Title:	Pyramids, Oasis, Red Sea Diving, desert hotsprings.
Region:	Middle-East
Countries:	Egypt
Date:	November 11, 1999
My Rating (out of 100):	75
	Hello everyone, Well, I've been 4 weeks in Egypt and once again, things are interesting. Egypt has lots of history and a unique brand of people and religion. Most of the Egyptians are Muslim but 10% are Coptic Christians. Egyptian men treat women as second class citizens and I've run into some interesting examples while traveling around. The Qur’an (Muslim Bible) says that women should be covered up so they don't get men sexually excited. It also says that men can have many wives at one time, or in secession and can divorce at any time. Once a woman is divorced, she will probably have trouble finding another husband and she loses her children. One of the guides, Abdullah, we had in the dessert was one day told by his father to rush home because his mother was sick. When he arrived, they kidnapped him and sent him directly to his wedding (surprise!) Now, he doesn't like his wife and will divorce her soon, keeping their two kids. Another Guide, Nasser, had two wives but they threw such jealous fits he said he had to divorce them both and now has an American wife. Of course, she doesn't treat him the way a normal Egyptian wife should and you see his friends give him really funny looks as if to say "how do you let your wife act so insolent?". The gem on this experience comes from "The Egyptian Gazette" which is an English language paper I found in Cairo. Inside there is an article about the birth control pill for men. Here is some of the good stuff: 'When asked about the day when men themselves become responsible for birth control, men and women had some different responses. Most women laughed at the idea and said their husbands would never do such a thing. Some of the men had more interesting comments. A supermarket attendanthad this to say: "Sorry? What do you say? Do you mean I should take a birth control injection like my wife? Nonsense! Pregnancy is confined to women, I believe. Maybe tomorrow husbands will be asked to do the washing and change the clothes of the babies who wet themselves!", he scoffed.' Anyway, that's the general attitude that men have towards women here. Based on the teachings of the Qu'ran, so if you disagree, it's blasphemy. Having said that, the people I have met in Egypt overall are very friendly and you get a lot of people who are nice just to be nice. They don't want you to visit their friends carpet shop or perfume bottle shop or anything. English is also spoken fairly widely, especially in Cairo. So, some of the highlights of the trip. I jumped on a tour for 3 weeks with a company called Encounter Overland, and I don't recommend them. Quite a bit disorganized and inexperienced guides. The trip was still fun and I was able to get to places you normally can't get to by bus. Mainly the Oasis of the western desert near the Lybian border. My favorite town in Egypt is a small traditional village called Siwa that lies where several hot and cold springs come up from the desert. It's a stereotypical oasis with a salt lake and date palms that abruptly end in rolling sand dunes where there is no more water. The town itself gets almost no rain and this allows the inhabitants to built all their houses out of mud-brick. They simply take mud, mix with water and form it into a brick shape. Then they lay them just like ordinary bricks, using water as a cement. It makes for an interesting skyline on this little village, since some of them can get to 3 or 4 Stories. I hear in Yemen, they get up to 8 or 9. In the 1920's a freak rainstorm hit the old village and most of the houses where washed away. Everyone had to build new houses (again of mud brick), but that's only happened once in recent history. We did most of our camping out in the dessert, usually next to a hot springs which is a nice place to have an evening bath. Just sit back and relax watching the desert stars, drinking date wine and soaking in the warm waters. It was fantastic. In total, we visited 4 such Oasis and did a camel safari out to one of them. The Pyramids. They are OK, but really only cool because they are so bloody old (5000 years). And something I didn't know...They used to be covered in white limestone and were perfectly smooth and polished. This was all stolen to build mosques and houses, but imagine that! These 150m stone structures a gleaming white sticking out of the brown desert landscape. They must have been spectacular. All through-out Egypt their are temples and tombs and I visited most of the important ones. Temple of Luxor, Temple of Karnak, Temple of Phillae (at Aswan) and Valley of the Kings, where those 58 tourists were massacred a few years ago. The only temple I didn't visit was Abu Simbel, since the road is closed because of terrorists. Which brings me to my next topic. In Egypt since that time, security has been tight and everywhere you go, there are guards armed with AK-47 assault rifles on every corner. Especially in Cairo and Luxor, where most of the tourists are concentrated. Every 60 km they have checkpoints on the highway and whenever we arrived in a new city they sent armed escorts with us to the hotel. Then plain-clothes, tourist police with guns and walkie talkies would shadow us wherever we went. It made me feel safe, actually. I didn't worry about muggings, never mind terrorism. Even when we were camping in the middle of nowhere, we were required to have a policeman stay in the camp overnight. The major tourist routes could not be traveled unless in a heavily armed convoy. Each morning we had to meet all the other tourist buses (ours was one of the only 4 wheel drive vehicles) and gather with a small fleets of police vehicles to make our journey. Which brings me to the truck, since you are probably wondering exactly what we traveled in. It's an old British military truck that's been converted to hold 25 people and tows a trailer with all our packs, camp stove, chairs, etc. It's desiel and can go 2000km on one tank of fuel. It has 5 gears on 4 wheel drive low and 5 gears on 4 wheel drive high. The roof is plastic and can be rolled up for the "convertible look" and gives us a good few and natural air-con. On the side of the truck are these metal "tracks" that are used to get you out of the sand when the truck gets stuck. The tracks are about 1.5 meters long and 50cm wide. 3 people go on each side and stick the tracks under the wheels of the truck. As soon as the truck has gone over, you run, get them, run forward and throw it down in front again. Hard work. Fortunatly we only had about 1km of this sort of thing to do on this trip. Next we went on a Felucca trip, which is just a big sail boat, down the Nile for 2 days. Nice and relaxing, but you don't want to swim in the Nile because "the water tastes like petrol" - our dumb guide says, and you can get a nasty parasite. Little worms that dig in your skin and make their way to your liver making you very, very sick. We had a campsite in the sand along the Nile with a traditional band playing music and a big bonfire. (and more date wine, of course) The last bit was spent on the red sea which is known for it's amazing scuba diving and windsurfing. I met a windsurf instructor on the bus and he was telling me how they had 27 days straight of high winds, then two days off and back to high winds again. Amazing. The Red Sea reefs are supposed to equal (and some say surpass) the Great Barrier reef for the beautiful fish and other sea live on them. So far, from the snorkeling I have done, they look pretty good but I go diving tomorrow and I'll really find out then. Anyway, that's about it. I'm off to Israel and Jordan in a 2 days and hope to be at Petra in 3. Hope this was interesting for everyone! Bye! (from Dahab, Sanai Peninsula, Egypt)