Egypt and India (and a little bit of Thailand)

We are now in Phuket, Thailand, a little island off the western coast.  We arrived here a few days ago to buckets and buckets of heavy rain.  It was a pretty huge bummer for me, as Thailand was one of my most looked forward to places of the entire trip.  Thailand has a hefty reputation for having the best beaches in the world.  Tough to explore beaches when it's raining hard enough to drown fish.  The weather forecast was for rain, rain, heavy rain, massive rain, and brutal rain.  Feeling depressed about our prospects in Thailand, I even went so far as to consider rebooking some flights to get us out of here earlier.

Well, teaches me to have any faith in weather forecasts.  After about two days of sucky rain-all-day-you-can't-leave-your-hotel-room action, it cleared up.  Now, don't get me wrong.  We're here in the offseason which means that really nice hotels and resorts are really cheap.  Our place is kind of a bungalow-ish place that looks like the penthouse at the Four Seasons but only costs like $38 a night.  I mean, if it's gonna rain might as well be stuck in a place like this.

So, yeah, it stopped raining and we rented a crappy, beater Suzuki Jeep and started checkin' stuff out.  This place is amazing.  White sand beaches, really cheap and delicious food, not that many people right now (do to it being offseason), and really friendly folks.  We're looking at booking an all day boat trip that goes to a bunch of islands including "James Bond Island" where parts of "The Man with the Golden Gun" were filmed.  We will probably roll on to Phi Phi island soon and perhaps make our way down to Ko Lanta, another island nearby.  Hopefully super-sweet blog updates will apprise you, fair reader, of what we've done.

OK, so here's the quick and dirty about where we've been for the last while.  After departing Greece, we headed to Cairo, Egypt.  We did the whole tour thing there since we were a little a-scared about the political situation.  After that we headed to Goa, India, a former Portugese colony on the southwestern coast by way of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India.  Mumbai has gotten a bunch of press in recent times for the terrible terrorist murders that took place at high end hotels back in 2008.

So I think I'll start talking about Egypt by presenting a quick fact sheet:

Number of people in greaer Cairo, Egypt area:  Somewhere around 16,000,000
Number of traffic lights in greater Cairo, Egypt area:  Somewhere around 3
Chance of scoring some booze outside of your tourist hotel:  .00001%
Chance of scoring some booze inside your hotel next to a pool while smoking shisha from a huge hookah:  99.9%
Number of huge-ass blocks in The Great Pyramid:  2,000,000
Percent of traditional Muslims that look like ninjas to me:  50%
Amount of time I would survive if I drove the roads of Cairo:  3.2 minutes
Manner of death I would likely suffer on said Cairo roads:  Crushing
Highest number of people seen piled onto one scooter:  Four
Number of dudes observed fistfighting while on camels:  Two
Number of times Leann and Chris got interviewed by Egyptian television:  One
Reason that King Tut is so famous:  Tomb was full when found (others from more important Kings were already looted)

Cairo is crazy.  Crazy cool, but crazy nonetheless.  There are a LOT of people there.  The streets are absolutely insane.  Like I mentioned, there are no traffic lights.  People just go.  All of them all the time.  There are also not really any lanes on the roads.  Cars, trucks, scooters, motorcycles, and everything in between just pack themselves in to one road as closely as possible.  Pedestrians risk life and limb constantly by trying to maneuver across packed roads, often having to stop in the middle of the road at each "lane".

Well, we got picked up at the airport by our Egyptian tour company (Emo Tours --- highly recommended and much less emo than I had feared.  No angst-ridden teenagers cutting themselves the entire time in Egypt, to my knowledge.)  They took us to our hotel and hot damn!!! it was a nice one.  I guess the hotel is only a year old.  We had a choice between three, four, and five star accomodations and picked the four since it was comparable in price to the three and the five was significantly more.  This hotel was bad-motherchuckin' ass.  We spent time in our spacious and exceptionally clean room and puncuated the ends of tour days by relaxing next to the 8th story rooftop pool whilst sipping on a cool Sakara beer and even smoking Egyptian shisha (it's just flavored tobacco....relax) out of a huge hookah.

We spent three days touring and here's what we saw:

The Pyramids and Sphynx:  The pyramids of Giza are right outside of Cairo.  In fact, Giza is a city that's connected to Cairo and you can see the pyramids clearly from the city (when it's not too hazy from pollution).  There is a series of three pyramids right near each other, with the Great Pyramid being the largest by far.  This one, also called the Pyramid of Cheops, is the one with more than 2,000,000 limestone blocks, the largest of which weighed an impressive 80 tons.  This pyramid was finished around 2560 BC and was the tallest structure in the world for over 3,800 years.  If you're not impressed, you should be.  These pyramids are absolutely amazing and the fact that they're so many thousands of years old and have held up so well to the rigors of time should give a person a healthy respect for the engineering skill of the ancient Egyptians.  We also got to see both women vendors fistfighting and dudes on camels fistfighting.  Times are a little tough in Egypt right now because the tourist industry is in shambles due to everyone's fear about the safety situation.  The Sphynx was actually smaller than I'd pictured but still very cool.  It combines a lion's body with a King's head.  The nose was chiseled off by a particularly enraged Muslim fundamentalist who took issue back in the 16th century with Egyptians making offerings to the Sphynx.

Two noses, six eyes, three heads, and one fantastic photo opp.

The Egyptian Museum:  A modern, if perhaps a little overpacked, museum that has probably the most wonderful collection of archaeological artifacts in the whole world.  That statue you're looking at over there?  Yeah, that's 5,000 years old and in perfect condition.  That chair over there?  That's King Tut's real chair.  This place is incredible.  Everything is so old and everything is so incredibly well preserved.  It's like an archaeologist's wet dream.  Don't worry, I kept all my fluids to myself while there.

Khan el-Khalili Market:  A huge, sprawling bazaar with every kind of offering you can imagine.  We were given a pep talk by our awesome guide, Mamdouh, before entering into the market.  Yes, you need to haggle prices.  No, you shouldn't tell anyone you're from the United States.  "Tell them you're from Holland.  People from Holland are famous around here for never buying anything or paying too much."  Who knew?  So, yeah, I inevitably ended up in negotiations with some dude named Hassan in his "brother's" shop over a soccer jersey and a shawl for Leann.  Negotiations actually got pretty heated, mainly because he was trying to tell me that his initial offer of well over $100 US was a good deal and that my jersey was "authentic, not polyester" despite the tag on the jersey itself that said "100% polyester".  Leann and the pseudo-brother guy were pretty amused during the whole affair.  The brother even suggested that Leann take a picture (she didn't, but it probably would have been funny).  Well, I got the stuff for under $20 and we shook hands and everyone was happy.  I think I still probably paid too much but the experience was pretty memorable and fun.

Bizarre?  No.  Bazaar?  Yes.

Mosque / Temple / Church / Citadel tour:  Our last day we toured one temple (it sadly got damaged during the revolution by some overzealous jerks), one church in Coptic Cairo, and a couple different mosques.  During this time we asked our guide various things about Islam that we didn't know.  He told us the world to the call to prayer that everyone in the whole city of Cairo hears through loudspeakers multiple times a day.  He told us cool stories about his family and life as a Muslim man in Egypt and allowed us to witness both the washing ritual, including feet washing, and actual prayer at a mosque.  Very cool.  We also toured the Saladin Citadel in Cairo.  The place was built at the end of the 12th century to protect from Crusaders (who never ended up coming).

I feel like I could write for days just about Egypt even though we were there such a short time.  Know this, though:  Egypt is absolutely safe (unless you're a camel ride operator, apparently).  The people there are kind and giving and extremely and deservedly proud about their revolution.  Things are all up and running.

However, it's also crazy in Cairo, like I mentioned.  40% or more in the city live in poverty.  Some of it is really extreme poverty.  A particularly shocking example of this is that the huge Cairo graveyard, named "City of the Dead", has now been somewhat renamed to "City of the Living."  Why is that?  Well, a huge population of people has taken to living in the actual graveyard.  There is a whole microeconomy happening in there --- shops, restaurants, everything.  It's apparently very dangerous to go to and most Cairo locals avoid it.

Still, I'd advise anyone interested in one of the world's oldest cultures to go visit.  Probably a good idea to book a tour, unless you're extremely adventurous, but don't feel afraid to go.  We had a wonderful time.

After departing Cairo in the middle of the night (our flight left at midnight), we rolled on to Mumbai, India for a night before heading to Goa.  Mumbai is even bigger than Cairo in terms of population.  There are over 20 million people in Mumbai.  The first thing we noticed as our plane landed early in the morning was the vast spread of shanties built up around the airport.  These shacks are constructed from, well, pretty much whatever.  Most of them have corrugated metal roofs but the walls are built from bricks, tires, and everything else you can imagine.  There are a million people per square mile in Mumbai.

The second thing we noticed upon exiting the plane in Mumbai was the smell.  It was terrible, like raw sewage.  Leann had known about this in advance but I wasn't prepared.  This initial experience set the table for what turned out to be an experience in a place of extremes.  The India leg of the journey is one with which I reflect on with the most mixed emotions.  Don't worry, though....India gets significantly better after the initial shock.  But before it gets better, it stays pretty bad.  Let me explain.

We, through a series of poor planning and failure to understand date changes correctly, ended up canceling our hotel booking in Mumbai for the night before we flew to Goa.  So we needed a hotel upon exiting the airport.  We found a very helpful young lady at a hotel stand and she found a hotel near the airport that would come and pick us up and was pretty reasonably priced.  Side note:  Mumbai is, unbelievably, one of the most expensive cities in the world to own property.  More than 50% of the city lives in one huge slum but it's also the capital for India's elite.  A distressing study in juxtaposition and contrast and serves to heighten one's feelings of the extremes that I mentioned earlier.

So, yeah, we got picked up and headed through the smell to the hotel, driven by a nice young kid and his sidekick that work at the hotel.  Sidekick offered us a driven tour of the city.  We deferred until later as we were dead tired.  Upon arrival at the hotel, everyone was mega nice and extremely helpful.  They took our bags up to the room.  The room.....ugh, the terrible fucking room.  This place was dirty.  Now, normally I'm not really all that sensitive to hygiene of a hotel.  I mean, I can stand a lot of stuff....probably much more than the average traveler.  But this room was grody to the max.  It smelled, there was trash on the floor and in the bathroom, and (and this is the worst part by far) the shower that I unwisely chose to take made me smell like open sewer myself.  I had never had a shower that left me dirtier than when I'd entered.  It was bad.  The restaurant I ate at, that Leann smartly chose to skip, was also disgusting.  Again, the people were very nice and some of the food was just fine.  However, I ordered steamed rice to go with my masala (spicy red sauce Indian food).  I spooned up a mouthful of rice, brought it to my lips, and..... stopped dead in my tracks.  The rice was obviously cooked in the same nasty water that I ended up showering in.

Not to be a wuss, but this was a pretty tough start to our India adventure.

Anyways, we took off from Mumbai and flew to Goa.  In Goa we'd rented a small studio apartment.  We were picked up at the airport (which, I'm extremely delighted to report, smelled just fine) and driven to our abode.  This abode abides (crappy Big Lebowski reference, sorry).  It was slightly musty due to the massive amount of humidity but comfortable and large.  We rented a scooter, scooted all over town and to nearby beaches, and spent some serious beach time at Vagator Beach alongside the cows.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Cows.  On the beach.  Beach cows.  Lots of them.  In fact, there are cows all over the place around Goa.  No one messes with them and they pretty much just cruise down the street at a leisurely pace, ignoring protestations and honking from blocked drivers.  In a particularly humorous instance, a couple cows got real aggressive with some tourists on the beach we were lying on.  The cows saw that the people had brought some food and essentially just started to help themselves to it.  One guy in the group grabbed up the food and moved away from the cows with it.  The cows gave chase, running after the guy.  He ended up emptying the contents of the food package on the ground in an effort to escape the attack of the herbivores.  Pretty classic stuff and pretty sure you won't get a scene like this on many other beaches in the world.

Our time in Goa really eased our fears that our entire time in India would be similar to our time in Mumbai.  Goa and surrounding areas operates at a relaxed pace.  We were just in a beach town, like most others in the world.  There were open-air beach bars with delicious food (Indian food is my favorite type of food in the whole world and the fare there didn't disappoint) and cold beverages.  We were also impressed and awed by the incredible Indian culture.  There are gazillions of religions, although Hindu predominates the country everywhere else but Goa.  Goa has maintained its Portuguese roots by having a significant amount of Roman Catholicism, as evidenced by the many roadside Christian shrines and churches.  The clothing is colorful and fantastic.  I could really dig Leann in a sari, for sure.  One particular scooter ride we took might have afforded us the most beautiful scenery on our entire trip so far, no small feat.  We scooted over a bridge to another beach town and the entirety of the bay and ocean spread out before us, complete with palm trees (ones with coconuts in India...the ones in Egypt had dates) and beautiful jungle scenery.  The place is like a postcard on steroids in just about every location.  Oh, and the bounty of vendor ladies that approach you near the beach all use English-sounding names like Julie and Sue and stuff.  This is supposedly done because Americans and others cannot remember Indian names.  Probably right.  We're not an attentive people all the time.

Things in India are CHEAP!!!  This was by far the cheapest place we'd visited.  A beer in the bar is about 60 cents.  A meal is a buck or two.  I got a pair of swim trunks and a t-shirt for about $3.50.  There are a ton of expatriates from all over the world in coastal India and I know why.  You can essentially save up for a flight to India, rent a room or an apartment by the month, buy a scooter, and live there indefinitely.  I'd say that after you got there you could live very nicely, apartment and scooter included, for six months for $5,000.  Shoot, probably less than that.

Most of our time was spent relaxing in India on the beach or at our apartment complex pool.  We ate, we drank, we slept, we beached it up, and we generally just refueled the soul for a while.  Overall, a very positive time in India despite the rough start.  In retrospect, maybe we should have spent more time in India to see more of the country.  However, like Egypt, it was one of those "big unknown" kind of places.  I can see why India is often referred to as a place that people either love or hate.  Hell, we loved AND hated it all in one short trip.  I have to say, it's tough to see the kinds of conditions that the most impoverished people live in.  Yes, it's an eye opener and, yes, it's probably important to see things first hand rather than just hear about them on Fox News, but it's not easy.  India is famous for both some of the most amazing and beautiful things in the world but also for incredible poverty and poor quality of life.  I understand just a little bit better now that both reputations are deserved.

So I'm having some upload issues yet again with the pictures.  I really want to add some shots in here from our Egypt and India stints as they were so cool.  I will either do a separate blog entry just with some pictures or will edit this post and add some in later.  In the meantime, wish us luck here in Thailand and much love from your itinerant traveler friends / family, Chris and Leann!