Right so finally getting to Egypt, now that I've been back for 2 weeks....

When I think about how wrong I had the arab world in my head it kind of alarms me. I think I expected birkas and moorish men weilding crescent moon shaped sabres and lots of men on the back of pick up trucks being rowdy and firing off guns - well that's what you see on the news. You expect that everyone is poor and miserable and horribly angry. Nothing is farther from the truth. I think you become a little deluded by what the media sells you, when I was little I think I really believed that all Russians were like dolph lungren in Rocky IV - 7 foot tall and a monosyllabic evil he-man programmed and brainwashed to destroy everything in his path. Now I just think all russians are either gangsters or lesbians like tatu. ANyway I digress... The Egyptians were so welcoming and friendly and open, especially the desert people. I got invited to so many campfire singalongs lit by a big yellow moon and found an arab father figure in Mr Badhu who kept the horrible german boys away from me and guarded me as I slept and when it go so cold that I shivered he threw his camel scented blankets over me and he just smoked his sheesha and I heard it bubble as I drifted off to sleep. The funny thing about the desert people was how open they were with you. I went for a dinner of salad and henna - I swear it was henna, smelt like it, looked like it, didn't know it was edible at snoozi and said's house and after the meal my friend karine and I were invited to the ladies quarters to thank them for cooking. Karine lived in Siwa and could speak a bit of the local language and they started to tell her about their swollen legs. Then they hiked up their skirts all the way to the tops of their thighs and showed us. They seemed to expect that as westerners we carried around doctors kits, but all that I could offer them was tiger balm. I know it's a remedy for most things but I wasn't sure on this occasion that it would work.

But I loved Siwa - the people were so beautiful - literally physically beautiful, they had caramel coloured skin and blue green eyes - they were berbers originally from morrocco, and they were always prepared in their houses for visitors. The rooms themselves were quite bear but they stacked 12 matresses in the side of the room with about 5 or 6 rolled up carpets next to them. The shops were never open, it was actually a tough place to buy things, you had to search out the proprietor and beg him to open, I guess it's a way of weeding out time wasters.... Siwa seemed as untouched by tourism as you can get in Egypt, and they seemed to like it that way, some things you paid for some you didn't, like our trip out to the great sand sea - it was like the english patient or lawrence of arabia. whatever way I say it, it won't do justify to what I saw. I saw oases and swam in a cold lake in the middle of sand mountains, I saw mirages float up and float away, I saw ancient fossils from when it sea - petrified sand dollars and star fish. I sandboarding from the top of sharp spines of deep dunes. We even got mohammed the driver - a 50 year berber to try it too and nothing compares to seeing him with cigarette in his mouth coffir (headdress on) gracefully glide down to the bottom. I visited the ruins of the oracle that alexander went to consult and legend has it that he lost 500 thousand men in a sand storm on the way there. ANd when I left I got presents - a big bag of dates and a scarf.

Now I don't know if a lot of it is because I rank well on the traveller talking hierarchy - this is scale of how much other people might want to talk to you.

My friend Jacqueline is a number one candidate, she ranks above all others

1. she's female
2. she's pretty
3. she's dutch (dutch and canadian are the most popular, followed by british commonwealth)
4. she speaks the native language
5. she has a sense of humour
6. she's nice

My friend David on the other hand is kind of at the bottom - this by the way is all superficial first impression stuff

he's big and hairy and wears speedos and is gruff and is Israeli (this is horrible but true, I think sometimes through no fault of their own, just a language barrier but Israelis can sound a little pushy and a little scary, everything comes out as if it is fact that what they say is the truth, the only truth and everything else is offensive and wrong). WHen he first came to sit next to me on the beach in Sinai I didn't want to talk to him. But then he offered me lemongrass tea with lots of sugar and I was in. If you don't rank high on the hierarchy you have to have a pull. Tea is a HUGE deal in Egypt, everyone in the desert has rotten teeth and it's because the way they drink it it's one part sugar one part tea. They have a ritual of pouring half a bag of sugar into an enormous cup and then pouring tea in it and repeating this process until the sugar is all dissolved, then they pourout individual cups and add more. It becomes addictive all the sugar highs and the headaches from the come down. David was great though, he spoke arabic and made friends with all the bedouin guys, he seemed to have an appreciation for things that I would get annoyed about. Like the fact that they have no sense of distance, everything is cigarette smoking distance, we walked 15 km from nuweiba to the camp and everywhere we stopped to ask how far long until ras sheiten, they'd say oh cigarette smoking distance...

The Nubians were lovely too, I met a guy, lets call him mohamed because most people were called mohamed, though there were a few ramadans and saids, but because there were so many mohameds I now can't remember who wasn't, I sat with him on his roof terrace and petted a baby crocodile - when the fishermen would catch them he'd rear them until they were a year old and then take them back to lake nasser, and watched the feluccas go by. In Luxor when I stopped for lunch the chef not only fed me but mended my shoe. My experience with the general population was so overwhelmingly positive it made me not really care about the hawkers and the tricksters. I felt wise to it all now. I rented a bike on the east bank in luxor and when I tried to take it across the river they told me that they weren't allowing bikes on today, or when two lads lied and said that the entrance to the pyramids was through the stables, I just pushed past them all. If anything I think a lot of egyptians are really embarassed by these boys - because they are mainly boys, and they often tell them off. I get more hassle from men in NYC then I got on the whole of my trip. I found that if you don;t wear a bikini and miniscule shorts that the men were really respectful. If they did show any interest it was often because they weren;t really able to have a chat with egyptian girls so they were just using an opportunity given to them to converse.

There is a phenomenon in Egypt though, a kind of a mirror to Thailand. If you go out to clubs or bars in Luxor and at the resort towns you see tons of 50 and 60 year old western - mainly english, women with young nubile toy boys. They were all a bit fabio beefcakey for my liking but the ladies enjoyed the pumping muscles. I guess maybe it's the whole omar sharif thing?

There is also another phenomenon of western women of that age, a type of traveller I like to call the battlin betty - after the first one that I met. They travel alone and Betty in particular was travelling off of the alimony her husband pays her which makes it doubly satisfying. They are all so spirited but something seems a little word worn about them, a little faded clint eastwood or jack palance grizzle about them. Betty in particular, she said in india she kept a stick with her at all times in case the men came up and tried to grab her. She mentioned she'd had a few altercations here and she had a mind to get a stick again.

Favourite Bits of Egypt

1. second hand market in Cairo it's like 24 hours or something - always people rummaging through
2. om kolthum cafe - play this classical arabic music star's music 24 7 and have walls covered in paintings and statues of her everywhere!!
3. egyptian museum - the layout, like it's someones attic?!
4. seeing a fennick fox in the white desert - white desert AMAZING!!!! Like a 3-d psychological blot test - 10 ft chickens and mushrooms, going to sleep in it looked like the moon, as the sunset the white rock formations turned gold and pink and purple and blue
5. Ramses smiting - EVERYWHERE he was really into his smiting
6. Amazing Sufi dancers - whirling dervishes like the planets, one guy twirled without stopping at speed for 35 minutes while playing a drum, just loved the music, each musician danced and talked with his instrument.
7. sinai gorges and canyons, so old and world worn, could see how the wind had shittled them down and the granite came in pinks and reds and blues and oranges.
8. Mr Badhi saying that marrying your cousin can be a problem, I said oh because of the close genetic connection, he said no because you're family is too involved
9. everyone had an opinion about diana and dodi

Most of all I just loved the people