Day 4: Edfu

Oct 19
Cruise started moving @ 6 am

After breakfast, while we were lazing on the deck enjoying the cool morning breeze, the shopkeeper, Ahmed came up to talk to us. He said that he can give us very, very good discount if we buy things from him. I told him that he don't have to worry. We have two girls and one man here who would definitely get some stuff off him. This, of course, got me into trouble with HZ and Kim because they said that I "put them on the table". Nevertheles, CY, Kim and HZ still fell for his charm. They spent quite a lot in his shop. HAHAHA.

1. Kom Ombo Temple
This temple is unique because it houses 2 Gods unlike other temple. A typical temple will have 3 shrines as it housed the God, his wife and his son. Kom Ombo on the other hand, is a temple dedicated to two God - Sobek and ?. Evil God was banished to take shape of any living thing which live inside the Nile (for example snakes, hippopotamus and crocodiles). In Kom Ombo, there was a lot of crocodiles - that is why Sobek was depicted as a God with crocodile head.


This picture shows two entrances to the Kom Ombo temple. The round disc with two accompanying cobra marks an entrance to the temple. Usually we will see one disc in all the temples we visited but in this temple, we see two discs. Cobra is a symbol of protection.

Here we get to see mummified crocodiles too.

Kom Ombo is also where we learned that the Ancient Egyptian has a calendar. Interestingly, they marked the last day of the calendar with a symbol called "Beh". Beh means last day, final. The influence of Beh can be seen in today's Egyptian language (Arabic?). Mido said that when he was a baby and when he asked for sweets, his mother will said "beh" meaning no more. So even though his mother used that term, she's not aware of its influence from Ancient Egypt.


Excellent angle from HZ to show that the relief is used to tell story. You have seen the picture of the King offering the temple to the God Horus (far right). The relief on the left shows that the King is offering an obelisk to the God Sobek and his wife.

In Kom Ombo, we were shown one relief showing the tools that was offerred to the Gods. This tools are actually tools to use for mummification process like the knife, the jar to store balm, etc.
Back to the boat. Ate Mamee (cup noodles) & beer (this time it is Stellar beer) in the "outside lounge" :) Well, we are not hungry actually, but we still need to get rid of those cup noodles we brought. The food in Egypt is delicious and suitable for Malaysians. I really like the rice. It's almost like our glutinous rice and yet it is not as sticky. All the myth about food being not suitable for us are not true. So, you don't really need to be "kiasi" and bring many Mamee cup noodles :P

2. Edfu Temple ~ 3pm
Horse-drawn carriage for our drive through the town of Edfu to the Temple of Horus. The 4 of us boarded a carriage (number 31). I guess it's HZ's dream come true as he has been bugging us to go for a horse drawn carriage ride. Anyway, in the middle of the journey, our business minded horse-man (I can't seem to think of a proper term at the moment) stopped the horse and helped us take photographs of the four of us in the carriage. Ok, no problem we think but we bet he wanted barkeesh (tip). Sure enough, after taking the photos, he asked for money. We gave him LE 5 but he refused and was getting angry. He kept on asking for more and we kept on refusing. Finally, he accepted the LE 5 and started smiling to us. I remember reading Lonely Planet that this is their culture - their way of doing business, so we should not be offended by it.


Temple of Horus at Edfu was the 2nd largest temple in Egypt after the Karnak Temple in Luxor. This picture is not able to show you the size of the pylons! You have to go there to feel it for yourself! It's HUGE! And to think this whole temple was buried under the sand thousands of years ago!

Here Mido drew on the sand and told us about the architecture of a temple. He told us how a temple is built. There's the pylons, then the "whole" (hall) for the people to "bray" to God. This "whole" is where the High Priest will bring out the statue of the God every morning for the people to bray. Next "whole" with all the "columus" is where the High Priests of other Gods came to bray. Then the next "whole" is where the High Priest of this God bray. Next will be the 3 shrines for the God, his wife and his son.

On our way back, our horse was just walking and not galloping. It's weird. A lot of the other carriages has started overtaking us. CY was worried.. wondering if he will bring us to an alley and mug us. I thought maybe the horse practise Ramadan too. Fortunately, we found out later that our friend had forgotten his whip which was why the horse was taking his time.

3. Sunset @ Cruise
First sunset in the cruise. This is also our first complementary Lipton tea supplied by the cruise (with cakes!) Imagine drinking tea while cruising Nile at sunset. Ahhh... Gaya, mutu, keunggulan... Blissful. We saw a few phases of the moon when we were in the cruise. To my surprise though, there weren't many stars in the sky.

4. Traditional Dressing
Post entered by Kim:
"There's a traditional dressing session tonight. It's called Egyptian Night. All guests were encourage to dress up and join the party. The restaurant served Egytian dinner. The cruise staff were all dressed in their traditional costumes. Some of them performed some dances. Like Club Med GMs, these guys are multi talented!!!

CY and I (and all the other ladies in the group) have been shopping the day before. I bought this beautiful red dress and CY had a striking blue. While we were walking up the stairs to the lounge, I noticed Mido standing at 3rd floor, outside of the lounge. He was dressed in white, wah – macam "white horse prince" -HAHAHA.... It was a fun night with all the ladies dressing up. And needless to say, when this scenario happen, you can count on many photography sessions… Poor HZ, being the Mr. Nice, he was asked to snap A LOT of photos using everybody's cameras - for 10 ladies. Later he said his hand really lemah ... Fong has conveniently made himself invisible.

I am not sure what happened but Mido got into this plot to perform a proposal outside the lounge. He took out his ring from his keychains, then put it on Kim’s finger and knelt down in proposal..……everyone was laughing enjoying the show. I was uneasy at first as I didn’t know what to do other being a sport and playing along. Not sure if that was too much for a married muslim man. Nevertheless, it was all in the name of fun ! "

Day 3: Aswan, the city where it all began...

Oct 18

Reached Aswan early in the morning. It was dawn when we boarded the mini bus.

The buildings around Aswan were pretty interesting.. they looked a lot like the small towns in Malaysia. There was one scene that reminded me of the buildings on the hill as depicted in Call of Duty: United Offensive - that level where you were riding a boat to a pier to bomb the lighthouse and finally taking out 3 huge AAs on the hills.

Anyway, we reached the pier. There was already a lot of cruises there. Saw Club Med (Aswan?). I was extremely pleased and impressed with the size of our cruise (M/S Salacia). It's bigger than I imagined it to be (my imaginations were based on someone's comment that Nile is very shallow - which is totally untrue).


M/S Salacia, where we spent 4 days, 3 nights from Aswan to Luxor.

We had to wait for 3-4 hours for the train group and we were not allowed to check into our rooms. Again, this has caused much grievances - we should at least be allowed to check in and freshen ourselves up. However, and the reception is right, check in time was 2pm just like any other hotels. Oh well, we spent some time taking photos and relaxing on the top deck.

Later, one of the waiters opened the lounge for us to rest and get some sleep. I tried to sleep on the couch but there were some kind of "bed bugs" or something and after a while I gave up trying to sleep. I ordered a cup of French coffee, which sucks, btw. Then I sat at the couch and somebody said that the train group have arrived.

Mido told us that we would start our tour now and come back in the afternoon just in time for lunch and our room. So off to the bus we go.

1. Aswan High Dam
First stop is the Aswan High Dam. In the bus Mido told us about how the older Aswan dam was not enough to control River Nile. We also learned about how important River Nile was to Egypt. People claimed that it was River Nile that saved Egypt, which he does not agree. He said River Nile pass through a few countries in Africa, not just Egypt. But it was the Egyptians that work hard to make use of Nile. So, Egypt's prosperity was due to the Egyptians, not just the Nile. That was why they built the old dam. However, that is not enough to control it. There's still flood every where. Because of that, President Nasser decided to build the High Dam at Aswan. By building the High Dam, he created Lake Nasser on the southern part of Nile.

Mido talked abt how River Nile started all these ancient history - how the ancient Egyptions planted their crops and then while waiting for the crops to grow, they have the time to ponder about life, their purpose in life and thus created the believe of Gods and the Second Life.

In his opinion, it wasn't the Pharoahs who built all these temples and monuments we are going to see. It is the Egyptian people. So he likes to call it Ancient Egyptian instead of Fer-RO-nik Egypt.

The importance of High Dam at Aswan:
- allow a 2 million hectar land to be cultivatable - for Egyption cotton, Egyption oranges, potatoes - create employment so that people won't concentrate only in Cairo. This land may be ready in 1-2 years time.
- he then told us about how the whole Egypt has 70 million people and ..?
- we learned that some of the ancient temples have to be relocated because of the High Dam
- generate electricity to whole of Egypt - have enough to export to neighbouring countries eg Israel
- when Africa faced famine a few years back (in Somalia and Ethopia), Egypt was the only country in Africa unaffected. This is all because of the High Dam and President Nasser.
- Mido said that the High Dam is like a double edge sword.. on one hand, it is the life of Egypt. On the other, it is the target of Egypt's enemy. All it takes (according to some General's quote) is 6 minutes to destroy the High Damn and thus, destroying the whole of Egypt.

2. Russia Monument
From High Dam we went to this monument that was dedicated to Russia for their aid in building of the High Dam. Mido said that this a friendship monument. He ended the story by saying that if you watched Lord of The Rings, the tower looked exactly like the bad guy's tower :D

On the way back from High Dam, a broken bus blocked the way and we had to detour.. we went to Philae Temple.

3. Philae Temple (pronounced as Fillet (as in the fish))
To get to Philae Temple, we had to ride a boat. This is where we learned about the Nubians (this is possibly where he mentioned that all the gold of Egypt come from the Nubians).

Mido talked about how the original site of Temple was in Agilika Island which was now submerged and they moved the whole temple to this island that is shaped just like Agilika. The island is called Philae?


Philae Temple, the first temple we visited and the first time I was fascinated by Mido's story...

In the shade of one of the pylons, he started to tell us the basis of Ancient Egyption history: the Gods.

He assigned roles to the group:
Albert = the Creator God
Kim = Nut, God of Sky
me = Jeb, Goddess of Earth

At first, there's only Jeb and Nut. They loved each other very much, so much that they were never separated. But the Creator God had to separate them (because of?) and so he created:

HZ = God of Air
CY = Goddess of Water.

God of Air and Goddess Water came between Jeb and Nut and they formed what we know as our world. See, even in the ancient time, ze people already believe the world is round.

In addition, the Creator God created:
Osiris = ?, God of ?
Isis = Joe, Goddess of Love
Mr Ong = Seth, brother of Osiris
Mrs Ong (?) = Seth's wife

Osiris was a good God, beloved by all people. This caused Seth to be jealous of him. So Seth planned to kill Osiris but you can't kill a God. What Seth did was amazing. He created this beautiful box made of gold. Unknown to the people, Seth made the box to fit only Osiris' body. He declared that whoever can fit into this box, will be rewarded with the gold box. Everybody tried and failed. When Osiris tried and fit the box, Seth, quickly closed the lid and sealed it. He threw the box and Osiris into the Nile and it floated to someplace.

Isis was busy looking for the box with her husband inside. She found it on an island? There was a tree protecting the box. Osiris body was cut into 16 pieces by Seth (?) and these pieces were thrown away? Isis looked for the body part and then use linen cloth to wrap it. Mido demonstrated the wrapping using someone's scarf. This marked the first mummy made by the Goddess of Love. He also mentioned that because the arm and hand were in different pieces, Isis had to place Osiris hands in a X shaped over his chest. This is the same posture adopted by other Pharoahs when they were being made into mummy.

Something to do with Creator God's name and whoever read it will be granted a wish. Isis transformed herself into a "vulcan" (falcon), flew into the sky and read the name. Her wish was granted. Osiris lives... but only for one night. During this night, Horus (played by Swee Fee (?) was conceived.

Horus wanted revenge. Fought with Seth. Seth was older and more experienced, so Horus was defeated. His eye was cut off. Somehow the Creator God wanted to put an end to all this and made Horus the King. He gave him an artifact called the Eye of Horus which can be used to see far and into the future.

We met at another hall with columns. This "hole" was an addition by later Pharoahs. It is used as a resting place for the Pharoah after braying. Each column of the hall have different design - something about the Greek designs (?)

3. Unfinished Obelisk
We visited a quarry. Here, I remember my first encounter with security and scanning of bags. It was hot and we have to line up to get through security.

Under the shade of a tree, habibi told us the significance of unfinished obelisk to Egyptologist. The unfinished obelisk lies in the only granite quarry in the whole Egypt - and it is in Aswan. Here we learned how ze shaped the obelisks/rocks - drill holes, put wood into holes, fill wood with hot water, wood expand, blocks are broken apart.

4. Lunch - Egyptian made spagetti
Came back to M/S Salacia. We were given a welcome drink while we waited for our rooms. It's a chilling hisbiscus syrup. Yum. Someone, I think it was HZ, didn't like it, so I drank his share too. Must have lots of liquid in this trip.

Delicious spagetti - marinated very well. Yum. Love the dates.

5. Felucca Ride

An enjoyable afternoon ride on a felucca.

Felucca is a kind of yatch. There are a few feluccas around our cruise and our tour include a one hour ride on the felucca. The felucca is manned by 3 Nubians who, of course, have homemade stuff (necklace, camel bone-paper cutter, etc) for sale.

Unfortunately, there's no wind today so we didn't go far.

Mido told us that LE in the money stands for "Liv Egyption", a French term. He also talked about how corruption are rampant in Egypt - how he has to pay to ride on the train with the group and get a coach (his train was supposed to depart an hour after the group). When Kim asked how much people earn here, he said that 80% of population earning less than US$300 - have to have 3 to 4 jobs. Then there's the middle income who probably own a small apartment in the city. And there's the very rich - usually businessmen and politicians.

He talked abt Sudan and how lazy they are (compared to Egyptian)... There was a popular joke about a group of Sudan sleeping. The first to awake get to claim the title President.

Nile is the longest river in the world. The people have to respect the River God because ze need his agreement before going to Second life. Unfortunately, people don't respect Nile these days. One can see bottled water floating around... or in some places, some "uneducated farmers" will throw a dead cow into the river.

We were then entertained by the Nubians, singing some traditional songs.

I think we were too tired to even think of watching the sun sets..

While waiting for dinner, I had my first Egyptian beer. The label was Sakara. It tasted like some Cina beer. We were served by this guy who introduced himself as Mustafa.

6. Dinner
Fight between Swiss and Indians over trivial matters. Nevertheles, an exciting evening to an already exciting day :P

7. Aswan night market
Our first attempt at buying things and practicing the art of negotiation in Egypt shop. During negotiation, we mentioned a price. Shop owner was extremely offended. Closed the display window and asked us to walk carefully. So, we walked out. He then asked his son to chase after us and ask us to return to the shop. Give good price.

HZ experienced buying oilment for his sprained ankle in his first pharmacy visit in the Aswan market (of course taken there by Mido). I wonder if he nego in the pharmacy? We bought many bottles of water. Even though Nile is the longest river in the world, poor tourist have to drink from bottled water because "ze are not used to ze kemical in ze river."

WHAT A LONG DAY! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...

Day 1 & 2: Bahrain and Cairo

Oct 16 - Bahrain
We have to spend the night in Bahrain in transit. Nothing much to say here except this small country is extremely rich. 1 Bahrain Dinar = USD $2.7. A typical McDonald’s Value Meal cost almost 2 Bahrain Dinar!

Oct 17 - Bahrain - Cairo
We were received at the airport immigration by a spectacle guy that has this weird jaw setting out of his face. I don’t know his name. (update 2/21: As we were lining up to get our passport stamped, I noticed that there were many booths on my left. These are booth set up by local banks for exchanging money and the "bankers" were screaming on top of their lungs to get our attention for business. Since the line was pretty long, I told CY that I would go change some money.

Somebody told us (maybe it was the spectacle guy, I'm not sure) that the immigration in Cairo works differently. You see, first you walked towards to Immigration officer. He inspected your passport, looked at you, chatted with you if you were a girl, ignored you if you were a man, then he would ask you to stand aside while he asked the next in line to come towards him. Your passport is still being held but was passed on to an officer who works behind a booth. If we weren't warned in advanced, we would have thought that something was wrong with the passport or that you were being detained. Quite a scare.

We then met up at the luggage pickup area and waited for, I presumed our guide. After around 10 minutes, the group started walking out of the airport. The airport parking was filled with so many black cars. They are everywhere. These are the taxis and there are endless rows of them .) We then boarded our bus. In the bus, we met our local tour guide, Mido.

"Welcome to Cairo.. welcome to Cairo". Mido started the tour with these sentences. (update 2/21: Just like the guide in Beijing, Mido began by telling us about the road that the bus is running on. He said that this is a new suburb in Cairo and one can tell by the road condition. The road we were on had an "island" with grass, tress and lamp post, separating the road on the other side. Cars move on left side of the island into the city while the other side has cars moving towards the airport. (People in Egypt drives on the left side, just like Americans). In some parts of Cairo, the older part, there's only one road and there's no island. You can see cars coming in all directions without any rules)

As the bus moved up an elevated highway after passing through an ancient looking toll booth, Mido told us about the elevated highway - how it took 30 years to build because all the money went to the war that Egypt was involved in. (update 2/21: He said that Egypt has no enemies but Egypt is the self declared big boss in Middle East and Africa. So, whenever there is war between countries, Egypt is expected to send soldiers and money to help out - or be peacekeeper. So you see, the construction of the highway have to be halted because the money is diverted out to other people's war.)

The city of Cairo has the biggest population in Africa, almost 22 million people (out of 70 million of the whole country). He said that this month is the month of Ramahdan and places like Egyptian Museum were closed by 2.30pm. The original plan of going to Egyptian Museum today will be postponed to the day we returned to Cairo. That upset many of us and Mr Ong went in front to voice his disagreement, I think.. I am not sure as I sat at the very end of the bus. Mido came back to the mic and said that he will definitely cover everything in the itinerary. Don't worry.

1. Sadat Tomb
The bus came to a stop at this monument that looks a lot like a pyramid. This was where he taught us some basic Arabic. The first term is "habibi". The term is used for your loved ones or for your close friends but in this context, we are his lovely group and therefore his habibi. Later I found out from a kwai poh that it also means sweetheart. And "yalla yalla" means let's go. So "habibi! yalla, yalla" means "my lovely group, let’s go!" Someone in the group, Josephine, I think, commented in Karnak Temple, that we could also use “lai lar, lai la” a Mandarin term for "Come Come" but "Layla" is also a name of a Arabian lady. Ah.. such confusion!

According to Mido, this monument, called Sadat Tomb, was built for two reasons. Firstly, for the unsung heroes that liberated Sinai (pronounced as Sai-nai) from Israel(?) or British(?). Sinai is an important part of Egypt as it is where the profitable Suez Canal was. Secondly, it is used to mark the death of a President Sadat (presumably the one that fought for Sinai's liberation). The President was shot in the head while sitting across this monument watching a parade. The interesting thing about this monument is the 3 types of guard uniforms: modern Egypt, Turkish (I think) and Pharonic (he pronounced as Fer-ROR-Nik). He also mentioned that these "guards" will ask you for money and we should not give them any as it is their job to guard this place.

2. Sheraton Cairo
Reached Sheraton Cairo and checked into the room. HZ upgraded his room to a suite using his Platinum card. Turned out that the damn suite has only one bed and I have to share it with him! Damn! Luckily it was only for a few hours… Let me pause by going to the bathroom to throw up :D

Later we were told that we have to get up at 1am to board our domestic flight to Aswan at 3am. Tough start!

Free time... so we walked around the East bank and the island of Zamalek. Kim wanted to go across the river to Hard Rock Cafe, Cairo. We saw a few couples getting ready to buka puasa. Surprisingly, they invited us to join them for a meal. Egyptian hospitality? I think so.

3. HRC Cairo @ Grand Hyatt Cairo
So dead. No one's there because liquour is not permitted during Ramahdan. We had a few milkshakes and shared nachos. Took a cab back to the hotel as we were all tired from walking. Cost us LE10.

4. Sending the Train group to the train station + Dinner.
Supposed to meet at the lobby at around 7.00pm. However, the escalator was full of people. Mohammad, the other temporary guide with pointy leather shoe, have to ride the escalator up and take us down. We found out that the train was scheduled to leave at 8pm... that was the reason for the rush or they'll miss the train.

The bus dropped the Train group in the station and took us for dinner at this kebab restaurant. It's called Gardenia. There was a lady outside the restaurant making the bread. The process is almost like our Tanduri chicken bread. Quite a nice place actually. The kebab chicken was excellent. Very tasty. YUM!

5. Woke up at 1am. Getting ready to take domestic flight to Aswan.
We were given some crappy Sheraton-breakfast-in-a-box. As we were boarding the bus, HZ did not see a step, fell down and sprained his ankle. Luckily he’s ok. Of course he started telling everybody about it.

While at the departure lounge, I see all the kwai los holding these breakfast boxes too. In the flight, I read the Egypt Air magazine (Horus) about King Tut (pronounced as Tut-Ankh-A-Mun by Habibi) tomb as discovered by Carter and Lord somebody. Very interesting read. This is very useful later when we went to the Egyptian Museum.

My amazing tour to Egypt on Oct 2004

This and subsequent posts are travel logs of my unforgettable trip to Egypt with my friends CY, Kim and HZ on 16th October 2004. When I went to Egypt, I did not bring a pen with me. I could not even write down the phone numbers of all the pretty girls that were in my group. I know... let me pause for a while and go bang my head on the wall.

Having said that, to my amazement, I could recount almost all of the things we have seen, and the stories we have heard. This was one week after our tour. These posts came out of memory with occasion help from CY, KC and HZ. I referred to Lonely Planet for the spelling of the name of the places and Gods.

Obviously, the credit goes to our local Egyptologist and tour guide, Mido, because it was his wonderful story telling skills that captured and fascinated me on the history of Ancient Egypt and allowed me to recount most of his story. If only my history teachers were as good as him :D

I am sure I have missed out many details. Some of these posts may not mean anything to you if you were not part of the tour group. I wish I could put some pictures here but I guess we have to do without them.

Hopefully, this log will remind us of the fun we had had in amazing Egypt.

Edit 9th Nov: A lot of people asked me why Egypt? Of all places in the world... why did we choose Egypt. I have always wonder why people ask this question. Isn't Egypt a place where everybody want to go? After all, it has so much history and culture. It has the only remaining Ancient Wonder of the World. So why not Egypt???

Anyway, our original plan was to go Nepal . We didn't have a lot of money to spend and we thought Nepal is a nice place - one get to see the Himalayas, maybe ride a llama or something. As the date draws nearer, there was fighting in Nepal.. some bombings. So we have to look for a backup plan and I suggested Egypt. Instead of seeing Himalayas, we see pyramids. Instead of riding llama, we ride camels. And Egypt is around the same price too - or so we thought.

When we went to the travel fair, all the travel companies told us that if you don't do the Nile cruise, you have not been to Egypt. But the cost is almost doubled. After days of discussion, we decided to bite the bullet and signed up for the Nile cruise .. and I did not regret one bit! Nile cruise (and the city of Luxor) is my favourite part of the trip!