 

Then we had lunch:

After lunch, it was what we were waiting for the most… the PYRAMIDS of GIZA! So again, Fatma explained to us what the pyramids meant, the shape, the construction, the architecture, and the history. Looking at the pyramids, you would think that they're out in the middle of the desert, like in Disney's Aladdin, where they're flying on the magic carpet over deserts and the guy accidently knocks off the nose of the sphinx, but they're not. Well at least, these ones are not, they are just like...chillin in the background of a bustling city. Aladdin didn't live THAT long ago compared to when the pyramids were built.

So we climbed on the pyramids, rode camels around the pyramids/sphinx, and even climbed inside the tomb of one of the smaller side pyramids where the wives of the king were buried. It was exciting, exhilarating, hot/dehydrating, and profound.

(hehe, Vivian's wearing a skirt! She never wears skirts, but she's practicing for Tanzania, where it'll be rude for her not to wear one… and my eye was not doing well, my contact kept getting blurry probably because of all the sand that was blowing around and also because my eyes hadn't gotten much rest for the last two days….)

///More on the pyramids\\\

Though they are still standing, the pyramids have been through a lot. Ceremonies, grave robbers, stripped of it's beautiful outer layers (you can see some of the outer layers still remaining at the top of some of the pyramids). There so much history in them, I encourage everyone to check it out. 

 Thank you Sony for making me an excellent camera! =) Our tour guide loved my pictures, they were some of the most "marvelous" pictures she's ever seen. She said that the jumping pictures are so lively because she's used to people just standing there...

Lastly, we went to a perfume shop where we were led by an expert (and really good salesman) on how they made perfumes and which flowers were in which scent. We learned that a bunch of designer colognes/perfumes were just combinations of flowers and found some interesting combinations. Though he was a great salesman, we did not purchase scents that could potentially attract mosquitoes later on >.<

KFC delivers…I wonder if they use the same chicken here…

When we got back to the hotel, we were able to use the internet for a bit and then finally shower. We then spent a short amount of time promenading about downtown Cairo but we were exhausted from the day's events. We also needed to rest for the next day because we had to be up even earlier because we were travelling about 200km away to Alexandria...and we didn't want to be late...again...

whew it's 4am on June 18th in Egypt. These posts take a while to put together as I gather all these pictures here. Check out more of the pictures on Facebook as well!