Yep, I'm home! I have been here since last Wednesday morning, but have been pretty busy. Stay tuned, photos and more strange tales of America (I went to Disneyland!!!) will be up over the next few days. Next trip will - fingers crossed - be somewhere around the end of the year, hopefully to Central and South America and back over to London to finish off my visa. PS, jet lag is annoying - I keep waking up at five in the morning!
It's true! I'm in Hollywood! Already done a movie star homes tour as well as a tour around LA. I'm staying right across the road from Graumans Chinese Theatre and the Kodak Theatre, where the Daytime Emmys are currently being held - Hollywood Blvd is blocked off with a red carpet!
I'm in New York! Staying at a hostel on the Upper West side. Central Park is at the end of my street. Have been doing lots of sightseeing today. Saw the Sex And The City movie this afternoon and loved it, and am doing the official tour tomorrow! The subway system was so confusing but I think I have mastered it. Internet costs SO much so I can't write much.
Back in Marrakesh! Spent the last week in Casablanca, Rabat (the capital), Fes and Meknes. My tour finished this morning but I am also staying tonight. Back to London tomoirrow and off to New York on Monday! Pretty excited about that, but sad because that means this trip is coming to an end. I have been inspired by some of the girls I have travelled with here in Morocco to check out South America so I think that will be my next trip.
Anyway, I thought I would go MENTAL shopping here but I think I have been pretty restrained. My most expensive purchase has been a leather handbag from the tannery in Fes. I have also bought a white embroidered top and some jewellry but I have spent most of my money on buying perfume oils. They last forever, never discolour or go off so I think they were a good investment. They are in tiny roller bottles so they are compact enough for me to carry around.
Marrakesh is pretty confronting, or I think it would be for a first-time traveller. Ther are snake charmers and Arabic storytellers and jugglers everywhere in Djema el Fna (the large square outside the medina) with thousands of people and cars and donkeys and motorbikes everywhere and I got pretty lost in the medina today with Courtney. Plus men hassle you every way you go and you KNOW that when you are trying to buy something they are going to blatantly rip you off. I am not a fan of haggling but I have done it and gotten what I think are some pretty good prices for what I bought. The ice cream here is pretty good. Had calamari last night from one of the street vendors in the square and it was really good (and cheap).
In Rabat, all the girls on the tour as well as myself went to a traditional hamman, which is a public bath house (women only). At the beginning you are so self concious about stripping down to only your undies in public with a bunch of strangers but by the end you really don't care. We got exfoliated to within an inch of our lives and hot and cold buckets of water thrown over the tops of us by very big, naked women who worked there (apparently this is normal). They make you lie in their lap when they scrub your tummy and chest and the woman who scrubbed me downs tits hung in my face and swung like big saggy pendulums the whole time. Their English wasn't great either so when they wanted us to roll over they slapped our asses. This meant we had to lie on the floor of this very big bathroom with a few inches of hot water and dead skin floating around us. It is kept very warm in the hammans so it was like a steam room. By the end of it, we were all so shocked and traumatised I think we all forgot we were walking around pretty much naked. It was definately an experience and on the upside, all the dead skin from my sunburn has gone.
My tour was pretty awesome as well, it was through Budget Expeditions (whose parent company is Tucan Travel). No cushy air conditioned sightseeing coaches and three star hotels with porters, lifts, TV, air conditioning and room service for us like my Egypt tour...we travelled the whole way on second class trains and stayed in pretty crappy hotels, but that's totally fine by me. This tour was really cheap and I enjoy travelling rough, camping and taking public transport and having local guides.
There was a riot this afternoon in the square, I think it was between football teams, there was heaps of huge stones being thrown. I was caught in it which was a bit frightening and I had just gone out to get ice cream, and when I got back to the hotel it looked all locked up due to the riot being right outside it. Anyway I got into the hotel and things seemed to calm down pretty quickly but you do not want to be in a huge square surrounded by hundreds of pissed off Arab men (who seem to be women-haters anyway) that are throwing stones at each other.
Having said that, and despite the fact that I cannot for the life of me get any alcohol anywhere, I REALLY liked Morocco and don't want to leave here either!
Made it to Morocco! The weather is great and the food is good. My tour group is quite small, about eight of us. Three of us are from Brisbane and all three of us are Griffith Uni graduqtes! Small world!
I flew into Marrakech on Friday morning and asked at the Royal Air Maroc airline counter about how much it would cost to fly to Casablanca, as I was so tired and not up to spending another 4 hours on a train. Anyway by booking it locally and paying for the flight in Dirhams (Moroccan currency) I only paid half of what I had been quoted in London! So I flew to Casablanca. My tour started yesterday in Casa and we went to see the huge mosque last night; and caught a train to Rabat this morning: Spent today wandering around the Medina and me and my roomate Courtney got pedicures. Everything here is French and that is the language they speak here rather than Arabic.
Had to buy ANOTHER bag as when Alitalia flew my backpack from Cairo to Rome to London they managed to rip off one of the harness straps and rip a hole in the bottom of it. I tried to fix it in Sweden but gave up, it would not have lasted another two and a half weeks. So before I go travelling again next year I am going to have to bite the bullet and spend ALOT of money on a decent backpack and get it properly fitted. I have emailed Alitalias Customler Service as to getting compensation but still have not gotten a reply, which I am fuming about since I sent it on Wednesday last week. I do not want to pull out the Psycho Lady number and make angry phone calls but I may have to if I do not get my own way!
HA! I have always wanted to say I have Stockholm Syndrome. Not that I have been kidnapped. But I am in Sweden. That's 24 hours of transit I don't want to do again (Cairo - Rome in which I had enough time to have one last pizza in Italy - London then sleeping on the chairs at Heathrow until the first Tube service was meant to run at 5 am but then there were signalling problems so the Picadilly Line was down so I caught the Heathrow Connect to Ealing Broadway which was perfect because that meant I could catch the Central Line straight through the Stratford, where I hopped on a National Express bus to Stansted Airport, flew to Vastata Airport in Sweden and caught a bus for an hour and a half to Stockholm!). The weather here is lovely, but I just need to sleep. I don't even know what time it is!
I'm here til I fly back to London Stansted on Thursday night - it's a VERY quick trip - then I fly direct to Marrakech and somehow have to get myself to Casablanca, either by bus or train, by Friday night for my tour to start on Saturday.
My birthday was awesome! Climbed Mt Sinai (not the whole way to the top - it was SO hard!) and saw the sunrise over the mountains while hanging out at a Bedouin tribe run cafe. My guide bought me an embroidered handbag from the tribes people and hot chocolate and we then spent the morning recovering and hanging out by the pool in the hotel. The people I'm travelling with also gave me a card. I got a full body Egyptian massage for free in the afternoon and had TWO birthday cakes at two different restaurants with two groups of friends, and then headed onto this pub/nightclub in an old boat! It was awesome, for once I had a really nice birthday.
Spent yesterday snorkelling and four-wheel driving, today I attempted to start my Scuba Diving course but sucked at it, so didn't complete it. The equipment is SO heavy and I got too panicky being underwater being strapped to oxygen tanks, weights and lots of other equipment. I was also slightly traumatised by having to wear a wetsuit in public. They are not very flattering. So I think I will stick with what I know - shopping, tanning, drinking and partying - and leave the mountain climbing and deep sea diving to other people! Oh well, at least I gave it a go!
We have two more days left in Dahab, I'm back in Cairo on Sunday and Monday and off to Sweden for the middle of the week, and in Morocco next weekend!
Tonight I'm climbing Mt Sinai! It will be awesome to see the sunrise from the top of this mountain (apparently God handed out the Ten Commandments to Moses on this mountain) on MY BIRTHDAY tomorrow. It's a pretty tough hike to the top, and we leave at 10.30 tonight.
Got quite a few days to spend here in Dahab, trying to decide whether I should do a day trip to Petra (Jordan - yes, a whole new different country!) or do a two day PADI open sea diving certificate (and yet another useless qualification) or both. Ideally I would love to do both but I don't think I can afford to, as I still have another month left of travelling ahead of me. Morocco will be cheap as well, but I know Sweden will be expensive, and all the things I want to do in the US (Sex And The City tour in New York, Disneyland in LA amongst other things) are pricey.
The hotel we're staying at here in Dahab is lovely, I have a view of the ocean and Saudi Arabia from my window and there's a gorgeous pool as well. Saudi Arabia looks alot closer to Egypt than Moreton Island does to Redcliffe. (For the record, I DON'T want to go to Saudi Arabia. And we were only a few kms away from the Sudan border last week when we went to Abu Simbel!)
Dahab is a backpackers dream, very cheap and lots of nice little shops and great food and beaches! My stomach started playing up again yesterday but hopefully it has rectified itself.
Things I don't think I've mentioned...I went on a donkey ride from the banks of the Nile to the Valley of the Kings on Friday. Donkeys are pretty small...I am not small...and I had a naughty donkey too that kept wanting to take detours. I went into the tombs of King Ramses I and III and also went down into Tutenkhamuns tomb!!! It was extremely hot and dusty and the tombs are quite far underground and naturally there is no air conditioning or elevators...just tunnels and alot of other stinky tourists! We went to the markets in the Islamic Quarter yesterday and I got some big dangly earrings for myself. The most important thing is that, in all my travels, I've never been able to sleep on planes or trains or coaches, but I slept the ENTIRE trip from Aswan back to Cairo on the dodgy train! And no, I didn't buy Valium from any "pharmacies" in Aswan either!
Very nervous about this climb tonight, about to go and have a nap by the pool in preparation for it!!! If anyone tries to call me for my birthday and I don't answer, please don't panic, I'll be on that mountain for a looooong time!
My friend Shari put together a little movie about our Contiki, the link is here, I love the fact that every bit featuring me is of Beer Hall night in Munich and I am wearing my trashy blue eyeshadow and am very, very drunk. I would like to erase part of that evening from my memory (although I can't remember alot of the first half after drinking so much beer!).
Egyptian food has made me sick. :(
