Day 1- Arriving in Cairo

Dec 9, 2005

It was pretty much an uneventful ride for me, well the most part of it anyway:P We boarded a 10 hours flight to get to Cairo with a transit stop at Doha via Qatar Airways. I say it uneventful because we did not have personal entertainment unit (you know the little TV on the backseat of the passenger in front of you and you can watch movies or listen to songs etc) during our whole 7 hours flight from KL to Doha and I think I pretty much slept the whole way (MAS & SIA has spoiled me on my previous international trips with those personal entertainment units so..:P). We stopped by at Doha (which is actually in Qatar, not Saudi Arabia as I thought:P) and bought some duty-free chococolates for snacks (a purchase that I would be grateful for the whole trip:P) before taking a 3 hours flight from Doha to Cairo. Now THAT flight had those little TVs on them with a wonderful selection of albums to listen to and I spent the whole flight listening to everything from James Blunt to the Supremes :).

Upon arriving at Cairo Airport we were greeted by Sharif from Joker Travel Agency who are in charge of our whole trip. He was pretty friendly & funny, and he promptly led us to our van. He then told us that we were going to go to our first visit before checking in our hotel, which was to the world-renowned Egyptian Museum. When we arrived there we met Noha, who was going to be our guide for the next couple of days in Cairo. We were not allowed to take any pictures inside, but what stands out in my mind now as I think about that trip are:

1) It was quite brown (not just the artefacts but the walls:P)

2) These very colourful, long papyrus scrolls framed up and hung on the walls as we walked up the stairs

3) This enclosed room where they kept all the treasures they found in King Tutankhamen's tomb which was found complete and intact, a rare thing as most of the tombs were looted by thieves. The things inside...my gosh it was amazing, all these glittering gold and jewels...and of course there is that brilliant blue and gold mask of King Tut which was put over the mummy as the centrepiece of the whole room (see pic).

4) The room where they kept the mummies which we had to pay an extra US$10 for:p Basically it was a room full of glass cases with people who have been dead eons ago in them:p But you can see how very well the bodies are preserved. I mean one of them still had hair on his scalp (that's him in the picture, King Ramses II)

5) The exquisite mummification table with claws as the legs (picture again:P)

6) Lots of Gods and Goddesses and the different names...

7) That Egypt was divided into 3 eras under the Pharaohs, namely the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom.

....that's pretty much what I can remember :P. We then went for dinner! :) We had it on a boat, and my dish was chicken with rice and some veggies. It was pretty ok, though the savoury rice was a bit on the salty side but I was still excited to taste my first Egyptian meal :) . But here's the funny thing, food is included in our tour package, but not drinks :/ which we had to order separately. It being our first day there , we didnt know that drinks were pretty expensive (especially in these restaurants, which turned out to be tourist only restaurants that they normally booked in tour packages...). That said, my bottle of coke cost me RM10 :/

Day 1 finished with us checking into our hotel, the Cairo Pyramids hotel. It was pretty ho-hum, but quite big with living room, bedroom and bathroom. There was a tiny balcony where we can look down at Cairo at night, and it was to be our home for the two nighs that we were in Cairo :).