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Brenton Kovacs's Travels
20/12/2010
Dubai has the largest Chinese trading market outside of China. Called Dragon Mart, the store is 1.2ks long. The best way to describe this experience is it's like walking through a huge ebay store. Everything on sale here all direct from the Chinese manufacturer. 1,400 stalls. This took us the best part of a few hours.
We planned to visit the Old Souk again and catch a Abra across Dubai Creek. The Abra ride is 1 Durham (40 cents)
The wooden boats are very old, slow, and the diesel fumes can be a little overwhelming, but what an experience. The Souk is such a great way to see everything from gold to spices. You do get hassled constantly by guys flogging copy watches etc, but this just adds to the atmosphere. This is our last night in Dubai, I I think we have seen all that can be seen in 7 days.
21/12/2010
Bags packed, we head off to Sharjah, a city to the east of Dubai. After driving around for 7 days I have had enough. The drivers in Sharjah seem even more aggressive than Dubai. In total we have had about 5 near misses.. Visited the Blue Souk, Central City, before heading to the Airport in Sharjah.
The airport here is not what you would call modern, but after clearing many security check points, we finally put our feet up in a coffee shop. The 4 hour flight with Air Arabia, departed at 11.15pm and arrived at 1.15am in Luxor. We caught a cab to the hotel, and jumped into bed for a few more hours of sleep.
22/12/2010
Staying in the Nile Palace, Luxor. Very nice and comfortable, with a beautiful view of the Nile river from the balcony. Breakfast was abundant with lots of variety. Our plans today are to visit the Luxor and Karnak Temples. I thought we would just walk to the Luxor temple as it is on 1k away. As we were walking we were constantly being hassled by taxi drivers and horse and cart drivers.
One particular guy got the better of me, and next thing we were being driven around in a horse drawn carriage. Spent the whole day with him. He was our private tour guide. This brought us very close to sights and sounds and smells you would miss in a bus or taxi. One of the best experiences we have had. Both the temples showed off a lot of the Egyptian architecture.
Luxor is a very poor city, and poverty can be seen everywhere. We even had a little girl running next to our carriage for at least a kilometre begging for money. The Egyptians are very friendly, say hello or waving.
Although it is hard work being a tourist here though. The constant hassling by store owners, cabbies etc all trying to get your money. The worst thing is some don’t understand the word NO. Anyway it was a very enjoyable day.
23/12/2010
Today we are visiting the West bank of the Nile. The Valley of the Kings and The Valley of the Queens are the big attractions here, and has many famous tombs including Tutankhamen and Nefertiti. It was very interesting to see and read about the tombs. All these sights were reach by another private tour guide in his taxi. This to us seemed a better way of seeing the sights rather than being one of many hundreds of tourists being bussed in and out like prisoners. We did it all at our own pace. The temperature was a balmy 25 degrees, but this did not help climbing the pathways to the tombs.
Spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the hotel, watching a magnificent sunset from the rooftop garden. After tea we walked to the Luxor Temple, which is lit up at night. This took us into the city which was filled with tourists and plenty of locals trying to milk money from the tourists. The amount of dust and diesel fumes in the air must have been bordering on extremely unhealthy. Having a lot of dirt roads certainly helped make the air so dirty. It was a lot nicer walking next to the Nile on our way back to the hotel.
Dubai has the largest Chinese trading market outside of China. Called Dragon Mart, the store is 1.2ks long. The best way to describe this experience is it's like walking through a huge ebay store. Everything on sale here all direct from the Chinese manufacturer. 1,400 stalls. This took us the best part of a few hours.
We planned to visit the Old Souk again and catch a Abra across Dubai Creek. The Abra ride is 1 Durham (40 cents)
The wooden boats are very old, slow, and the diesel fumes can be a little overwhelming, but what an experience. The Souk is such a great way to see everything from gold to spices. You do get hassled constantly by guys flogging copy watches etc, but this just adds to the atmosphere. This is our last night in Dubai, I I think we have seen all that can be seen in 7 days.
21/12/2010
Bags packed, we head off to Sharjah, a city to the east of Dubai. After driving around for 7 days I have had enough. The drivers in Sharjah seem even more aggressive than Dubai. In total we have had about 5 near misses.. Visited the Blue Souk, Central City, before heading to the Airport in Sharjah.
The airport here is not what you would call modern, but after clearing many security check points, we finally put our feet up in a coffee shop. The 4 hour flight with Air Arabia, departed at 11.15pm and arrived at 1.15am in Luxor. We caught a cab to the hotel, and jumped into bed for a few more hours of sleep.
22/12/2010
Staying in the Nile Palace, Luxor. Very nice and comfortable, with a beautiful view of the Nile river from the balcony. Breakfast was abundant with lots of variety. Our plans today are to visit the Luxor and Karnak Temples. I thought we would just walk to the Luxor temple as it is on 1k away. As we were walking we were constantly being hassled by taxi drivers and horse and cart drivers.
One particular guy got the better of me, and next thing we were being driven around in a horse drawn carriage. Spent the whole day with him. He was our private tour guide. This brought us very close to sights and sounds and smells you would miss in a bus or taxi. One of the best experiences we have had. Both the temples showed off a lot of the Egyptian architecture.
Luxor is a very poor city, and poverty can be seen everywhere. We even had a little girl running next to our carriage for at least a kilometre begging for money. The Egyptians are very friendly, say hello or waving.
Although it is hard work being a tourist here though. The constant hassling by store owners, cabbies etc all trying to get your money. The worst thing is some don’t understand the word NO. Anyway it was a very enjoyable day.
23/12/2010
Today we are visiting the West bank of the Nile. The Valley of the Kings and The Valley of the Queens are the big attractions here, and has many famous tombs including Tutankhamen and Nefertiti. It was very interesting to see and read about the tombs. All these sights were reach by another private tour guide in his taxi. This to us seemed a better way of seeing the sights rather than being one of many hundreds of tourists being bussed in and out like prisoners. We did it all at our own pace. The temperature was a balmy 25 degrees, but this did not help climbing the pathways to the tombs.
Spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the hotel, watching a magnificent sunset from the rooftop garden. After tea we walked to the Luxor Temple, which is lit up at night. This took us into the city which was filled with tourists and plenty of locals trying to milk money from the tourists. The amount of dust and diesel fumes in the air must have been bordering on extremely unhealthy. Having a lot of dirt roads certainly helped make the air so dirty. It was a lot nicer walking next to the Nile on our way back to the hotel.
- comments
Adrya Kovarch What beautiful architecture. The chinese market and Dubai sounded fascinating. Did you buy anything from the numerous stalls?
Adrya Kovarch Oh yes I remember this so well. Egypt is a very poor country - it had its days back when the Pharohs were running the place, but it doesn't have it now. It must have been a strange culture. I remember going into one of the buildings at Luxor and almost fainting - the vibe was so weird. There was so much violence between the Pharohas and as you have probably been shown by your guide all the heiroglyphics where names occur have been gouged out by a rival sibling.
Adrya Kovarch It is such a unique culture and I think well worth the experience - the incredible architecture - it must have been a bustling city - with all those magnificent columns.
Adrya Kovarch I do remember being so overwhelmed by this temple set into the cliff. It was here i distinctly recall that one of the Pharohs was a woman and well loved, but her brother murdered her and gouged her name from the heiroglyphics. The light was very yellow indicating the arrival of a sand storm. I got back to Cairo with my fellow travellers but were caught in the storm as we crossed the street. The particle size was huge and i remember catching a piece of quartz about 1cm in diameter. You really couldn't do anthing but get out of it, as it was so dangerous. Apparently sand storms are quite common in Egypt, just to add to the filthy pollution and poverty of the place.
Adrya Kovarch Oh yes the Nile - the giver of so much life to Egypt - its source of wealth. The colour went yellow like this in the sand storm. Are these the Souk boats you spoke of ? You are really living it up and i'm glad you are making the most of it
Adrya Kovarch Alan what a great shot of Brenton - it really captures the ambience f the place. People in gelobias(?) sipping tea on the streets in front of little cafes. good shot of Brenton too - looking very robust.
Adrya Kovarch Egypt is so weird - the glamourising or spiritualising of animals and the meaning behind them. First i thought that it was quite wonderful how they respected other life forms and then after seeing many documentaries on the culture i realised it might have started with that but it became a bureaucratic obsession filled with superstition and an industry of stuffing animals for select rights in which one had to purchase the animal from the public servants - an ancient "Yes Minister". They certainly don't respect animals now, or didn't when i was there - we tried to feed some very skinny and feeble donkies and were hurled abuse from the owners - why would we feed animals when there are children starving?