Egypt, Day Ten and Eleven

Day 10: HAPPY EASTER! (We didn’t celebrate considering we were in Muslim Country) Today we went exploring in Luxor. We wanted to go to the bizarre (local market area)…and so we walked through that and as we started, this random kid (probably 17 or so) was following us and trying to show us where everything was even though we just wanted to walk. And then he said he wanted to take us somewhere, so since we didn’t have anything us really to do we did. It was this three level building that was also a bizarre but the first floor was another papyrus factory and display place. He happened to be an art student (and was also studying English too) and so he had help hand paint some of the papyrus sheets. We then wandered around those three levels for while, Catherine and I were asked if we were sisters for about the 10th time while we were there…which we always just went along with it and said yes…haggled but didn’t buy anything….got hit on while haggling, surprise surprise….and then we left.

Also during this Luxor exploring day we met a Scottish guy that was staying at our hostel…his name was Howart, so he tagged along with the 5 of us….very nice guy. So after we got done at the bizarre we went back to the hostel. At this point we needed to talk to the wife of the guy that owned the hostel. Her name was Paula. She was actually Columbian but had married an Egyptian so then moved to Egypt. She was soooo nice and helped us so much, and we could talk Spanish to her if we wanted haha. So the next day we were planning on leaving to Horgada so the following day we could go on this Scuba Diving trip that Paula had set up for us. So we talked to her about all of those plans and then she took us to the bus station to buy tickets and then to a sports shop that had swim suits since Joy and I hadn’t brought ours. Later that night Paula and some of her friends invited us to go to bar to hang out for awhile. Just the girls wanted to go. This was quite the bar. It was really neatly decorated (but also had its weirdo perks…there were two 3 and 4 year olds running around and the 3 year old girl came up to joy and wanted to sit on her lap…haha….and then they also had this dog wondering around the place…not as weird as bring your kids to the club night except for the fact that this dog was the size of a small horse) and then in the back it had an indoor pool and then right outside by the pool area there was a camel and a horse in the pen that would come up to this big open window so you could pet them. Paula took us back there to see the animals and as I was petting the horse Joy said she wanted to take my picture while petting the horse so I put my hand on his nose and turned around….well the horse apparently thought I tasted good because he lightly bit my hand….it didn’t hurt but it did scare the crap of me…so I believe Joy’s picture is of me screaming…good timing I suppose.

So we hung out at the bar for awhile and danced. Then a slow song came on (yes we were all confused by this too….who plays slow songs in a club??) and this very good looking guy that had been talking to us girls asked Joy if she wanted to dance. We all thought he was very good looking but then he began to talk, and he ruined it for himself. Joy told us later that while they were dancing he said “Do you want to know why I had these tattoo? It ‘s because I have such a nice body that I can put them anywhere and they look good”. Weirdo. Then after the club we went back to the hostel and hit the hay.


Day11: Today was a big Egyptian Celebration. I’m really not sure what it was but everyone came out into the streets near the Nile and set up picnics and had family time. It basically looked like what the 4th of July might look like in the States. Hiraji wanted to take us out and walk us around for this holiday just so we could see what it was like. So he picked us up at the hostel at 10:30am and we went to the Nile to walk around. We then crossed to the other side and Hiraji bought us Egyptian peanuts and roasted squash seeds from a vendor and then we just went and walked around. There were kids swimming in the Nile and other little kids on donkey rides, pretty cute. We then walked down to this little street restaurant that had fresh juices. They had this little cute shelter area to sit under by the river that had music and such. So we sat under there and Catherine Joy and I got fresh mango juice…amazing! After that we decided that we wanted to do another Faluka ride on the river since it was our last day in Luxor. So we got on the Faluka and sailed on the river for awhile. Because of the holiday there were sooo many people along the shore of the river swimming and playing games. After sailing we went back to Hiraji and his friend’s man hut again and had a glass of tea.

Then as leaving the hit one of Hiarji’s friends came to meet us, so on the way out of the hut we introduced ourselves…and of course I was the last one out…and so he grabbed my hand and kissed it and said some comment…thank you? What else do you do, haha. After that we went back to the hostel to get everything together because we had to get to the bus station to get on our 6 hour bus ride to Horgada. This bus ride was quite interesting. First we met an American guy (he was who Joy sat by) who was from Boston BUT he was born in NEBRASKA! He didn’t live there that long, but was born in Omaha so we thought that was pretty cool. And also his mom went to Creighton and so I told him my dad went there as well, but turns out not at the same time. Small world. We talked to him for the majority of the bus ride…very nice guy. I’d say he was 24 or so…he is working in advertisement in Boston… and now we are all officially facebook friends with the guy haha.

Then came the more interesting part of the bus ride. A couple seats in front of us and to the side there was a young couple with a little girl who I would say was probably about 4. We saw the dad get up and go talk to the bus driver and then all of a sudden the bus driver slammed on his breaks and this guy who obviously wasn’t in his seat fell forward and almost hit the windshield and so to brace himself he reached up and grabbed this shelve thing in the front of the bus and while grabbing it, it broke causing him to again almost fall straight into the windshield. His wife stood up screaming because we didn’t know why the bus driver would do this and then she went up there and then the fight began. I guess the man from the young couple went up there to talk to the bus driver about him stopping every 5 minutes (which he was doing) and told him that he had payed good money for this ticket and he had to be wherever he was going on time so wanted to know if all of the stops were necessary. Apparently the bus driver didn’t like this and slammed on his breaks causing this guy to fall. Then people from the back of the bus got involved and came up and started yelling and there were people in the middle trying to mediate it and keep people from punching each other and it grew to be a big mess. And of course as I said before we were sitting very close to these people so we were very much in the middle of all of this. I was on the isle and was then basically sitting on Catherine’s lap because there were so many people getting into this mess.

The only funny part of this was that in front of us there was also two more rows of American students and so we thought it was quite ironic that all of this fighting was happening around us and we were the only ones who couldn’t understand Arabic….all except for our Boston friend Bernie though. Bernie had taken Arabic in college and so he was telling us what they were saying. Then they also began to fight because I guess curse words were being said and the dad of the little girl got mad and said that nobody should be cursing in front of the children. This got to be such a big deal that at the next check point that we stopped at we the police were brought on the bus to handle all of this. They the police took everyone that was involved off the bus and apparently got things figured out. We also thought it was funny that all of us American Students were the main witnesses of what happened….but we obviously wouldn’t have been any good at witnessing.

Then after a couple more hours we arrived in Horgada where Paula (the lady from the Luxor hostel) had arranged for the guy who ran the hostel in Horgada to pick us up. He was there waiting for us as soon as we got off the bus and took us back to the hostel. It was about 1:30am when we finally got to the hostel and we had to be up early for our day of scuba diving and so we went straight to bed.