Camels and Trinkets

Cairo - 3 hours away across the Sahara

Wagons hitched, guns loaded, sirens blaring, 25 coaches headed off to Cairo some 3 hours away. I was in a private vehicle but was not allowed to leave the convoy. The picture is one of three trucks of armoured guards, with sirens on. Yeah! 3 hours of gruelling low speed Cairo traffic. 85 million people live in Egypt and 25 million car driving ratbags live in Cairo. There is no public transport system to speak of (makes NSW look good) and fuel is cheap.

The Cairo Museum

To set the scene; 25 busloads of Aussies, 10+ busloads of other nations, all simultaneously crowded into the museum, sans cameras, trying to listen to Museum guides explaining Egyptian history in languages matching their linguistic origins. It looked more like the entrance to the Easter Show and the toilet queue was just as long.  

 King Tutankhamen’s 110-kilogram 24carat solid gold coffins, 20-kilo head adornment and gold thongs (Tut called them sandals) are the star attractions. All of the items found in King Tut’s tomb are on display and are truly breathtaking demonstrations of mastery of cloth, wood, metals and gems. Tut lived a privileged life as King until he mysteriously died at 19yrs from a hole in the back of his head. At least KRudd was allowed to step down, alive.

There were also miscellaneous carved rocks from the Old, Middle and New Egyptian Kingdoms to fill the rest of the museum and amuse the fee paying tourists.

Interestingly, a more complete and richer Egyptian Museum is to be found in the Egyptian Museum of Turin, Italy. The naughty Napoleon Bonaparte took home many artefacts from his Egyptian campaign and the French Consul General in Egypt took some more. The Italians acquired most of it for reasons unknown.

The Pyramids…

To touch the pyramids is both a mystical and painful thing to do. Did you know that some Egyptians still make their bread by placing it on rocks in the sun until it is cooked? It was 55 degrees at midday when we finally arrived at the Pyramids; Cairo needs a cross-city tunnel.

The pyramids shimmered under the heat haze of the Egyptian sun, wavy camels slid across the horizon, 25 coaches roared to a stop on the Sahara sands disgorging sun burnt Aussies with terabytes of empty camera memory cards. It was a sight to behold.

Everyone must touch a pyramid once in his or her life. You connect with the sand blown land, the heat, the architectural extravagance and the labour of tens of thousands of Egyptian slaves who’s lives were spent in their 30 year+ building. It was very disappointing and disrespectful that several tourists had to be chased off the pyramids as they climbed up their sides to capture a trophy photo.

For many of us, photo’s taken, and safely back inside the air-conditioned coach, we reconciled to the magnitude of human achievement that the pyramids are. This was quickly brushed away with “go faster” excitement as 25 coaches and a few private vehicles raced down the hill to be the first to the SPHINX.

Port Said

One minute we were in the Suez Canal then suddenly it opened up into a seething ocean of large ships and a huge shipping port called Port Said. This port exists because of the Suez Canal and its occupants are derived of the many visiting sailors through the eons. Conjure your mind pictures now and add 50 degree heat, accumulated dirt from no rainfall in years and the arrival of 2000 Australian passengers dressed in less than RSL Club minimum day attire.

In short, this is one dusty, grey town with machine gun armed police, soldiers and shady looking characters on every corner. There is little to see or do despite the physical size of Port Said. All the action is in the two streets paralleling the harbour.

Port Said is the closest docking port to Cairo. Most of the 2000 passengers wanted to see the Pyramids so we left for Cairo. Every cross street was shut down by armed guards for kilometres as our “convoy” headed out.

Suez Canal

The canal is 163 kilometres long, with no locks, joining the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea. Convoys of 10 ships at a time travel Northbound and southbound through one lane with a lake for passing in the middle.

The Suez Canal has been operating since the 13^th Century BC, built by Ramses II. It has been abandoned, closed, modified, blown up, and rebuilt many times. In 1956 the Egyptians decided to nationalise and seize the canal provoking a war with Israel.

The bully French and the failing British Empire, recently united by a world war and fearing loss of access to the canal, joined in by also attacking Egypt. The canal re-opened after agreements were signed allowing free passage for all with a nominal maintenance charge by the Egyptians.  “Nominal charge” meant $250,000 per large ship with over 50 ships per day and 22,000 per year.

The Canal also closed for a few years from 1967 to 1973 whilst the Arabs(Egyptians) and Israeli’s sorted out some more differences of opinion.

Egypt collects a tidy sum from the canal to fund its heritage preservation work.  It is a mystery why the Cairo Museum and outdoor historical sites are in such disrepair and exhibits so poorly presented. If this mystery was solved we might also solve the riddle of why NSW trains, hospitals, schools and roads are in such disrepair despite healthy tax collection.

As the ship was restricted to 5 knots, this was an all day experience starting at 4.30am. On the starboard (northern) side is the sands of Saudi Arabia and on the port (southern) side the fertile, Nile irrigated, farmlands of Egypt. Soldiers and tanks patrol the northern side and sleepy fisherman and farmers couldn’t care on the southern side.  At the end of this Canal is Port Said.

Dubai – Burj Khalifa – tallest building in the world

  Bloomingdales is a poor mans Harrods but was still fun to look around. Having warmed up from snow skiing we sought out some of the other “supersized” structures in Dubai. We jumped a Range Rover Taxi to the Burj Khalifa; a tallish building in the centre of Dubai, which is coincidentally connected to another super mall so more golf buggy fun was inevitable.

Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed al-Maktoum named the building Burj Khalifa in honour of United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan. Sheikh Khalifa is also ruler of Abu Dhabi, the emirate that came to Dubai's help late last year to the tune of $US10 billion ($A11.15 billion) to bail out the bankrupt project. The Sheikh al-Maktoum is now building a taller building in Abu Dhabi with his name on it. Boys and their toys!

(note how large the base of the building is to get a sense of scale)

At 828 metres and more than 160 stories, Burj Khalifa holds the following records:
• Tallest building in the world
• Tallest freestanding structure in the world
• Highest number of stories in the world
• Highest occupied floor in the world
• World's highest observation deck with an outdoor terrace
• Elevator with the longest travel distance in the world
• Fastest elevator at 80 kilometres per hour in a single shaft
• Tallest single elevator in the world

The trip up in the elevator was a juxtaposition of chilling and astounding. The lift car is pitch black and lights up like a nightclub as you hurtle to the observation deck at 80kph. The sense of drama of this incredulous trip was heightened as one indigenous child began to wail in a non-melodic tone the moment the doors closed. The lift began to pulse with coloured strobe lights and Arabic music; the wailing increased; the lights pulsed faster; the wailing increased; the music and the wailing synchronised into a single crescendo of light and sound climaxing in the doors opening at the top of the Tower of Babel. Phew, that beats reading compliance messages in the lift at work…..

Stepping out of the lift was a simultaneous auditory relief and a sensation of movement under foot as the Burj Khalifa sways between 2-6 metres; more than your average palm tree on a windy day at Manly. Words struggle to alliterate the feeling that goes with the view. Everything below appears so small but you know everything below is larger/taller than most Sydney buildings. There are electronic viewing binoculars to help you take in the panoramic curved-world view programmed to switch from actual view to video replay mode if a sandstorm obliterates the view. They replay exactly where you are aiming the viewer and replay a blue sky and blue sea image even though you can’t see it. WOW! WOW! WOW!

We took tea (drank not stole), accepted requests to photograph several NASB (Non Arabic Speaking Background) tourists with their own cameras and then excitedly headed back to the nightclub they call an elevator.

Dubai -5 degrees, I nearly got frostbite

We arrived at Dubai Ocean Terminal to a colourful milieu of jangling belly dancers twirling away on the dock welcoming us to their country. Having jangled and shaken enough these beautiful women waited to offer us photo opportunities as we swarmed, like lemmings off a cliff, down the gangways into their world.

Everything is bigger than big in Dubai, no reference to the belly dancers. The buildings, the boats, the shopping malls, the desert; where to start?

Dubai is the commercial capital of United Arab Emirates, population 4.4 million people, with most appearing to drive Ferrari’s, Range Rovers and Bentley convertibles. There was a LEXUS showroom for the working classes. The shopping centre car parks look like luxury car dealerships.  The multi section shopping centres make Westfields look like St Vincent DePaul outlets. The Dubai Mall is so large you get around in golf buggies and even then it takes over ten minutes to get from one end to the other through the Egyptian, Persian and Chinese themed sections!!!!

What sound does an Arab make when bumped into with an electric shopping buggy?

“Jihad, Jihad, something, something, something” (at least that’s what I thought it sounded like)

It’s 45 degrees outside and rising. Being outside is not a comfortable environment. A brown haze, that at first looks like industrial pollution but is actually sand, blows in from the Arabian Desert. You can taste it in your mouth and it covers everything in a gritty blanket that must play havoc with car paint.

Back to the frostbite; As we drove through slowly thru the mall we happened upon a shop (bigger than any Westfield) called “Ski Dubai”. I am a keen skier so I thought I would pop in to see what was on sale. After considering some new equipment I was invited to try it out and to step into the trial area. We geared up and stepped out the back and as you can see Dubai had imported Perisher Valley complete with lifts and coffee shops. There were fast and slow runs, learning areas and snow boarding jumps. Some three hours later I had to leave as I could no longer hold the stocks (didn’t think I would need gloves ha-ha). The temperature was -5 degrees. Absolutely unbelievable, I am sure I was in the Tardis (Dr Who) because it just kept going and going. 

I thanked the storeowner and went to the next small shop in the mall, Bloomingdales, to warm up.