Was up bright and early at 3am on Wednesday morning for the trip to see Abu Simbel - yet another temple that Rameses II built to the great glory of himself! Arrogant so and so he was. Anyway, its a 3 hour bus journey to about 40km north of the Sudan border, right on Lake Nasser. It was in fact moved stone by stone up since it would have been buried under water after the Aswan dam was built. Its pretty darn impressive actually and inside (no photos allowed!) Rameses II has had painted lots of pictures of himself being the all amazing hero defeating everyone in battle...

Then it was a 3 hr journey back to Aswan with a short detour to the Philae temple which was dedicated to the Goddess Isis and is beautiful. Was too darn hot though and I was knackered by this time! Got back to the hotel and had a snooze before meeting up with Irene for some food. We had been invited to a Nubian wedding by our Felucca (sailboat) captain the night before so we were picked up at 11pm by them and taken to a village out of town. It was pretty mad although the party didn't get started till 1am at the earliest. Everyone was dancing and the girls were all wearing beautiful dresses. Its all very segregated still with the men on one side and the women on the other. Everyone was smiling and singing though and it was fun to join in with them. We left at 2.30am since i'd been up nearly 24 hours! I was tired!

Had a relaxed day on the hotel roof yesterday reading and then we went and met our Felucca friends who took us out for a sunset trip. They had just about recovered from the party the night before! It was so relaxing and the sunset over the Nile is beautiful.

Am off on a 3 day Felucca trip back to Luxor today. I'm hoping for a good group on my boat! And hopefully I won't get bitten too much since we'll be sleeping out in the open on the boat.

Laters! xxx