Day 9
Discover Egypt
Yet another early start up at 05:00 and leaving the hotel at 06:00 for Karnak temple. We arrive at the temple just after 06:00 and find the area empty, again we have the whole site to ourselves. Tam guides us around the various parts of the temple explaining the history behind each part as it was built by different Pharaohs. We are then given some free time to explore the temple on our own. I head off and then bump into Grant and Briana. We are then approached by some Egyptian guy who tells to follow him to see a couple of statues. He offers to take a couple of photos of me in front of the statues and I thank him and give him £5. Grant tells the guy he has no money on him and the next thing I know is the guy is leading me off to another part of the temple. Grant and Briana wander off in another direction. My new found Egyptian friend leads me to the side of one of the great pylons which is being restored. I'm lead up a fight of stone steps and as I come out into the open am greeted by an amazing view over the temple complex. After another couple of photos I head down and follow the guy again. At this point I see the other 2 and decided to head over to them. They are stood by some gates on the last pylon which looks along the sphinx avenue to Luxor temple. I then notice they are with a tourist police officer who seems to be chatting to them. My guild then tells me that the area we are in is out of bounds and photos are not allowed to be taken in this area. I get to the others and the officer says something to my guild and my guild leads me to the gate to take a photo of the sphinx avenue. The police man who is armed with what looks like an Ak-47 then leads us to the other pylon I has just visited. He leads the other 2 up the steps and when they get to the top they walk out into the open. The policeman tells them to keep down in case they are seen and we all take a few photos and head back down. When we reach the bottom I walk past the policeman and he ask's grant for money. Grant gives him £20 and we head towards the broken obelisk. Briana wants to take some photos of the obelisk and as she approaches it one of the guys there lifts up the rope cordoning it off from tourists. Briana tells the guy she has no money and the guys says no problem and let's her under the rope. When she is finished she steps over the rope and the guy asks for some money. She explains again she has no money and the guy points to Grant. Reluctantly grant gives him some cash and we head off to the bus. Once at the bus we head to the Luxor museum and are dropped off here. As this is not part of our itinerary we will have to make our own way back to the hotel. Once we have finished at the museum we grab 2 taxis back to the hotel in time to move all our bags into one room as check out is at 12:00 and we don't depart until 18:30. We then all head out to find somewhere to get lunch and head towards Murphy's. When we get there we find it to be closed as a lot of places seem to be as we are now in Ramadan. When find smiley's next door is open and the menu looks good and they serve beer so we head in. At the end of the meal Grant and I try to blag a couple of beer glasses for our collection but end up buying them for £30. It's then back to the hotel and all 8 of us squeeze into the one room and before long every one is asleep. After a while I wake up an go down to the lobby to go onto the Internet as this is the first chance iv had since the end of my last trip. Once iv finished I head back to the room and have a quick shower and change before we depart for our overnight train back to Cairo. We get to the station after a stop for the others to get food as we have been warned the meal on the train is like airline food. I'm not worried as airline food is normally edible. The train arrives almost on time which is unusual and we all climb aboard. I share my compartment with Grant and a little while after the train starts to move the porter comes round with dinner. Well I will never moan about airline food again. We are served a piece of grilled chicken which looks like it has been run over by a truck, the rice is cold and almost raw and there is a brown cake like thing when I'm told later it was a potato cake. I put the road kill in my stale roll and that's about all I manage to eat from the meal. We then order a tea and sit and chat for a while until we decide to head to the back of the car for a cigarette. Once we return to our cabin grant pulls out the gentleman jack and we sit listening to the learn Arabic file I have on my iPod. We continue this until about midnight learning our Arabic, drinking the jack and stopping for a smoke every now and then. We then hit the sack after another long hard day.