May 2013 Cairo, Egypt

Pyramids as seen from the back of a camel. Normal.

So after spending about six months of settling into the new job, I decided that a little more carrot and a little less stick was in order so I took off for a little r&r out of country. There was a deliberate timeliness to this decision as I had an opportunity to piggyback the trip on a work related visit to Dubai when I was pretty sure I would be able to get away early. Not actually being sure exactly how early that might be, I also couldnt be sure of my ultimate destination until I got to the airport but the Cairo flight was available and jumped off the departure board like it was calling to me so I booked a ticket. It was also only a 3 hour flight from the UAE (which means about 2 1/2 from Doha) so the flight landed in Egypt just before sunset. The temperature upon landing was glorious. Qatar has recently cracked the 100F (37C) mark which means things have started to swelter a bit there. Thankfully the humidity levels have been low though which has made things thus far tolerable and I also have made the deliberate decision to acclimatize to the high temperatures by not running the air conditioner in my car or apartment (bedroom excepted as although I may be a bit mental, I am certainly not a martyr). The trip from the airport to the city centre can apparently take as little as 10 minutes or as long as 10 hours depending on the traffic, which was absolutely unreal. One of the problems of travel writing is that perspectives are relative and can sometimes be misleading. Just a few months ago for instance, I observed how bad the Qatari and Saudi Arabian traffic is but now, from an Egyptian perspective, I would only consider it mildly irritating. The traffic here is worse than in the Philippines. There are no rules. There are no traffic lights. There aren't even any headlights (drivers refuse to turn them on at night). There is only congestion and noise. But the worse thing of all is that there is absolutely no queuing.

Back in England, queuing is an art form. Orderly lines with a practiced protocol be it at a bar, bookies or probably even a burning building. There is even a standard etiquette for escalators. Australians like to 'bag' the English by saying 'they sure love to queue' but those that do have obviously never experienced the hellish alternative. The tollbooths looked like crumbs set in the road and the cars like pigeons crowding in to feed. At stop signs, if you're not as far forward on the shoulder of the road as you can possibly go with your car parked at a 45 degree angle, you're obviously not doing it right. Lanes are nonexistent as are any semblance of a personal dance space. And oh God the horns! Constant, even in stopped traffic. We passed one guy on a motorbike travelling down a highway in a rare bit of open space between him and the nearest car and he had his thumb clamped down on the horn button. I asked my driver about this and he just shrugged and said 'culture'. The first night featured a beautiful Middle Eastern sunset; a vibrant but hazy sun burning in a dust filled sky. Typically these sunsets illuminate Arabian landscapes like they're being bathed in the glow of a fading flare but this one just cast a harsh pallor across Cairo and made it appear angry. The streets were choked with traffic and everything from the buildings to the people to the very atmosphere itself looked dirty and decayed. We passed the infamous City Of The Dead which exuded an air of ominous of which I have never experienced before in an urban environment. An area of Cairo consisting mainly of derelict buildings interspersed with cemeteries where the homeless have established a sort of alternative society, the City Of The Dead looks like an ancient but post-apocalyptic kingdom complete with skeletal mosque and soaring minarets. It was eerie, romantic and creepy all at the same time.

The City Of The Dead.

Taking all of this in, I managed to keep up a constant banter with the driver, whose name was Mohamed. I have to admit that Mohamed was quite an accomplished banterer in a second language. At one point, he turned to me and said "Qatar is a country with a great future but no past and Egypt is a country with a great past but no future."

After about another hour and a half of inching along in horrendous traffic, we arrived at the hotel. I had paid $40 in total for a room for three nights which included the free airport transfers, a room with 3 double beds and an ensuite bathroom and breakfast so I wasn't expecting much and initially wasn't disappointed. We pulled up at an indistinct and dark block of ancient buildings, cracked and dirty sidewalks. The electricity was out in the hotel so we had to climb a staircase that wound around one of those Basic Instinct-style lifts for about 6 floors in the dim beam of mobile phone lights before arriving at the entrance to a hotel with a sign bearing a name that was different from the one I booked. Pure adventure. After checking it, I went out on the balcony for a bit to watch the remains of the sunset but was held captive by the further eclecticness of the Egyptian traffic instead. In the space of 10 minutes, I witnessed a pickup truck loaded with packages about 3m high, two ancient cars either break down, stop indefinitely blocking traffic, or just blatantly give up the ghost, a boy cycling down the road balancing a large tray of about 20 butchered chickens on his head and an SUV type of vehicle that had its electrical system wired so that all of its lights would flash randomly in different colours. This latter specimen I initially thought was putting its life in danger as it constantly indicated in different directions but it occurred to me that it rather achieved the opposite effect by projecting a potential hazard zone around it. The Europa League final (Benfica v Chelsea) happened to be on so I asked at the front desk if they could recommend a cafe or bar to watch it. Instead of directions, I got a personal guide who walked me to an alley cafe that he said was run by a friend of his. On the way, he tried to link arms with me the way men do over here. It came without a warning so I almost pushed him into oncoming traffic before I realised what he was trying to do. I tried to refuse as politely as I could but I don't have much experience in knocking back random arm linking attempts from other blokes so it was all a bit awkward for awhile. Thankfully we arrived at the cafe and I was given a prime seat right in front of the widescreen TV which was sitting on a table in the middle of the alley. The reception on the TV was occasionally pixcellated and would even cut out from time to time. This wasn't surprising when I noticed the satellite input chord; instead of winding its way into the shop, it stretched vertically upwards into the sky. Whether that chord was connected to a dish on top of the building or directly to the satellite itself, one couldn't say for sure as it disappeared from view about six stories up. The game kicked off so I ordered a coffee and settled in for the match. I've made it abundantly clear in the past that Im not really a soccer fan so I was using the game more as something to fixate on whilst sat at a coffee shop by myself more than anything. It was also a warm and comfortable night and I was content to sit and sip coffee and people watch for awhile. Unfortunately the coffee itself tasted like it was brewed from dirt. I had to admit it did fit well with the whole motif of decay that Cairo so prevalently displayed though. I also witnessed two pretty spectacular injuries in the space of 10 minutes. One woman walked headlong into a glass door in a shop next door and from her subsequent vacant expression, I was pretty sure she had concussed herself. Another woman slipped on a wet patch of God knows what and twisted her ankle. At this point, I was looking around warily wondering where the danger was coming from next. When two robed figures emerged from the shop a few minutes later swinging urns of smoking incense, I actually almost upped and ran for it. Thankfully there was no further incident of note (apart from what turned out to be a relatively entertaining soccer game with a late extra time winner) so I passed an enjoyable night and headed back to the hotel afterwards.

A good night's sleep wasn't in the cards though. Being a very infrequent coffee drinker and one who rarely indulges later than mid-afternoon, imbibing multiple cups of coffee after 8pm proved to be a rather effective sleep deterrent. Then, after lying awake for what felt like hours trying to process the caffeine, I had finally managed to drift into unconsciousness when I was startled awake by a call to prayer that someone was broadcasting at absolute air raid siren levels. In Qatar and the UAE, the call to prayer is broadcast from the mosques at a tolerable volume. Despite the fact that it can be quite droning at times, the call to prayer is actually quite nice to hear and lends a sort of exotic ambience to everyday life. But that statement is qualified by daytime ambience, not night time, and I quite honestly haven't heard anything like it since Istanbul during Ramadan. The call to prayer there (and here) is loud enough to sheer sheep. It's no wonder Arabs are viewed as being cranky people; my good humour would be jacked too if I had to live with sudden warbling cranked out through tinny speakers at Who concert levels in my bedroom at 3am. I spent my time being subjected to the esoteric hair dryer wondering if an active noise control system could be invented to counteract the torture. I would happily christen it the Call to Fuck Right Off. Breakfast the next morning consisted of a couple of instant lattes on the balcony watching the sun come up over the Cairo ghettos and a 'continental' meal consisting of baguettes and cheese. Normally I'm a bowl of muesli, yoghurt and orange juice guy but this breakfast was remarkably similar to the kind you get in ski towns in the Italian alps (minus the prosciutto) which I absolutely adore so I was initially delighted. However, the 'cheese', which came packed into metal wedges, spread a little too easily and tasted suspiciously like butter. I had arranged with Mohamed on the way in from the airport to take me to Giza and he arrived right on time. He spent a good 15min telling me how much he was hoping that he would get me to be impressed by Egypt whilst nearly avoiding spectacular accidents at the remakable rate of about three per minute. Not the best of presentation methods. When he noticed my white knuckles, he laughed and said 'Is like Playstation, right?'. We drove by the American Embassy; all streets leading into which had their entire openings barricaded with 2 feet thick cement blocks and had apparently been that way since the 2011 revolution. Then we trundled over speed bumps set in a main road with no warning signs which had to be very dangerous if you didn't know they were there. Mohamed said that the highway to Alexandria had them as well. The HIGHWAY! All very impressive but probably not in the manner of which Mohamed would have liked.

Barricaded streets.

Then we passed perhaps the most shocking of all the lunacy (although it wasn't fully realised until later that day.see photo caption below): a number of high rise brick buildings that people were randomly constructing themselves on land that they had squatted on immediately following the revolution. There was no planning permission, no architect, no structural engineer and no rationality anywhere. They apparently just started slapping bricks and mortar together as quickly as they could. It reminded me distinctly of building blocks as a kid when you see who can build the highest towers and then try to knock them over by farting against them.

Building block slums of Giza. The building with the arrow pointed at it had collapsed by the time we passed it again in the afternoon.

Upon arriving in Giza, there is about a one mile drive along a small creek to a sort of base area near the pyramids. Unfortunately what probably would have been a nice visual feature for tourists approaching the area has been turned into the complete opposite thanks to endless piles of rubbish dumped along the creek banks. The pools of stagnant water had all kinds of waste floating in it (litter, food, human and otherwise) and mounds of rubbish had been pushed up against the side of the road running alongside it like they had been shoved that way with a snowplough. Through shimmering heat I watched as street urchins picked though the garbage piles on the creek banks whilst women emptied buckets of waste beside them. And even though Mohamed had warned me to roll up my window, it still didnt provide much protection from the stench. The whole thing was absolutely soul destroying. The pyramids of Giza is the only remaining wonder of the 7 Wonders of The Ancient World and probably the Middle Easts biggest tourist attraction. Why or how Egypt could allow this area to fall into such decline is mind boggling, especially when theyre looking at tourism as one of the few natural resources that still provides a major source of income for the country. From what I had seen so far of Egypt though, the only chance for a future they are ever going to have is to excavate a huge hole near the Saudi border and then just keep digging sideways until they hit oil.

Mohamed had graciously arranged for me to make the trek to the pyramids on camelback through a friend of his. He also sorted a Bedouin guide that would serve not only as a guide but also as a deterrent to the beggars, thieves and scam artists that were prevalent in the area. The Bedouins name was Hassan and the camel owner introduced him to me by saying if hes good, give him tip; if not, shoot him.....but bring back my camel. The Bedouin was fairly old, dark skinned, dressed in a dark robe and had a big smile full of seriously decayed teeth. He rode up on a mule and spoke fairly decent English as well so I slipped him 10 bucks to refer to me as Dr. Jones for the day.

The Bedouin.

If you've never had the (mis)fortunate to ride a camel, you're honestly not missing a whole lot. You have to constantly squeeze your thighs together to prevent yourself from sliding in the saddle which gets pretty uncomfortable quick. The average 'caravaning' speed of a camel is probably equivalent to '2' on a treadmill so you're also probably better off walking. Plus a camel's direction drifts as bad as the sand which means added irritation due to constant course correcting. The terrain was rocky in places as well and a camel's feet are unfortunately not within their sightline so where they actually step is pot luck as far as I can tell. There were probably as many misplaced camel toes during our journey as there is in your average Wal-Mart trip. When you catch sight of the pyramids over the desert landscape, one is quite simply awestruck. Theres no other word for it. Although the image of the pyramids rising out of the sands is an iconic sight and one that everyone is well familiar with, it still manages to appear unreal and even a bit alien to see it in real life. It must have been something else to witness this sight back when they were newly built. I've been fortunate enough to have witnessed Angkor Wat at sunrise and have watched sunsets from the top of the temples in Pagan and arriving at the Giza pyramids at midday on sunny day under a blue sky is not only right up there but completes the ancient civilisation daytime experience hat trick rather nicely. I pictured an ancient rural Egyptian family on a caravan holiday to Cairo (with the kids on the back of the camel in their jackal and bird head hats on asking 'are we nearly there yet?') cresting a dune and seeing this spectacle for the first time. They must have absolutely shat their loincloths.

I'm admittedly pretty awful at photography and for some reason the last thing I typically think of when witnessing something like this is to stop and take a photo of it, but the Bedouin had obviously done this a few times and periodically asked for my phone to take photos of me (I don't even bother packing cameras anymore). I have to admit that he was a pretty impressive shutterbug as far as desolate living nomads go though. The man would duck and weave into a myriad of positions in order to ensure he had the best angles covered and there was even a fairly humbling moment when I had to be shown how to perform the delete-your-unwanted-photos-on-your-company-Blackberry-because-your-memory-is-toofull operation by a 65-year-old barefoot camel herder.

This could have been taken at the mall.

Humping around.

Most people are under the impression that there are nine pyramids in Giza but there are actually three. Before the Revolution, it was forbidden to enter them or even touch them but now, with the country desperate for money, you could probably even break a chunk off and take it home with you if you wanted provided you were willing to cough up for it. I decided to go inside two of them. The first pyramid I went into was one of the smaller ones and a tunnel ran sharply down about 25m and at a 45 degree angle. The tunnel was purposely small (the idea was for entrants to show reverence by bowing before their fallen ruler) and 45 degrees is a fairly steep angle for a descent but a plank with strips of wood placed crosswise every 2 feet or so made it doable. I made the descent backwards; not out of reverential disrespect but because I had partially broken one of my sandals and was desperate to keep it intact for as long as I could. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one seemed to mind. At the bottom of the tunnel was a short passageway which opened up into the tomb at its far end. The tomb area was small with two stone altars from which the indentation of the mummies were displayed like little pre-historic stone snow angels. I'm not sure there is a word for the emotion for what it felt like to look upon these two stone caskets knowing that the King and Queen of long ago laid buried here for thousands of years but the mood was abruptly changed when Hassan popped up behind me all smiles and said 'you get inside, lie down, I take photo, yes?'. I tried to be polite by pretending I was appalled by such blatant irreverence but inside I was thinking BRILLIANT! When I hopped in, he even suggested crossing my arms together like the mummy's but I had already beaten him to that little blasphemy. Unfortunately the tomb was so damp and humid that the photo came out pretty foggy.

Accommodation not recommended.

After frog legging it up the pyramid's gangplank, the next stop was the boathouse. At the time the temples were built, the Nile River ran a slightly different course and apparently passed right next to them. An ancient Egyptian boat was found buried, but impressively intact, near the foot of the biggest pyramid so a building was built on the spot in order to display it. I went in by myself and was immediately pounced on by a 'guide' who was just some unfortunate soul looking for a tip. This was about the third or fourth person that had either asked me for money or tried to push something into my hand (so that I would take possession of it and they could then demand payment). I was warned about this and had left my remaining cash with Mohamed so I could turn my pockets out (which is one of the only ways I've found to be left alone in these instances). I kept trying to blank the guy and repeatedly moved away from him but he was impressively persistent. At one point, he even walked in front of me and lifted up his shirt to show me the gun he had tucked into the front side of his pants. I didn't get a long enough look at it to determine whether it was real or not but I wasn't too nervous because I was fairly confident he wouldn't be desperate or stupid enough to try to pull an armed robbery against a penniless tourist at a world heritage site. However, that didn't mean it wasn't going to be real awkward for both of us come tip time.

The big un.

Managing to escape the boathouse without a gun battle, I got back up on the camel and trundled over to the biggest of the pyramids for another tomb descent. This one went down about 50m at the same 45 degree angle as the smaller one. At the bottom was a very long but straight passageway that led to the tomb room which was much the same as the first one, only bigger and with hieroglyphics on the wall.

Ancient Egyptians. Before they forgot how to queue.

I don't want to take away from the impressiveness of the insides of these pyramids because they were impressive. But I just don't really enjoy being in enclosed, underground spaces very much. I'm not sure whether I died in a tumble dryer in a previous life or have developed a touch of claustrophobia brought on with aging but all I could think about down there was of all the collapsed structures that had occurred in my lifetime that weren't even 100 years old. And being hunched over in a narrow tunnel in a third world country underneath a 4,000 year old stone block structure that probably weighed about as much as most of the skyscrapers in Cincinnati combined wasn't putting my mind at ease. The civil engineering majors in college were some of the biggest pissheads I knew and I was fairly certain that even their learning was further advanced than their ancient counterparts from the 4th dynasty. So I really didn't linger long and legged it out of there pretty quick smart. The final stop on the camel caravan carnival Cairo tour was the Sphinx. It sat (or lay, depending on what the fuck it actually was) at the base of the pyramids near the entrance proper of the pyramid site. The Sphinx didn't really bowl me over to be honest. It was a bit like the whole Mona Lisa experience at The Lourve.....much smaller than you think and, well, a very ambiguous expression really. However, the thing I will most remember about the Sphinx was a teenage Egyptian girl who came up and asked if she could take a photo of me. Thinking to myself 'well Brian, me old mate, you probably do look absolutely dashing in this summer sunshine, dont you?', so I told her sure, go on and take a few if she wanted.

The Sphincter.

So she promptly took my phone out of my hand and started snapping photos of me....for me.

She actually posed me in all sorts of positions: punching the Sphinx, resting my elbow against the Sphinx, holding the Sphinx in my palm, kissing the Sphinx, etc. I was actually thinking to myself that the Sphinx and I were getting rather intimate when she told me to bend over in front of it and I drew an immediate halt to the photo shoot (as it turned out, she was only trying to get a photo of the Sphinx kissing my ass so I did actually rally for one more). She didn't even ask for a tip when we finished which ran counter to everything about my Egyptian experience thus far (34 begging attempts at this point) and I was so impressed by this that I actually bummed some money off the Bedouin to give her.

Chewing the face off the Sphinx.

After bidding adieu to both the camel and the Bedouin, Mohamed then decided to take me to two attractions he thought might interest me. The first of these was an Egyptian art gallery where a man patiently demonstrated the process of making parchment from papyrus in the hopes that I might purchase one of the paintings. The parchment was what the majority of Egyptians painted on since way back wand also how they made the first scrolls. He then deciphered and 'decoded' some of the more famous historical Egyptian paintings. All I could think was that Dan Brown could have a field day with this stuff. The paintings were impressive but not something I would really want to purchase so I had to disappoint him. The second stop was at a perfume factory. Seriously? A perfume factory? I had explained to Mohamed after the art gallery that I wasn't really a souvenir buyer and had also mentioned to him earlier that I didn't have a girlfriend or wife so I had no idea why we were pulling into a perfume factory. Did he think that's what I meant when I said brewery?

To be honest, I have to admit it was pretty jazzy though. I got to smell samples of everything from framboesia to francesence to fuckknowswhat and when the perfumer (I presume that's what they refer to themselves as) did the demo where he eye-droppered 3 small drops of peppermint into a pint of hot water and held it up for me to sniff, it nearly blew my head off. Pulling away, Mohamed was absolutely pissing himself laughing at the sight of me checking for singed nose hair in the rear view mirror. After a quick stop for a falafel lunch, the final stop of the day was at Saqqara. This was a less touristy pyramid cluster further afield from Cairo. Mohamed told me before I went in not to show anyone my ticket after I got inside, not to go with anyone who showed me a key and to ignore all offers for guided tours. I thought these were all very odd bits of advice but I actually had to follow all three of these instructions and all within 40 seconds of entering! It wasn't even begging; it was more like hassling. Begging, the normal kind like in Mexico or India (ignore the David Brent like insensitivity of that comment for the moment), is more of a sad, subtle and relatively brief affair. The hassling you get in Egypt is constant, repeated and even malicious as there's usually a deliberate intent to deceive. The usual tricks didn't work: the game face, the head shaking, the avoidance of eye contact, etc. Even answering their usual first question of 'what country you come from?' with 'Sweden' and pretending not to speak English didn't work and that ALWAYS works. So I tried to fight it by hurrying myself through a ruin or two before finally losing it with a guy trying for the fourth time to shove a head scarf into my hands by snapping 'I said NO!' at him. At this stage, I simply couldn't take anymore hassling so I left soon after that and told Mohamed to take me back to the hotel so I could take a shower and sit on the balcony in peace with a coffee and to watch the Reds game from the night before on my Ipad. He dropped me off and I did all of those things and even took another shower afterwards. The second shower occurred after the shocking discovery that the most fragrant Egyptian perfume is not framboesia or francensence but camel. Whether this was due to a particularly stinky camel or rather that the sniff shot of peppermint had sharpened my sinuses to superhuman sensitivities I never found out.

Unreal. And one of many such specimens common to Cairo roads.

I had booked a Nile River cruise that evening (which included dinner and 'entertainment') and I had the hotel arrange a driver to take me there. The driver turned out to be Mohamed's brother, Omar. We thread our way through rush hour traffic which is a bit of an oxymoronic phrase as there was nothing rushed about it. Most of the travel was spent either idling in congestion or flooring it through the brief stretches of open road. By the time we arrived at the boat, I'm not sure what I was more annoyed with: the hassling or the navigating between the hassling. The cruise was thankfully a respite from both. Apparently it has been awhile (since the Revolution at any rate) since Caucasian foreigners have populated these cruises so I was absolutely pampered by the staff. I was shown to the table with the best view which they gave me all to myself and then waited on hand and foot for the entire night. I ordered a bottle of white wine and even debated about asking for the palm frond treatment but decided against it. When we pushed away from the dock, the tables were probably about 75% full with mainly Egyptians aboard (along with a few Asians). It apparently is a big romantic thing to do in Cairo, these river cruises, and I joined right in by discreetly necking with the wine bottle. A traditional Egyptian band (wearing tuxedos of all things) started playing at some stage and started cranking out tunes at call-to-prayer-like levels. Then the 'entertainment' began. I use quotes because what was actually advertised was a belly dancer and a traditional dancer and neither even remotely qualified. The belly dancer came bouncing out first and it was first glance apparent that it wasn't her belly that was going to be doing the bulk of the dancing. She was dressed in a veiled skirt with the required amount of belly exposed but it was the glittering top that was fighting a valiant but losing battle to restrain the enormity of her breasts that got the attention. Those boobs stood out more prominently against her chest than the pyramids had against the desert and were spectacularly animated. Belly dancing, as you probably know, requires the belly to, well, dance I suppose. The problem was that even a little bit of movement at the bottom of her torso was causing violent pendulumous motion at the top. The reaction from the crowd was hysterical. Husbands and boyfriends just sat there with sheepish looks trying find somewhere they could rest their eyes whilst wives and girlfriends turned to stone. I admit that during the odd occasion that I've wound up at strip clubs, I've experienced this same sort of thing. After the initial thrill of being in the presence of naked women, you sort of get desensitized to it and I find it very difficult to just sit there and leer. I actually think its the leering more than anything that puts me off; a sea of men visually groping a woman in public is not the nicest thing to watch. But boy oh boy oh boy, the exact opposite (i.e. a room full of men trying NOT to look) is absolute magic!!!! The air of discomfort was so palpable it was actually laugh out loud funny. A room fool of people tormented by a pair of tits; this was booby brilliance at its best. Grinning like a Cheshire cat, I refilled my wine glass and kicked back to enjoy the show. And after maybe another 5 seconds or so of gleefully soaking up everyones suffering, it dawned on me how just how seriously I had misjudged the situation. The thought I had: if youre a half-naked girl who is faced with the unbelievably awkward situation of having to put your body parts on show in a room peopled by Muslim families and one pissed up Caucasian giggling to himself in the corner, it is not going to come as any real surprise where your safety zones going to lie.

It played out exactly as if she had heard my thoughts. She made a beeline straight over and came to a jiggling halt right beside me. The next few minutes were excruciating. There is absolutely nothing on this Earth like having a pair of glittering and barely restrained 36DDs shaken in your face whilst being stared at by a ship full of devout Muslims with a wine bottle there like Satan himself had plonked it down for effect and was over at the bar shooting finger guns at you. If that wasnt outrageous enough, the ships photographer came over with one of those 1930s-Jimmy-Olsen-looking cameras with the gigantic flash and started strobe lighting photos (BOOF!) during all this like it was occurring on a red carpet at a film premier. One called Sins of The Infidel perhaps. I wasnt sure it could actually get any worse. After a good few minutes of torture, she jiggled away and went out to attempt a proper belly dance demonstration in the middle of the room in front of the band. The belly dancing (like I said before) was awful. There was very little belly involved in it at all; she basically just shook her hips like a bad YouTube video of someone trying to dance like Shakira. The boob bouncing was awesome though. Her breasts seemed to move independent of her body and when she started spinning round faster and faster they created such dramatic centrifugal force that they generated their own gravity field. Im going to stop now. Mainly because I didnt bother taking any photos and Im afraid of being perceived as being prone to exaggeration (I couldnt bring myself to take one.it would have felt a bit like shoplifting in front of a studio audience on Supermarket Sweep). The next round of entertainment was even more bizarre. A guy came out wearing what I was pretty sure at first was a dress and began spinning around so that it flared up and out. My initial thought was errrr..could we bring back the boobs please? But then the overhead lights went out and his dress lit up like it was decorated like Clark Griswolds Christmas Vacation roof in blue rope light. It was nice but, seriously, the belly dancer was still warmed up wasnt she?

Before and after Ellen found the switch in the garage.

Then the spinning changed and the Lite-Brite dress started angling like a Tilt-A-Whirl at an amusement park. Yeah but. Then the dress sort of split in two and turned into the spaceship from The Greatest American Hero. AWESOME! Yeah but.

The Tile-a-Whirl

The Greatest American Hero

Then suddenly he whipped it up and over his head and it became a sort of bullfighting parasol sort of thing. Yeah but. I think that guy did everything he could think of to top the belly dancer and some of it was admittedly pretty amazing but lets face it: rockets could have gone off, the ship could have taken flight and Jimi Hendrix could have slid in from heaven whaling on a guitar and he was still always going to win the silver, wasnt he? After a buffet dinner, I decided to go topside and I immediately regretted spending any time at all downstairs. The upper deck was completely open as an observational sun deck with a central bar and tables scattered around the perimeter railing. The night air was hot and humid and there was a brilliant desert moon hanging over the eastern bank of the river. At this time of night, Cairo almost looked halfway decent twinkling away in the moonlight as we drifted silently past. I had my IPod with me and had been waiting to play Night Boat To Cairo since I got on board (cheesy as ever) so I grabbed a table and indulged. I sat there for the rest of the cruise sipping wine, listening to music and just watching the city go by. It was such a lovely night that I was almost convinced that Cairo would be better the next day.

Just gone noon, half past monsoon on the banks of the River Nile.

Almost. But not quite. Not nearly quite. Not at all quite actually. The Egyptian Museum1 was only a block and a half from the hotel so my initial game plan the next day was to tour the museum in the morning, have lunch and then take a wander through the Khan el-Khalili bazaar in the afternoon. In between, I would just do the usual drill of getting lost on foreign footpaths whilst listening to the pod. Mohameds brother had mentioned the night prior that the museum would likely be closed because there was some unrest expected at Tahrir Square (the site of the January 2011 violence, which was only 300m down the road from the museum..and from what I could work out, was a roundabout, not a square). I was only in Cairo for a few days though and wasnt about to let a little revolution get in my way. Whilst waiting to cross the street to the museum that morning, I was hassled by yet another of the many odd locals who were absolutely brimming with curiosity about which country I came from. I had been out on the streets that day for less than ninety seconds and it was already starting. I just pointed at the museum and then my headphones and mimed that I couldnt hear him. I ignored him for about another 20 seconds before crossing the street but the man didnt stop trying until I was at least half way across.

The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities is commonly referred to as the Egyptian Museum. It is unclear whether this shortened term was just affectionate compactness or a reflection on the fact that antiquities are really the only things in Egypt that anyone would bother putting in a museum.

The museum was fenced in all the way around its perimeter and the only opening in sight was where a tour bus was entering. I started walking up to it but was stopped by a man near the entrance who said that the museum was closed for prayers but would open again at 1pm. Since Friday was the holy day this made sense so I started to turn away when he asked if he could give me directions to where I wanted to go. I told him I was headed to the bazaar and that I knew approximately where it was. He said he would show me real quick but he had to get back to the gate. I had my doubts but he started walking the way I was going so I just followed him. He crossed the street and then suddenly ducked down into a shop that sold gold jewellery. I just sighed and carried on walking up the street. This was starting to get ridiculous. At the end of the block I came across the first man that had hassled me that day. Oh please God not again. He pointed at the museum and asked me why you not go in? so I frustratingly explained to him that the museum was closed. Couldnt these people tell that I just wanted to be left alone? It was like swimming upstream to spawn. Well the hassler proceeded to inform me that the museum actually was open and that the man who told me it was closed must have been lying. At which point, I almost lost it. When it takes a hassler hassling you to make you realise that youve been hassled by another hassler, one can inevitably expect to let loose the loco a little. Thankfully I managed to kick it to the curb for the sake of politeness and patched up my wounded pride enough to actually shake the mans hand, thank him, apologise for being dismissive to him earlier and to let him know that I was from Lichtenstein. It only took another few dozen hassling brush offs before I finally managed to gain access to the museum, which was an absolute sanctuary after those rough first fifteen minutes or so on the Cairo streets. No one approached me, no one tried to sell me anything and no one begged me for money. No one even appeared to care which country I came from. I could just meander aimlessly between exhibits and enjoy the experience on my own and at my own pace.

The Egyptian MuseumCairos haven from hassling.

Unfortunately I am not really a museum person (Kirstin used to be really big on museums so I was a fairly regular weekend museum-goer when we lived in London but I quickly discovered that if it didnt have a pub or a planetarium in it, then it wasnt likely to have Brian in it for very long either). Its honestly a shame too because I have to admit that the museum displays were very impressive and there wasnt the usual no photography / no touching shite. You could flash fire away at mummies and trace your fingers through hieroglyphs if you wanted to. Unfortunately I just really didnt want to. I know this may sound nationalist or racist or discriminatory (or whatever the politically correct word is for political incorrectness these days), but all of the mummies and statues just started looking the same to me after awhile. I was so desensitized by the time I came to the King Tut display that I didnt even realize that it was King Tut being displayed. It was just more old stuff. I lasted about an hour and a half in total and then I happily buggered off to eat lunch.

Statues that all look the same. From right to left we have Osirus, Helios, Ra, Thoth and..for Christ sakes Tut, quit screwing around and take off that bird head.

After having had a couple of days to sample a sufficient amount of the local Egyptian fare and finding it both disappointing and virtually similar to that of Qatars, I was free to continue with my quest to identify the worlds best Big Mac guilt free. Im not sure if I mentioned it in an earlier Journal or not but the UAE (Abu Dhabi airport in particular) has finally knocked long runner title holder Australia off the throne and it has served to finally breathe new life into what was becoming a rather listless exercise. The only problem was that the lone McDonalds within walking distance that was still operating in Cairo was located right next to Tahrir Square and mid-day was likely to be the height of the unrest. Excellent. If theres going to be a revolution then I would not only have a front row seat for it but Id also get to witness it whilst crushing a large Big Mac meal.

This turned out to be quite an experience. I will spare you the logistical details of trying to make this happen that afternoon and just summarise the obstacles encountered while doing so: The discovery that Tahrir Square was the only option after about a two hour process of elimination (i.e. actually walking to and discovering that two other McDonalds had closed in the last two years) Concrete barricaded streets blocking access to the area surrounding Tahrir Square A tank Fan assisted oven like temperatures Approximately 18 - 20 people who wanted to know what country I was from Sidewalks that smelled suspiciously like tinkle Traffic that didnt care whether you walked like an Egyptian or not Other assorted hassle

Egyptian protestors trying to prevent the author from getting to McDonalds

By the time I arrived at the McDonalds, I was so famished that I had decided it was going to take far more than one burger to provide a proper assessment. That was right when I encountered the biggest obstacle of all: the building the McDonalds was in had long since been boarded up. The only way that I actually knew it had been a McDonalds was from a well faded sign above a bricked in window. I sat there and just stared at it for a very long, very painful minute. I sat there and stared like someone who had just spent over two hours walking in a tinkle-smelling, fan-assisted oven through hoards of hassle whilst skirting tanks and traffic in order to realise what might probably turn out to be my one and only chance of experiencing an Egyptian Big Mac only to find out that the dream wasnt going to be reality. I probably would have even started crying if there had been any moisture left in that body at that stage. Slowly accepting the fact that I was fated for falafel, I was just turning to leave when a door in the boarded up McDonalds swung open and a man walked out licking an ice cream cone.

Now then. About twelve years ago, I was doing some work in Banda Aceh (a town at the northern tip of Sumatra in Indonesia) when I found out it was understood that I would also be giving a lecture on acoustics whilst I was there. This wasnt a particularly happy moment for me as public speaking is an irrational fear of mine. I immediately began to panic and to think up ways of potentially getting out of it. First I considered pretending I had a dodgy nasi goreng belly and couldnt get out of bed. Then I thought Id just go missing. Unfortunately both of these conditions were relatively temporary in nature and wouldnt save me for an entire week so I was essentially snookered. I ended up just resigning myself to my personal hell the following day and going to bed for a restless sleep. The reason I mention this little slice of life here is that its the one example I can think of an instance, from post-adolescence at least, when I was absolutely dreading something that I had absolutely no way out of. Something that puts the absolute fear of God in you and something that only an act of God can make go away. Which, in the case of the Banda Aceh lecture, was exactly what happened. Torrential rains arrived at some point during that night and I woke up to find that the town had been ravaged by extensive flooding and mudslides. Most of the roadways were impassable, the town was completely flooded and most of the lecture venue was under water. It is the only actual example I can think of for being faced with a hopeless situation and then having it completely resolve itself. Needless to say, the effect this has on ones disposition is dramatic. So when I saw the man emerge from what had only a moment before been a physically manifest hopeless situation whilst gobbing away on soft serve vanilla, I experienced what I can only think to describe as my second ever joygasm and it was just like I was playing in the mud in Banda Aceh all over again. Apparently the boarding up bit was just to discourage rioters (silly me) and there was actually a fully functional Big Mac facility underneath the derelict looking building faade. Seriously though. I know this wasnt exactly the most amazing thing ever but what were the odds? I tried for a multiple joygasm when the Macs arrived but they were honestly pretty dire. It also took the staff at least ten minutes to cook them. I decided to double down with nuggets but they were pretty bad as well. The only good thing about a trip to McDonalds in Cairo is when you actually realise its there. I had also realized by this stage that Cairo really didnt have anything else to offer me. I had intended on spending the (now remainder of the) afternoon at the bazaar but after enduring a few days slowly becoming allergic to continuous hassle in places where I wasnt expecting it, it would have been downright daft to have carried on to a place where I did expect it. Mental, not a martyr, remember? So I went back to the hotel and spent the remainder of the evening on the balcony listening to baseball games, reading and just watching night fall over Cairo. And finally managed to sleep like an Egyptian.