Egypt 2.0 -City of The Dead-

I woke up at 6am to prepare myself and have breakfast before this super exciting day start, anyway 6am Egypt Time is 8am Dubai Time. The tour started at 7am because we have a long list of places to visit. S0oha kicked off the tour in the Hotel lobby by giving us a 30minutes lectures about Egypt. It was very informative but boring stuffs, where I learnt that west of river Nile (West Bank) was City of The dead where all tombs and pyramid were built. East of Nile River (East Bank) was city of life where schools, palace and etc were built.

The reason being, the sun is BORN from the east and Die on the west everyday, LOL! Ancient believe mah. Our first stop, The Great Pyramids of Giza!!! Very exciting, if I have to single out the place I wanted to visit the most in Egypt, it has to be The Great Pyramids of Giza. All others places are just side dishes.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is HUGE, Much bigger than I had imagined. You cant imagine how BIG is this things unless you stand infront of it. Although it was build 4000years ago, it's still a very impressive structure by today standard. I am super excited about molesting the pyramid, the only remaining Seven Wonders of the World, not everyday you got to grope the buttock of a 4000years old aunty. I blamed my over excitement on all those lustful videos and photos from National Geography Explorer. There are 100+ pyramids left and many more destroyed but all of them are built in a straight line along River Nile. Ancient scientists or Wizards did that by taking a Star (I forgot the name adi) as the reference point.

It's the tallest structure in the world till 100years ago. To be able to fully appreciate the magnificent of pyramids, you have to understand its history. The pyramid nowadays are just bones, it exterior finishes has been eroded by nature and its interior jewels has been robbed millions of times. In ancient times, pyramids are cover with White materials and interior full of Gold, Jewel and other expensive stuff. Just imagine what KLCC Twin Towers will look like after 4000years with all its cladding gone or broken and everything inside gone, even the mummified body of Madir.

Thanks to Trevor and Eric who had digested all those "advices" from Lonely Planet, we were able to dodge "attacks" from the Egyptians.

For dodging "attacks" from Pharaohs the Salesman (man, woman, kids, grandpa, grandma, aunty or uncle alike) don't look at them because they are die-very-hard type salesperson, worst than our direct-sales frens or Insurance agents because these peoples has no pride. If you give them a small spark signs of interest, they will hold on to you till you buy their stuffs. These little Pharaohs looks more beggars than traders!

There are also the"Kind Hearted" pharaohs. They will show you the best angles for pixs. They will even take pix for you... They can even take pix with you... But all they want is tips!!!

I saw this woman walking away with an angry face. Not sure if she got molested or "robbed" or maybe both. As you can see the Pharaohs in the middle is smiling from his heart, he gets the money as well as the woman. It must be one of the best catch of his life!

There are also Pharaohs on Camel. They will let you take a photo of them. In fact they insist you take pix of them, if you really do they will ask for tips as like you owe them. I just ignore them and took pix of them far away using Tele lense!

Wakakaka Free of Charge! I outsmart and out hi-tech the pharaohs.

I crawled into This mini-pyramid, The Pyramid of Queen Hetepheres choosen by s0oha. One of the shortest tomb, it just took us less than 15minutes in & out but our backs and legs still ache. I'm sure those princess will complain and complain none stop if we were to crawl into the Great Pyramid of Giza. Tomb like this and few other areas do not premit photograph being taken. Guards aren't highly efficient in protecting their heritages but they are simply greedy.

According to Lonely Planet, the guard will let you take as much photo as you like but they will take you camera away when you leave. Some say, you will need to pay 200 Egyptian Pounds "fines" but if that's true, I don't mind paying in advance as taking pixs inside a forbidden areas simply excite me. I didn't try it out, as I dun wanna lose my E450. LOL!

Egypt Tourist Polices is here to help the tourist, to help the tourist spend their pocket money faster. This is the most disgusting part, polices will do exactly what the other pharaohs do. Show you the best angle, take your pix, take pix with you and demand tips in the end!

Thank you Lonely Planets, you make me feel smarter than those pharaohs.

After “Up close and personal” session, we were taken to appreciate the pyramids from a distance. No matter how hard I tried to belittle these pyramids, they still look and feel huge! Ancient Egyptian as s0ha like to call them, stop making pyramids 3500 years ago, they tried very hard to make it thieves-proof but to no avail. Its like parking your Lamborghini at the backstreet of Chow kit.

According to s0oha, pyramids weren’t built by slaves. Pyramids builders are in fact the loyal citizen of ancient Egypt who believes they are building the house of God, Pharaohs are Son of God! Son of God, sounds familiar? I did watch something like that on national geographic channel (NG) that they found some workers squatters just beside the great pyramid of Giza but that didn’t justify the large numbers of workers needed to build such structures, so more so its 7000 to 3000 years ago.

But what happen to those builders after the pyramid is finish? Since, no one should know the secret of pyramids; I assume all this builders are killed! Although s0ha did show me various theories how pyramid is build but I still thinking its build with the assistants of ALIENS!

At the “Pyramids of Giza View Point”, there are more traders but I dont even give them a glance. Very irritating to think that they might stick to you like super glue till you buys their product. Beside traders selling useless souvenirs, there were also a lot of camels and horses for riding. Although camel and horse riding cost will be bared by s0oha, I decided not to take my risk. Camels and horses here are smelly chaps, just like the smell of the feet on Egypt Air!

Next stop, The Great Sphinx of Giza "The Father of Fear". Sphinxy was the symbol of wisdom (human) and strength (Lion) but by today standard that is “Cacat”. If Sphinxy is still guarding the Pyramids as they believed it, Sphinxy sure would have walloped up all those irritating traders and guards at his feet.

It takes some imagination to fully appreciate a badly damaged structures. Nile Rivers used to flow through this area thus it looks totally different 4000years ago. This place will surely be one of the most beautiful places in the world if it looks exactly like it was 4000years ago.

I crafted my initial "A" on an ancient relics, my legacy will live on forever! Hahahahaha….

This “A” is actually the sign of love in ancient Egypt, there are four “A”s in my name so I got lot of loves to give. Come to me baby!

I don’t understand s0oha de Guide or maybe s0oha don’t understand us de Tourists. She likes to talk, talk and talk. She told us stories for 20minutes and only let us takes photos for 5 minutes. I do respect her as a responsible guide as well as a knowledgeable archaeologist but every tourist likes to take photo as the sign of being there and done it. She only gave us 5minutes up this super tight ramp to take the picture of …

Kissing the Sphinx, everyone was busy pretending for that kissing scene, some French women even tried to French kiss the sphinx. Because of the 5 minutes rules set by s0ha, I didn’t manage to take the pix of Sphinx kissing my Ass! That would have been the best picture of the whole trip, if I manage to do it.

I wouldn’t kiss someone with a broken nose so more a male like Sphinx. Kissing the Sphinx must have felt like kissing Michael Jackson. Puke! Puke! Puke! Some say Sphinx nose was damaged by Napoleon’s canon, some say Islamic warrior and some say English but whoever did that is an idiot.

Our next stop, The Great Step Pyramid Complex at Saqqara! There were few check points with policemen holding AK47 along the journey, which scares me off. Watching actions movies with lots of guns battle and explosion doesn’t help when you encounter the real thing. No wonder my parents were worried sick when they know I went to Egypt. The complex is surrounded by walls and the whole complex is about 37 acres, which would have been the size of a small town during the Old Kingdom.

Known as the first pyramid and the oldest structure in the world. The 7000years old Block Works looks less impressive than its successors after all the first airplane didn’t fly far. Designed, built and supervised by Father of all Architects, Engineers and Quantity Surveyors, MR. Imhotep!

Imhotep isn't the villain wizard as portrayed in Hollywood Movies "The Mummies", he was in fact the beloved Builder. Too much Hollywood-ing can spoil your mind.

After the Steps Pyramid, we went for lunch. Our first lunch in Egypt and according to our itinerary lunch is provided by the tour agency. S0oha said "lunch is included but not drinks!"

Is it lunch? Or we are becoming the lunch?

This is the most expensive photo of the thousands our group took during the whole trips. It cost Cherrie ONE USD! LOL! Along the path in the restaurants, there are donkeys, lion’s cub and people making traditional breads. These peoples asked me to take pix of them but I didn't give them even a look. Because… all they want is tips! No photo No tips, simple as ABC! That’s why I didnt take a single picture of all those idiots!

We all are very thirsty and hot, so we ordered 8 cans of coke and proceed with the Arabic food buffet. When we sat down for lunch, came three musicians playing some really miserable music demanding tips from me. I sat nearest to the walking lane, so this Musician with a violin type of instrument started playing his music loud beside my ear. I ignored him for 5 minutes but he keeps asking for tips and his ear deafening music (if you can call that music) is killing me.

After sometimes, I beh tahan liau. I gave him five dirham coins. I know if I don't drive him away, I will surely land a punch in his face. Which I think is not a good idea in a foreign land. Good musician makes money and Bad musician also makes money, ONLY in EGYPT!

I always tip when the service is good but in Egypt, I felt like being robbed. So I tell myself no more tips for Egyptian but I still need to relieve myself in the toilet. Toilet is the Tipping Heaven for Egyptian, they love their toilet and it's the most heavily forted tipping point in the whole Egypt. So I hold my barrel till that Toilet Pharaoh went away. I rushed in finish my business inside the toilet for less than a minute. No tips, Hooray!

There were so many bees flying around and sams0n manage to capture few other them inside glasses. A new knowledge for me, how to catch bees!

Then, come the bills…

Unbelievable! 15 Egyptian Pounds (12 dirham) for a can of coke in a restaurant not much better than a mamak store. That's ridiculously expensive, no wonder S0oha said "Lunch is included but not drinks!" I have learn to read between the lines of s0oha words, my defination of "lunch is included but not drinks" is "Your lunch is included in your drinks' bills!". Smart le!

Egypt's per capital income is three time less than Malaysia. Three cans of the $15 Cokes would have cover our 8 lunches. We paid the price and learnt the lesson. So our Next and Next-next and Next-next-next lunch come which is included by our Guide, we will just ask for two big bottles of mineral waters. That must pissed those restaurant owner and tour guides off.

Wakakaka!

After lunch but I prefer calling it we being lunched, S0oha brought us to the kononnya "Papyrus Museum", it's actually a shop selling papyrus not a museum but there was a set of machinery use to show tourist how papyrus paper are made.

Even before I enter that shop, I know we are going into the lions den. They might ripped me off but I gonna expose them in the World Wide Web (WWW). I know before hand, there will be Lions' den if you follow Tours!

1st...
Then...
Lepas tu...
S0oha shows us steps by steps how papyrus were made during the ancient times. After that 15mins side show, comes the main show. Each of us is given a piece of paper to write which painting on the papyrus we like. The salesperson said "Only for all of you, 50% discount!" Wah! Their profit margin must be very high if they can give us a 50% discount.

This shop is quite alright because they display every price with the painting, not like others where you gotta bargain very hard. I never intended to buy any but the $15 bookmark caught my eyes and I ended up buying four.

$15 times 4 numbers = $60, $60 times 50% = $30

But their calculation is $32! How they come up with 32 is still a mystery to me.

When I tried to argue with them over the $2, they will just talked to each others in Arabic while pressing the calculator. I tried to argue with them but they insist their price is right and even S0oha sided them by laughing at me for arguing over $2.

I gave them a pissed off face and paid the $32. Not sure if they acted stupid or plain stupid in maths. Earn my $2 and give me an impression of their stupidity, a good bargain indeed.


The Nile Cruise is a must try from Lonely Planet advice but we were advice by Jess not to try because she said it’s unnecessary to trap yourself inside a moving hotel. Inside a ship without casino, there isn’t much to do except sunbathing which most of us won’t enjoy. Anyway, just to feed our curiosity and to cool us off after being ripped, s0oha brought us to a mini-cruiser along the river Nile. The water is blackish in colour bur it doesn’t seems dirty. The wind sail is a comfortable transportation, silent, smooth and cool.

The best thing about s0oha as a tour guide is that, she settled all the tips. We don’t have to worry about tipping as long she is with us. I feel protected from the real Egypt, every time we are with her but at the same time feel angry with her cockiness.

The blackish water (or Blue as s0ha named it, colour blind?) don’t feel dirty. The water is cool and refreshing; after all I’m floating on the longest river in the world The River Nile. It is great after a hectic day out in the pyramid area & looking at all the tourist sites. Imagine the so long history of this water channel, Egyptians see the Nile as their main source of existence; it is the blood and main vein and in other words it is Life since the pharaohs.

It was a good 30minutes sails in Faluca (sounds like it) and time to say bye-bye to s0oha. She tried to discourage us from going to the light show. Earlier in the morning, she suggested that we will be exhausted in the evening thus wont able to watch the show but we all are still very young. I think because she would like to spend her night with family during Ramadan month. It will cost us USD25 extra for using her service and the van at night. Oh! That's a drive off but we don’t mind going by ourselves, it’ll be the best time to experience the real Egypt dealing without a Tour Guide.

We insist of going so S0oha suggested its better we had our dinner at the Pizza hut roof tops while watching the Shows for free. FREE hurray!

We reach our hotel around 5pm with Pyramids still visible, at 6.30pm we had geared up for the Light Show. S0ha said a taxi to PizzaHut should not cost us more than 10 Egyptian pounds (LE), so 2 taxis for eight of us should be 20 LE.

For all her lcly, she is in fact a very responsible person. She wrote us the address of that PizzaHut and also our hotel in Arabic, since most taxi driver can’t read English. She only briefly suggested we order a taxi from the hotel counter, so I took it as not a very good idea. Maybe the hotel taxi guys will also rip as off?

So we proceed to the entrance of the hotel.

We met a hotel security there (he got a hand gun) and he introduced us to the guy below.

This man started the taxi price from 30LE and lowered it to 10LE very quickly. I smell something fishy there, so we asked him 10LE for a taxi? He said 10LE for a person…

NO! We don't want his service. He is a Vamp!!!

We stopped other taxis that cross out path but every time we talked to a taxi driver, that guy will come over and tell the taxi driver something and the taxi will straight away leave.

A very bad man indeed, he wasn't only trying to charge us sky high price but forcing us to take up his offer. This continue for about 5-6 taxis. We won’t get any taxis as long as that Badman is there. So we walked back to our hotel security guard (the one with the handgun) and told him about that Badman.

He managed to hire passing by van that can take 8 of us in one go for just 20LE. Bravo!

The Pizza hut at most 10minutes drive away from our hotel and with Egypt super cheap petrol, 20LE should be on the expensive side of bargain. But never the less, we were satisfied with the van driver attitude. he is polite and honest, we rewarded him with extra 5LE!

We went straight up to the PizzaHut roof tops but found two Sport lights firing full blast towards the roof top direction. It must be the jobs of the Light & Sounds Company, there are no free breakfast in this world. This PizzaHut must had a good run of business before the installation of these two sportlights!

The lights were very irritating but we still manage to watch that show with helps of shades. We had pizzas and KFCs before continued watching the light & sounds shows for free. Free stuffs are usually not very good lorrr!

Hiding behind the shades, we still manage to take a lot of good photos but still not good enough to be award winning shots. In fact most of the shots are over exposed.

Its near to impossible snap any good photo without a tripod and I dont have one with me, so bad! The two pro Roy & Sam setup their stuffs making me looking with envy.

Trev the structural engineer construct his own hideout since the main hideout has been conquer by the two Pro! Not bad for a Rumah Setinggan type of shades! With his Canon Ixus, he still manage to capture some good pixs.

Around 9pm, the sport lights that firing towards our side, went off. Dunno why? All the photos below are "Cetak Rompak" from Sams0n's facebook!

He even manage to snap a falling star, really great E450 but i havent master it yet! I only use fullyautomatic. LOL!

We took 2hours for photo snapping, much to the annoyance of some frenchi who come after us because we took all the prime position lol. Some more they only got "so-chai camera", that's what Roy calls small digicam!

After the shows, we bargained for taxi again. A Taxi driver said he got a big car and it can take 8 of us in one go but he wanted $40. We agreed on $25, as $25 seems a good bargain just like the Van we took here. Shockingly to find his taxi is THIS big! We manage to squeeze in, that's amazing!

That taxi itself deserves a story.

No air-con with only one window open-able and that's the driver side window. Worst, I could smells exos smoke inside the car although its very little but still might killed us. The headlights was off, he switched it on only once when he saw the police and turned it off again. Egypt is one of the country with the cheapest petrol rates (RM0.50 per litre), why did he need to act like that?

It was just a 10mins ride but its like riding roller coaster in Africa. If anything happen, it will be near to impossible to get out of that JUNK!

Very exciting day indeed!