The tourist game.....then the end game!

After the rollercoaster…the political one…of yesterday coupled with a late night coffee in my wonderful hotel as I stayed up til one o'clock writing the incoherent babble that is this blog…I slept very badly. I just fallen asleep for the umpteenth time at about 8 in the morning when there was a knock on the door and breakfast was delivered to my room! So I spent the next hour or so eating my rolls, drinking my coffee - too damned weak - sipping my lemon juice and feeling very self righteous munching my way through my 'fruit platter'…all the while watching Die Hard 4 on the TV. I was waiting for my favourite line spoken by Bruce Willis - not all your dogs are barking together - which unfortunately never came and was probably from another Die Hard film anyway, but hey !

I donned my new underpants - jolly comfortable they are too, thank you for asking - and after checking whether Hos had changed his mind overnight, or whether Cairo had been razed to the ground instead, hotfooted it out of the hotel. 

My hot feet took me down to the public ferry as I wanted to go to the West Bank to take a look round. The West Bank is where all the antiquities are - other than the ones on the eh...East Bank - and is where all the produce for the East Bank - i.e.Luxor town - is grown and lastly where life is a little more laid back that in town which is on the East bank...are you keeping up here!!?

I am afraid the hassle that comes with the job of holidaying here and which usually leaves me completely unmoved, indeed I quite enjoy parrying the miryad of ways they have of trying to part you from your money, sometimes goes one step too far and on the way to the ferry encountered a young man I took an instant dislike to! He insisted of showing me the way right ON to the ferry, despite being about 50 yards from it in the first place and despite my telling him time and again he was wasting his time. 


A small scene ensued as I threatened him with the police, who were standing 50 feet away as I really had had enough of him banging on about wanting money! He told me something about my parentage which was, shall we say, new to me….I told him something about himself which he probably knew anyway…and he stormed off the boat to find some other poor unsuspecting tourist….oh no, he can't….there aren't any ! Idiot.

The ferry is the one the locals take to cross the Nile, and so it was full of every sort of Luxorian you can imagine. A little fellow came up and tried to flog me some paper hankies, I watched an old chap squatting on the deck consuming his lunch, and photographed 2 shy young girls on their way to or from a party as they were carrying a balloon. I probably sometimes overstep the mark in Europe when photographing people, as as soon as you photograph anything under the age of 30 you are immediately marked as either a Dirty Old Man (over 20) or a Paedophile (under 20!) but here it is OK, so long as you show them the photograph which they then can laugh at. It must have been OK as one of the girls came back to me holding her baby brother and asked to be photographed with him!  I was then introduced to the rest of the family. Lovely !

A brief negotiation ensued once I reached the other side for the cost of a push-bike for a couple of hours! We settled on £1 English for 2 hours, and off I cycled feeling, and probably looking rather self conscious ! 

My first port of call, as it was lunchtime, was the Amoun Hotel where I settled in the garden courtyard and had an omelette and a salad. There were a couple of English ladies having lunch together - I shall touch on single eh…mature ladies that live/long-term visit here a little later - who came over for a chat, and a German couple who looked distinctly uncomfortable being here at all. I tried to engage them in some jolly conversation…not a chance! However hard they tried to be friendly, they just couldn't hack it ! The poor waiter was at his wits end as everything he brought to them they prodded and poked in case it contained poison ! It should have….

After lunch I continued through the little villages and backroads that dot the Nile plains, being hailed and waved at by the locals, who are so friendly. The area itself is pretty devoid of much charm, thought in parts is very green, as it is all so dilapidated and rather dirty. It does of course beg the question the whole country is asking of its leaders at the moment…where does all the money go? These people seem pretty poor, yet live within a stones throw of Luxor and the tourists !

After a couple of hours or so I arrived back on the main road by Hotchickensoup's temple - I didn't go in as I have been there often - and slowly made by way, huffing and puffing back to the cycle emporium. The place was totally deserted. Amazing, I didn't see a single other Western tourist the whole time I was there.

Returned to Luxor and the hotel for a while to check on events in Cairo…all still pretty much same-same - before heading out again for another Felucca ride with my new BF Cat. He'd brought his young son along this time and off we went into the sunset! There was a lovely breeze blowing as we headed over to the other side again. 

Then I had one of my mad moments I'm afraid. As we sailed along I saw a camel loafing on the bank, and am got rather het up and excited as it has been some years since Iast I rode a camel….oh dear.  Much to the amusement of Cat and Co, I hailed the camel, leapt geriatrically ashore and entered into negotiation for 1/2 hours camel ride ! £3…deal done.

Camel and I headed off into the same sunset led by a young fellow who spent a great deal of time wanting extra baksheesh..I really wasn't terribly interested as there was a football match going on and one of the team was wearing a Chelsea shirt! Camel..actually whose name was William Shakespeare if you please!…was a little nonplussed by the football and did a sort of soft shoe shuffle in protest. I managed to cling on for grim death and felt very Lawrence of Arabia when our little camel tantrum was over. 

It was all happening whilst i was on old Will, as it then was the turn of a coupe of donkeys to do a but of hooning. Two donks, tethered together for some reason, decided to go on a bit of a rampage. The one leading didn't really twig he had his mate tied behind him and they went careering around the place with the one behind getting more and more furious being dragged hither and thither until it fell over and ended up being dragged along on its side. Hilarity all round. They caught them in the end, and for the sake of balance or something, swapped the one at the back with the one at the front…at which point the new leader let loose with its hooves and gave the one behind, as well as one of the poor handlers, a jolly good kicking ! Vicious little bastards are donks ! I was nearly in tears laughing.

We slowly drifted back to base, eating pink biscuits and drinking mint tea brewed on the boat, at which point I headed back for a peaceful evening in the hotel.

Well, that didn't last long…as bugger me….old HosMub had decided to take the whole world by surprise and resign!! Whoosh….that was that.

Ending in a whimper and not the bang every American sillyarse TV channel was hoping for! God they really are an appalling bunch of gung-ho merchants these CNN reporters, with the ghastly Anderson Cooper the worst of all. I remember a broadcast from him a few days ago as if he was in Baghdad during an air-raid, all closed curtains and bad lighting, with a cameraman and a gaffer man sitting with him on his unkempt bed…when in reality he was probably staying in the Four Seasons on Zamalek island !

I got my hot feet out again and walked into the streets. There were some people chanting and singing and as soon as they saw me. the token Westener they all rushed up and asked me what i thought. I told them it all seemed pretty cool at which point they all shook my hand and seemed to want to kiss me! Don't know what I had done really…maybe they thought I was personally responsible for giving old Hos the heave ho!

The main Square infront of Luxor Temple was pretty quiet until a large procession arrived with lots of cars hooting and young men chanting and waving flags. I took a long film of it and almost beyond belief seem to have erased it from the disk….I'd never make a journalist !! 

Anyway I was minding my own business on the edge of the crowd when one of the young men holding a banner spotted me and asked me what i thought. Again.. good for Egypt and all that tosh, at which he pointed out that his banner was in Arabic and….eh, Japanese ! 

I told him I would personally give him £100 if he could produce even one Japanese tourist in Luxor, and offered to write whatever it said in English. Anyway it all went from bad to worse, and I ended up writing something suggesting Hos was gay on the poster and even signed my name. The crowd thought this wonderful, so I was joshed, given sweets, had my cheeks punched and generally pulled about playfully for a while !

One of the young chaps told me excitedly and all shiny eyed that it would take "days" for democracy to be established. Oh dear. 

He looked a bit shocked when I told him it would probably take somewhat longer than that. 

"You English" he shouted. "You have democracy there, no? how long it take?" 

"A few hundred years…..! ……..But I give you good price…."  We all laughed!

It was great, but I'm afraid A. I was bloody freezing and B. rather hungry, so after a rather quick trot round the fleshpots of Luxor in a Caleche, most of which were closed and all of which I wouldn't have touched with a bargepole, I returned to the Winter Palace and dined, in splendid isolation in their quite magnificent dining room, whilst cars drove up and down outside along the Corniche, horns blaring with people screaming out of the windows ! The revolution was for all intents and purposes complete!

Hosni's gone to Sharm! Oooh..'er, as we say. That will put the wind up the Travel Companies and the Foreign Office ….. wonder whether he did that on purpose…..Nah…..never !


By the way, thanks so much for following this. I know there are quite a few and I particularly appreciate the comments. I have always travelled on my own, and am lucky that Caroline allows me this (well, to be honest she doesn't get much choice, poor girl !!) and writing and taking photos gives me something to do in the evening when I feel I am a little past going out on the town !