Backpacking

My last night in Egypt was excellent.
I know I'm skipping an entire week of Egypt, but those entries will follow this one. I just want to get everything down as I remember it and I've only got 20 minutes remaining.

The day began when I arrived back in Cairo yesterday after a 10 hour night train from Luxor. The train ride was pretty uneventful aside from sharing a cabin with a large Egyptian family who spoke little English and I, "Shwiyah" (little) Arabic. Of course upon finding out I was Canadian their Egyptian Hospitality came into play four-fold and I was offered any and all of their food. The pita and sketchy cheese looked unappetizing but of course refusing their offer of "Ekel" (food, eating, etc) would only ensure they shove it further towards me and eventually down my throat so I took it and ate it... and then took the juice they gave me, and then the cake, and then the crackers, and then the etc. etc. etc... you get it.

Travelling alone in Egypt as a woman is not difficult, just incredibly annoying since you will inevitably be stopped every 5 steps and heckled to buy things from shops, told you are "gemilla" (beautiful), be offered a variant amount of dowry from your hand in marriage, receive dirty looks, receive smiles and waves and of course the famous wink and nod which basically means... accompany me to my house for a bit of loving.

Travelling alone, I generally avoid most eye contact but smile briefly... it's easier this way. Then they know you're polite and respectful but you don't encourage them to approach you one-on-one even though they will.

Travelling with Josh and Eliza it was a lot easier to wave and be outgoing and smile as we had our "husband" Josh to protect us. Remember, we were his two wives after all. Hah.

I got to the Cairo train station and because the taxis were all attempting to charge a ridiculous price because I was a woman tourist on my own I said "fil mish mish" (in your dreams) and started walking with 45 pounds on my back and 15 pounds on each arm (silly, stubborn me) to my hostel about 2 km away.

I arrived sweaty and nasty and immediately had a shower and dropped on my bed in my beautiful air-conditioned room (YAAAAYYY). Keep in mind that at this point anything was beautiful.

Later on that night I went with 3 Egyptians I met to a traditional Egyptian dance put on for free by the ministry of culture. It's incredible. You sit there and watch men twirl around to Arabic music for 2 hours. It definately puts you in a trance. Awesome pictures to come. I have five minutes left so I leave you with a quick summary....

I stayed up all night with the 3 Egyptians wandering downtown Cairo and smoking Shishah in a cafe until a taxi picked me up at 5am for my 7:40 flight to Amman which I almost missed because they changed the gate before the flight and only announced the gate change in Arabic. Gahh...

Oh well. I arrived safely in Madaba with an excess of Egyptian souvenirs and gifts and am happy to finally be sedentary for a month and a half. The dig starts in a couple of days so I will do my best to continue updating and adding pictures...

Much love,
Krysten

I can't tell you enough how fun and amazing Egypt has been for me, so I'll start at the beginning...

I flew into Cairo Airport with a delicious view of the Nile and a very nice Egyptian man in the seat beside me who taught me my first words in Egyptian Arabic:

"Ha bi bi" - My darling
"Bousse" - Kiss
"Tanem" - Sleep

Little did I know that this flight was only an inkling of what was to come. From 100 - 1 000 000 000 camels, limitations are no holds bar when it comes to marrying a caucasian.

The airport was a nightmare due to a silly mistake on my part. I arrived at 3:25 am on the morning of June 1st. I booked my hostel for June 1st. Silly me! Since I booked my hostel for June 1st, they assumed I would be staying the NIGHT of June 1st and not the night of
May 31st. Get it? So here I was in a foreign Arabic country where as soon as you leave airport security there is a crowd of 500 Egyptians waiting for their family or foreigners they can hassle for a much over-priced taxi.

I looked around for awhile expecting to see my name raised above the crowd, but after an hour of taxi drivers following me around and asking to be my boyfriend even though I'm "married" and attempting to make Arabic payphones work and receiving only a busy signal I gave up and got a taxi to my hostel. This brief summary is only a fifth of the detail of the insanity that occured that night. I hardly want to relieve it in writing... So ask me about it when I get home.. haha

I met Josh and Eliza in Cairo my first day there; twins, travelling for 18 months from South America to the Middle East to Europe to Asia. Hilarious and very great people. I met them as they came into the hostel arguing with their taxi guide they had hired for the day to take them to Giza, Saqqara and Memphis ... apparently they decided they didn't want to go Saqqara and Memphis after Giza as they thought the guide had said "Sahara" and not "Saqqara" ... They were still going to pay the full amount, they just didn't want to see everything. In Egypt if you reject their history, you reject them. Josh and Eliza learned quickly how to be better tourists. Hahaha.

My first day in Cairo was spent at the Egyptian Museum where we saw some of the most incredible things I've ever laid my eyes on, besides Tommy (permission to puke at my lameness). An entire wing was reserved for 11 ancient mummies. Entirely preserved, the bodies laid intact in cases carefully monitoring the temperature and ensuring their hair, fingernails and other finer parts of the body would endure no further physical degradation. Seeing a 4000 year old woman lying with her eyes closed, arms extended and hair fully intact was an experience that I still can't put into words. It's just... so... cool.

Tutankhamun's tomb was definately a highlight of the Egyptian museum. Howard Carter discovered the tomb many, many years ago and died soon after it was uncovered. Many mysterious deaths followed thus suggesting the work itself, in uncovering an ancient tomb, was victim to ancient curse. Howard Carter's fellow excavator, a man who performed a purification ritual before entering the tomb was one of the few men who worked at the site to survive into old age.

Tutankamun's remains were incredible. Hundreds of golden, earrings, bracelets and necklaces adorned the mummy itself and were wrapped in bandages surrounding the mummy. A MUST SEE.

Crossing the road to the museum? Well.... an adventure. Basically roads here are busy highways or death traps as I like to call them that you simply run across when the traffic is well.... less thick (and by less thick I mean 300 cars passing you a millesecond instead of 325). Josh, Eliza and I simply stared at the traffic until we saw an Egyptian guy just running through it. So we did the same, pretty much screaming and laughing the whole way.

Khan-el-Khalili, probably the largest and most famous Bazaar in Egypt was another AWESOME experience. We showed up and were FAMISHED. Any restaurant was a good restaurant. Wading through the piles of carpets, sheesha pipes and crappy Egyptian souvenirs we came across Egypt's version of a mall's foodcourt. A bunch of restaurants cluttered together all vying for your appetite. The minute we came around the corner the shouting began.
"Here, Here! We Good Food! Here Menu! Eat! We Have Chicken, Falafel, Koshari! Good Price!"

The only tourists there, we just started laughing and the entire 500 or so Egyptians enjoying their dinners turn to look at what's causing the commotion. Finally we decided on a restaurant and found out there were not enough seats inside. According to the owners "No pob-lem, No pob-lem!" We stood there until we realized they were kicking people out of their restaurant in the middle of their meal so we could sit down. Egyptian hospitality at its finest! Of course we said NO way! Let these people eat! A table opened up in a couple minutes and we were finally able to eat.

The food was delicious, pita, meat, salad stuff etc... The hawkers were an experience. Everything known to man was being sold and little Egyptian boys, girls, women and men would approach every table in the market with odds and ends like Kleenexes, souviners, rugs, necklaces, bracelets, hennah and etc. We went wild with the hennah as it was only 5 Egyptian pounds, or rather $1 Canadian.

And THIS was created! Awesome, eh?

So we ate and continued on our merry way around the market taking about 12 steps an hour as we seemed to be barricaded by a ridiculous amount of people shouting "Welcome to Alaska" (Yes, Egyptians are crazy or "Magnoun" in Arabic), "Look at my shop, you know how much? 5 pound!" or "Two wives? Lucky man!"

The Egyptian people are the funniest and most welcoming people in the world. When we finally left the market Eliza and I had each purchased 1 item and Josh, nothing. Basically the entire time was spent joking around with the people in broken Arabic-English and turning down offers of marriage for Eliza and I by saying we were Josh's wives. In Islam, men may have up to four women... but the story goes "Four women equals four problems."

We went home very, very happy but tired and HUNGRY. We seem to always be either hungry or thirsty here! It seems less of a hassle sometimes to eat nothing then to have to barter for a cold bottle of water or a meal! Hahaha.... You wouldn't believe how cheap everything is though... it's awesome.

A 1.5 litre bottle of water? 1.5 pounds or $0.30 CDN
A meal? 2 CDN

And so I leave you with the memories of my first day in Cairo...

Next? My second day in Egypt. Hopefully soon to come.. haha

Much love,
Krysten

WOW.

There's hardly a word to explain Egypt.

I am having an amazing time. The best part though? THE PEOPLE.
Yup, you read that right. The Egyptian people are some of the coolest and most easygoing, hilarious people in the world. Of course you may still get ripped off as a tourist, but have plenty of fun with the shopkeeper while you're doing it....

... and a little game the taxi drivers play? Don't mention you're scared or they'll drive ten times more dangerously and laugh at you shaking in the back seat while they're doing it!!!
We learned quick!

... and crossing busy highways? RIDICULOUS. You look at the oncoming traffic, realize it's never going to stop and the cars going way faster than they should be of course MAY not stop for you so you JUST. START. WALKING. Sometimes running. 6 lanes of traffic and you weave your way through and get honked at about 470 times.

... offers of marriage are plentiful.... but apparently I'm married. I've been travelling around a bit with these 2 New Zealanders who are brother and sister and at the market last night EVERYONE would say to him... Oooo, two wives my man! Good work! By the end of the night he was just saying "Yes, it's a good life!" ... The Khan-el-khali markets were DEFINATELY one of the HUGE highlights so far. We had an amazing time and spent probably 30 minutes actually looking at the items and about 2 and a half hours trying to get through the markets without tagalongs while joking around with most every stall we passed....

OH and I got hennahed! My hand and arm has the most awesome design that lasts for a month and was only one dollar Canadian!

Hopefully I'll put some pictures on tonight after I go to the pyramids with a girl and a guy from Alaska....

COOOOOL

Much Love,
Krysten

Here I am in Malta, waiting for my plane to Cairo. It seems a little crazy to me that I've already made it this far without any major problems or mishaps.....

...well except for falling in the lake last night while riding Jolanda's brother's bike. Just wait til you see the picture that was taken after it happened... (featured soon.. haha)

So here's the story...

No one felt like riding their bikes with me so I decided, you know what? I'll go by myself! I need a little independence.... but little did I know I would independently fall from the bike and in to the murky, swamp behind her house. Europeans are tall. Her brother is probably about 6'4 which means he has long legs. Following so far? Long legs mean the seat and the pedals are VERY far apart, which means my short little body and legs don't quite reach the pedals....apart from the tips of my toes.
Add a narrow bridge in the middle of a nasty, fishy swamp to the mixture and the recipe equals disaster. A smelly, wet, girly disaster.

When I realized I wasn't going to be able to turn the corner on the narrow bridge because I couldn't reach the pedals, I freaked out (not wanting to fall in the swamp, you see) and tried to jump off the bike and onto the bridge (no, not into the swamp). I missed and landed in the lake. The scenario was not as gruesome as it could have been even though I did come out with a fairly large bump on my head when the bike...well... landed on my head (sheez this is embarrasing). I managed to land somehow in a bed of nasty, slurpy, swampy seaweed and only one side of my body was at one point, fully submerged in sickly Holland swamp water. The other side was, YAY, dry. So I pulled the bike out of the water with seaweed hanging from the handle bars and ...yes... walked back to the house where I was laughed at by Jolanda and her family... of course.

Anyway, I recovered... physically, although maybe not completely my pride and somehow I made it to Malta.

The title of this post was to assume = doom and I presume everyone would be happy if I stopped babbling and got on with it. I've assumed a lot of things in the past couple days some of which have gotten me into more trouble than others:

1. I assumed Kijelt (Jolanda's friend) wouldn't drink a whole bowl full of thick sweet onion and chili sauce, meant for dipping food in, for 5 Euros. It took him awhile, but I lost that bet.

2. I assumed I would be able to ride a bike that I could barely reach the pedals

3. I assumed that I was in Valletta, Malta when I got off the bus in a very populated, yet small metropolis. Only an hour later when I read the sign that said "Paolo Police" did I realize that I was still 20 mins outside of the city I actually wanted to go to. No wonder the map didn't make any sense and I couldn't find the Ocean! Holy embarrasment, batman!

... and just in case you're ever in Malta and riding public transport, the bus drivers like to honk at each other on the rode which often scares the bejeezus out of us country folk who are unfortunately stuck in the circumstance of riding formentioned bus...

4. I assumed because Malta was an Island it would have BEACHES. I packed my sunscreen, bikini and towel in my carry on so I could just hike to the beach on my layover. I start talking to the couple beside me and we get talking about how I'm only in Malta for about 7 hours and I tell them I'm gonna find a beach and go to it.... They respond with "A beach? It's all rock. There's only a couple beaches in Malta and none of them are around Valletta." Here I'm thinking, oh blah... what do they know.... UNTIL we approach Malta from the air and I see that INDEED, the ENTIRE exterior of the island is beautiful, solid, ROCK lined shores. Oh, blah.

And now my internet time is running out so I leave you with the moral of my story:
Don't assume..... or your vocab will be reduced to two words, like mine: OH, BLAH

Much Love
Krysten

Hai!

Ik ben gut! Ik ben in Katwijk in de Nederlands!

We have been very lazy so far! Jolanda picked me up from the airport and I had bought her Irish chocolates from Ireland but surprise, surprise... I forgot them on the plane! Just like I always forget everything on planes!

I have also forgotten my passport on the plane in Australia (thankfully I ran back to get it in time and had to search through the garbage! Yeck!) and my Nike running shoes on my flight back from Haiti. At least I didn't lose my plane tickets this time! That would be the ultimate nightmare.

Today, Jolanda and I made a chocolate cake! They don't have chocolate cake mix here though so we had to make it with a vanilla cake mix and put cocoa in it... sweeeeet

Gas here is INSANE. It averages about 1.40 Euros per litre which is more than $2.00 Canadian per litre!

The beach is only about a kilometre from Jolanda's house...

Tomorrow we are going to The Hague where Sadam Hussein is on trial and then to the casino at night! We're planning on going to either Germany or Belgium sometime this week as well, so soon we will be busy, busy, busy!

Hopefully everything is well with all of you and you all are having a great summer! I almost wish I were in Canada now because the weather is so cold everywhere I go! Hah...

Love
Krysten