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Day 1: Detained? I am not an I.I.?!
Entry 2 of 6 | show all | print this entry |
Chapter 2: The Terminal
The plane arrived in Dubai international Airport at around "middle of the night".. when I say "middle of the night" I mean it was not midnight but rather in the midst of my good dreams. (I presumed it was like 3 am in the morning?) Once you got off the plane, you had to take a bus trip back to the transit terminal. This shuttle bus journey seemed endless... for more than 15 minutes and about 30 turns around the corners (luckily the driver didn't do any drifting... ) the "dizzy" transit passengers finally got "unloaded" into the transit terminal! (Have u heard of getting motion-sickness from an airport transfer bus? C'mon!)
 
Left: Everyone was getting off like zombies having been waken from the midst of their dreams.
Right: The bus that took us to the terminal. Now imagine what the inertia would be if it cut a few 90 degrees corners during the course...
Now this terminal was shocking! As one of the richest countries in the world I would not be surprised if the terminal was plated in gold but what I found instead was just simply disappointing...
The First Sin: Perhaps the people in Dubai really liked to greet people in the middle of the night and invited them out in the middle of the day... as a result flocks of airplanes just landed after dark and wouldn't leave until the sun came out. As a result all the passengers would then have to accept Dubai's "hospitality" and stayed in the terminal until sunrise.
The Second Sin: The terminal did not have enough seats... By "seats" I mean those objects that allow people to sit on. 99% of these seats were already taken up by the early birds who were the first victims of Dubai's hospitality. They surely knew how to use the 4 seats in a row to allow themselves to sleep comfortably until their departure. The less fortunate souls who were too late to get a comfortable spot had to sleep under the seats... but at least they could also rest in peace! Now for the most unfortunate people like me who couldn't even find any seat or floor space to sleep or sit had to keep walking around aimlessly in the terminal... (felt like lost souls who could neither go to heaven nor hell but were left to walk for eternity)
That's not all, the Final Sin: Even if you finally decided to walk no more and wanted to stand and wait, you didn't know where to wait!! The reason? You wouldn't know where the boarding gate would be... Yes, there was an electronic signboard, but there were too many flights that the board could only show all the flights for the next 15-20 minutes, (imagine how 100 flights to be departed in the next hour could be fitted into a board that could display 50 entries at most?) so you wouldn't get a clue on which boarding gate your plane would be until the final call... orz
Chapter 3: Defending the national treasure!
Amazed by such a "well-featured" terminal I decided just to walk around and tried my best to find a seat to settle down. (All the shops had been thoroughly visited) I was so bored and dared not to fall asleep so after a while I decided to walk around again like a walking zombie... The free internet station was not good to kill time neither as there was already a long queue outside the station. Finally I managed to stumble across 2 Cantonese-speaking girls. At that moment, a white guy was trying to chat them up but since I was so bored (and to defend our national interests!!!) I decided to "interrupt" their conversation. I barged in "politely" and got one girl's attention and finally managed to get both their attentions (The power of mother tongue~ Sorry, mate!) It turned out that they were also transiting to Turkey.. ahem.. Travelling in Turkey was just my specialty and I could by no time get their attention with my expert advices and my past photos. Time flied while I was having fun; luckily one of the girls warned me about that silly signboard (they had experiences with that before!) so I went to the information counter and asked and indeed the boarding gate of my plane had already been assigned but the signboard still didn't show! So reluctantly I had to wave goodbye to the girls in a rush as the gate was on the other end of the terminal (and I didn't have time to ask for their email addresses, man that was the first mistake I made in this trip.. and I still regret about it as of now orz)
 
Left: The Dubai terminal: Just look at those empty seats, look under them, are they really empty?
Right: Everyone was busy on the net, probably hotmailing to their loved ones on how "great" the terminal was... I think I will just move on and leave them to spread the news
This time, the plane to Cairo was a lot worse than the one I took earlier and there was no more ICE so I just dozed off in this short journey.
Chapter 4: Arrived! What a warm welcome!!
As usual, the flight arrived late in the Cairo International Airport. So I quickly got off the plane and tried to get out the airport as soon as possible as I got a free pickup from Desert Safary Hostel waiting outside. (The only good thing about this hostel) I was one of the first when I arrived in the immigration hall. Then I suddenly remembered I have to change my money into Egyptian pounds. So I went to the various money exchanges and by the time I had changed my money I suddenly found several long queues formed before the immigration counters! A grand tour of Vietnamese just arrived and I was forced to queue at the end! [Then I remembered the gospel's teaching: "If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all..." :O]
One thing that was even more annoying was that on the way from the departure hall to the immigration counters, the pickups from many tourist agents could actually sneak in this restricted area and greeted their guests; but then surprise, surprise, there were no signs which went with my name! After watching the others got greeted and escorted to the immigration counters sourly, I had to pick a queue and queue there by myself.
Luckily I bet on the right queue and somehow it moved extremely fast and I thought to myself, 'hey, maybe my luck hasn't totally run out!' When it was my turn I gave the officer the passport and beamed a smile at him. (just like the signature smile from the famous toothpaste advertisement) Instead of expecting an Egyptian smile in return, he confiscated my passport and told me to wait and signaled the Vietnamese behind to move forward! So standing there like an absolute idiot, I could not do anything but just waited and watched all the other Vietnamese passed through, one by one! Finally an officer came to me and instead of giving me an update he told me to move away so as not to block the counter... orz
After 15 minutes and after all the Vietnamese had gone, I found myself stuck with 2 other guys: one Chinese businessman (he dressed too casually to look like one) holding a Chinese passport; a Malaysian Chinese holding a Malaysian passport; and me, a Chinese guy holding an Australian passport. The only thing we had in common was: we were all male and we travelled alone and we were Asian! I suspected that they thought we were using fake passports to try to sneak in to work illegally! Hello?! Who would want to work in your country??
After 5 more minutes, when the senior officer inside the office finally "woke" up and decided to run some checks on our passports were we finally cleared! But then he commented that I didn't look anything like the photo on the passport! @_@ Gosh, I really think next time I shouldn't shave my hair so short!
I had never in my life got detained before at the immigration and it was a really unpleasant feeling, especially when I was the last to leave the passport control office. Getting the baggage and clearing the customs were no hassle anymore (since the main crowd had already left) When I finally staged my appearance in the arrival hall, a guy came to me with my name on the sign he was holding (with a sigh of relief) - he said he been waiting here for 2 hours already! Poor guy...
  
Left: The landing card I have to fill-in... ok it has english, so no problem until... hey what does the last row say? Head of Nefertiti Queen? What do I have to fill in?
Middle: So I followed the arrow and turned over, oops, doesn't help much! I called the CA and she didn't know neither.
Right: Finally I managed to get hold of another card! and viola! Q.E.D.
Chapter 5: The Crazy Taxi
So we left the airport and got to get to his "car". It turned out that he was a part-time taxi driver who had been hired by the hostel to pick people up. He must have lost his precious times while waiting for me at the airport! So at the end I gave him US$10 which was quite a lot by their standards (or so I thought!) [maybe I would have given him more if he didn't park his car about 10 minutes away from the airport and neither did he help me to carry my huge rucksack on the way - It definitely wasn't a pleasant walk with the full gear on!]
My first feeling on the infamous "Cairo's Crazy Taxi": first of all, there was no seat belt. So your life was at the mercy of his skills; secondly, the window could not be wound up and down; so I had to eat dust for the whole journey! Thirdly, I did not see the purpose of having traffic signs or lanes on the roads - He was just overtaking virtually every car that was in front of him! (except those that he was not so "skillful" enough to overtake) and they liked to horn a lot - whether it would be a friendly greeting "Hey man!" or an unfriendly one "Up Yours!" Whenever there was a message that could not be conveyed by simple horning they would just shut out of their window to the other drivers, e.g. 'Do you know where xxx is?' and that's why all the taxis did not have the windows wound up, they were wound down for a purpose!
 
Left: The interior of a typical taxi. The meter is in Arabics! Luckily it was never used! I have never seen one that was working anyway!
Right: Look at the panel of rear mirrors! No wonder why the drivers never needed the side mirrors!
Chapter 6: Don't you worry, my friend!
After a "thrilling" ride from the airport I finally arrived in My Desert Safary Hostel. The word "thrilling" was not exaggerated, remembered the driver was in a hurry?
Anyway at the hotel there was a big guy called Ahmed (I think that's what his name was) on duty. After serving some nice tea he brought in the bad news - his hostel was full unless I wanted to share the shower and bathroom! And then he said
'Don't you worry, my friend, I could fix you up a room in our sister hotel, Pension Vienna.'
Now the phrase 'Don't you worry, my friend' was a sign that you really should start to worry - but too bad I didn't realize that until I learnt about it after many painful lessons!
I waited in Desert Safary until my agent (whom I booked my cruise with) showed up and gave me the boarding pass (you called a piece of an A4 computer printout a boarding pass?) Luckily he showed up or else I would have been conned (I paid 50% already with this company called ATA Tours, whom I randomly hooked up via the internet)
The room in Pension Vienna wasn't that bad. The public toilet and bathroom was a shock! Luckily mine was an en suite, so I didn't have to use it [Thank God!]. Oh the room had a window too, and the view... oh, it's really "A room with a VIEW" - 'Hmm... better leave the window shut'! Overall the room was ok for HK$12x a night, except that it was so lonely! There was not a single soul in the common room at all except the porter on duty. At least in Desert Safary there were more travellers wandering around.
 
 
 
Top Left: The entrance of my "Don't you worry, my friend" hostel... Doesn't look too impressive...
Top Right: The elevator... wow! I am back at the 30's. IMPRESSIVE!
Middle Left: My room! The bathroom is just a partition! At least it has a "door"
Middle Right: Well, there is no compartment for the shower, so basically you just wash the floor every night
Bottom Left: A room with a view... with a view like that I think I will keep my window closed.
Bottom Right: This is the public bathroom and shower, ain't I lucky to have an en suite?
So with no chance of meeting new friends I decided to start my adventure in Cairo on my own. Oops! The hostel didn't offer any free map, but the porter generously lent me their antique - a map of Cairo that's as old as an ancient treasure map, with cello tapes and tears all over it! So having feel a bit like Indiana Jones or Benjamin Gates I was off to the dangerous streets of Cairo...
'Hold It!', the porter said.
'Uh-oh!', I thought.
It turned out that he kindly "escorted" me down to a shop called Scarab (yes, that's the name of the Egyptian beetle as shown in the movie "Mummy") and told me that since he was a special friend of the shopkeeper, he would offer me a very "special" discount today if I bought papyrus from this store! To his dismay I did not treasure his "friendship with the shopkeeper" nor the "very special" discount and left the rip-off shop. Finally I was left alone...
... Not! You would never be alone for long in the streets of Cairo. Before I even arrived at the Egyptian Museum, (that's less than 5 minutes walk from the hotel, if you know the way that was... and it really wasn't easy from that "treasure map" with missing street names) I was joined by a young lad who offered me to take me to Giza for the pyramids.
'What? Now it is 4 pm, the pyramids must have closed by the time we get there?!' I said.
But he said 'Today's Sunday and there are no traffics and you can go there to watch the beautiful sunset!'
Wow! That's a "good" reason! -_-" It seems that everything he said was so true and sincere! (In fact this was a trait that all Egyptians were good at!)
Chapter 7: Do I not know how to cross a road?
At the end he left me his? name card with his uncle's mobile number (he was too young to have one? or could not afford one?) and told me to call him in case I would go in the near future... and he actually did me a favor... he showed(?) me how to cross the hell-like multi-lane road to the Egyptian Museum.
Now "road crossing" in Cairo is really a survival skill you got to learn IF you ever want to survive. (This is no joke because if you don't quickly learn the art, you couldn't go anywhere, not even to any restaurants) Most main roads in Cairo have the following characteristics:
1) Most of the hardest-to-cross roads have multiple lanes or are wide enough for many cars to travel through in parallel. So you have to take a while to finish the crossing;
2) There are no such thing as zebra crossing (all the zebras would be dead judging by the Egyptian chaotic traffics!), very rarely you would find overhead flyovers (for pedestrians) or underground tunnels;
3) There are tons of traffic lights, but they are for cars only and are not for the pedestrians; besides, the red lights mean nothing to the drivers as they usually ignore them anyway.
Conclusion: You could just cross the road anywhere you want, anytime you want (I wondered if there is any law against jaywalking in Egypt! :O)
My first time in doing this was really scary. The traffic was non-stop; cars were just roaming through and there was never a break in the middle. (This street (Sharia Ramses) was actually one of the busiest roads in Cairo) I just didn't know when to start crossing. But the lad just knew... We crossed. I prayed. We arrived.
 
Left: Try crossing the road with this traffic! I remember the old atari game called "frogger".
Right: The ultimate cure to the traffic problem was the "scarecrow", see? The whole flock had disappeared!
Chapter 8: A night at the Egyptian Museum
Once on the other side of the road I saw the big reddish building called the Egyptian Museum, and for the first time I saw the military there (ok I wasn't sure if they were the army or the police, but they surely were armed!) It was already 4 pm at that time (the museum closed at 6) so I bought the ticket.
'Oh! Cameras were not allowed!'
'Wait! How about if I pay more for a special ticket? The book said there was a special ticket for photography...'
'No, sorry Sir!'
So it seemed that my guidebook was really out-of-date... -_-"
Having turned down a couple of guys who offered to act as my guide to the museum, the first place I went to was... nope, not the entrance, but the cafeteria besides it! My belated lunch was a very dissatisfying ice-cream bar for 15LE (almost as expensive as a Haagen-Dazs in HK) [All food in the cafeteria had an outrageous prices tagged!]
Now with the stomach finally settled (sort of) I quickly hurried inside.. The first thing I saw, believe it or not, was the only fake replica in the whole museum - the Rosetta stone. No, this wasn't the software that taught you foreign languages; it was the piece of stone tablet that had the same writing in 3 different languages. With that, the historians could finally decipher ancient hieroglyphs (i.e. those funny ancient Egyptian alphabets that were in the shapes of animals and objects)
The museum itself was a very structural building; two floors, 4 corridors or wings around a central hall. Unlike the British Museum, You REALLY couldn't get lost in this building!
So theoretically, two clockwise trips should complete the whole thing. But after 5 minutes time, I went back to the entrance hall for the gift shop (how handy!) So for 30LE I got myself a guide.. it had 64 colorful pages. The reason I came back was because the exhibits were scattered all around the places and most of them did not have any labels or descriptions.
 
Left: Just got out from the creepy Egyptian Museum. Don't ever go in when it's near its
closing times.
Right: My "silent" tour guide!
In fact the guidebook wasn't that useful as 64 pages really couldn't cover thousands of artifacts discovered in the old (3000 BC), middle and new kingdom. Time was actually running out so I had to hunt for the gems of the museum....
Tutankhamen! Yes the famous pharaoh whose tomb was uncovered in the 1922 in the Valley of the Kings. It was the most unspoilt ancient Egyptian tomb ever uncovered yet - with all the treasures and burial items left intact inside the tomb.
Tutankhamen (King Tut!) was famous for his young age (8) when he came to throne, and also of the mysterious death not so long after. (at 17) But to most it was his golden death mask and the curse of Tutankhamen that were better known of.
Most of the items found inside the tomb had been transferred to the museum. When his human-shaped sarcophagus was discovered, there were actually 4 coffins, with one inside another. The outermost 3 coffins were wooden and the innermost one was made of 110 kg of pure gold and that's where the mummy lied. One wooden coffin was still placed inside the tomb in the Valley of the King.
During my stay inside Tutankhamen's room, a VIP (I think he was a politician) suddenly arrived and with him the body guards, the organizers, the reporters and the cameramen all came along. Though I was not sure who he was but I was glad he was not important enough to be the target of the terrorist suicidal bombers (C'mon... If I could get that close to him, just about anyone else could!) But at least I got to appear in TV!
Another must-see in the museum was the Royal Mummy Room. You had to pay 100LE to enter to see the corpses - in fact the real mummies of the royal family. To be honest they looked the same as those shown on pictures or on TV. No matter how great they were during their reign, they all looked very similar now - dry, old and fragile! However, the pricey 100LE entrance fee wasn't charged for nothing - the creepy experience of being trapped in a room at 5:30 pm ALONE with 10+ mummies was quite some... priceless feeling! Needless to say, I did not spend too much time studying them in great details and as soon as I checked them all (Yes I didn't miss a single one!) I was outside in no time! : O
Besides those two must-see items, I also checked out the Amarna Room, a room for King Akhenaten, who abolished the beliefs of many gods and only worshiped one god Aten. His statues could easily be identified by the elongated heads and protruding bellies. Tutankhamen was actually his son and during his short-lived throne he managed to revert the religion back to what it was and brought back the multiple gods due to popular demand.
   
From Left to Right:
The Rosetta Stone, the same writings were inscripted in 3 different languages.
The front view of the Death Mask of King Tutankhamen
The rear view of the Death Mask of King Tutankhamen
King Akhenaten, who was protrayed with the elongated head and protruding belly
Another interesting room displayed the animals' mummies, yet another must-see spot.
I walked and walked and suddenly realized the corridors were getting empty and lots of other visitors had left. Being left alone in a museum full of statues and mummies and other artifacts of over 3000 years old after sunset was not fun (remember the movie "Night at the Museum"?) so I hurried up and swept all the remaining rooms, with the giant colossus of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye as the finale.
The porter in the Pension Vienna once told me, 'You have to go around Egypt first and visit all the places, learn about their histories before coming back to see the museum. Then you would understand and appreciate more.....' his words for once was quite true! I think I need to go back there again one day!
 
Left: The interior of the Egyptian Museum. At the centre were the giant colossus of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. Imagine how you feel when you dim the lights!
Right: Part of the "Book of the Dead". This shows the weighing of the heart.. Unlike in the movie Mummy, it was not really a book.
Chapter 9: Only the fittest can survive...
It was around 6 and the sun was not set yet. I walked my way to the Sadat Metro station. The metro system was simple with only 4 lines but buying a ticket wasn't easy. Everyone just barged in to the ticket counter and you never got a chance to speak 'I would like err...' before interrupted by other locals who appeared from nowhere and were dying for a ticket. Queuing? What queuing?!
After 5 minutes or more, I finally managed to get a ticket for zone 1. Then I got to play 50:50 to determine which side of the platform to choose as I couldn't identify the Arabic displayed on the sign anywhere on the metro map. But luckily an Egyptian student came and helped me with the right platform. The first time ever a truly friendly Egyptian helped me for no personal gain!
If you already imagined how bad the ticketing process was then it wouldn't require you to have any more imagination on how bad the boarding process was. People who know me know I am not that type of a fragile build to be pushed around. Usually I don't need too much effort to get on or off a train carriage. But in there, I really had to PUSH HARD to get on and get off - especially when I was trying to get off: whenever the door opened at each station, those "bulls" would come rushing in: they really didn't expect people to get off! Had to do some sumo-wrestling!
 
Left: M does not always represent McDonalds.
Right: There is always a clock on each metro platform. This is definitely a good way to learn the Arabics numerals.
Finally I arrived in the Ramses Train station. The first thing I do was to go to the tourist centre to ask for a map. A tourist centre was so hard to find nowadays in Cairo and this station just happened to have one of them. It turned out to be very primitive with only one lady sitting behind the counter. There were no brochures of any sort whatsoever. OK, maybe she had them with her behind the counter. So I asked her for the map of Cairo, and the reply was in very good English:
'We have run out!'
'Yeah, a long time ago I believe!', I thought.
So this confirmed the fact that Egypt is a very environmental-friendly country. You just wouldn't need to worry about paper recycling. This was the last time in my whole trip that I ever needed to spend time to locate any tourist information centre. That's good!
My next objective was to buy the ticket of the sleeping train for my return trip from Aswan to Cairo. Since their website said that beds were limited on a train (obviously!) and it was so "sophisticated" that it could not accept any advance booking via the net; so I had to spare my time to come personally to buy the ticket in advance! Well, buying the ticket was a breeze: the English was good, there were no queues and for US$ 78(!) I got to have the entire double room for myself. (In Muslim world, room sharing with strangers seemed strictly prohibited?!)
While I was at the station I saw a crowd of 40 to 50 people kneeling and praying to their god Allah in the centre of the station square. Yep it was one of their praying times and it was the first time I saw so many praying together live! (I haven't really seen this scene before in Turkey somehow.) Here people would just abandon their work and came out and pray during the praying times. The square had partitioned an area and prepared the mats for them to pray during the praying times.
As it was not nice (and not too interesting as well) to watch others pray, so I left the station and tried to find a place to eat. However the area around the Ramses station was not really surrounded by any restaurants, so I took the metro back to the Sadat station - the nearest of where I lived.
As the Sadat station was quite a huge station built under a giant roundabout, I emerged on the wrong side of the road. I could go back down to try another exit, but I decided to try my skill (and luck) on crossing the busy streets of Cairo. So I waited and waited but the traffic seemed endless. I had to make my first move somehow. Luckily I saw some ladies crossing the road and I just followed them, while making sure I was "covered", well sort of. This was the second time I crossed the streets of Cairo. After this, I no longer had any problem crossing anymore!
 
Left: Outside of the Ramses Station.
Right: Inside of the Ramses Station. The people are praying at the back
Chapter 10: Accept the Egyptian's Hospitality!
While I was standing around a corner looking at my clueless map an old guy approached me and asked me which hotel I wanted to go to.
'Ah Vienna, I know the owner there, he is my friend, let me help you and take you back!'
So the good Samaritan took me down the streets towards the hotel. On the way he "revealed" that he was a store owner and offered me to come and visit the shops where he sold "authentic" papyrus. At first I turned down and he said,
'Do you not want to accept the Egyptian Hospitality?'
As I didn't want to portray a rude image of my race, so I thought there was no harm in visiting - "blending in with the locals" was always a primary objective of my trip.
So we went to a small side street and approached a small shop at the basement. A boy, who saw us approaching, immediately lit up the shop, and brought out all the papyrus. The prices were really cheaper than the "Scarab" shop that I visited earlier, and at the end I bought 2 pieces of papyri.
'There is no such thing as getting away with a good deal in Egypt - You will always get conned in Egypt, it all matters to how much or how little, and whether you are willingly being conned or not.'
Whether the old man was really a friend of the hotel owner I could not really find out at the end but he indeed brought me back to the Pension Vienna after the visit to his shop.
I wandered along the main street (Sharia Talaat Harb) trying to find some restaurants or fast food stores for my dinner. It was not easy to find a single restaurant along the street and finally I went inside a shopping mall and settled my dinner in a Egyptian fast food store, with some chicken sandwich, chips and Pepsi.
During my dinner, two Egyptian guys had an argument and were about to start a fight when immediately all the bystanders came rushing in and broke them up. Those bystanders really did not know those two guys in the first place! In Hong Kong I really doubt if anyone else would step forward if such things happened. (maybe they would only step forward with their cameras?!) So it seems that there really was some "Egyptian hospitality" after all.
 
Left: Well all the words in the menu are in Arabics, definitely not very enlightening...
Right: My dinner included Pepsi, chicken kofta, some chips and a dessert with preservatives,
yuck! (16.75 LE)
Latest Comments (1)
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check this out (reply)
Mar 26, 2008 16:39 EST by leo1234
Great article! If you're looking for good restaurants in the area check out www.foodjoker.com. Great selection of places to eat and great site. Available also in 8 languages.
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