The Land Before Time: Papyrus XVI - Aswan, Philae Island

After a long, exhausting journey traversing through the desert, we're back to Aswan again.

Taking a boat across Nile to Philae Island.

Approaching Philae Island, an archaeological site like Elephantine Island, which also houses ancient temple complexes.

Philae Temple of Isis. This row of columns doesn't provide any shelter =(

A closer look at the pylon.

These relief never fails to impress me.

Trajan's Kiosk of Philae. An interesting 'cubish' structure.

Temple of Hathor.

A 2-in-1 picture. These structures really remind me of the days when I used to play Real Time Strategy (RTS) games, where you build colonies and send out troops to attack others. The buildings by the Egyptian Race resemble these indeed.

Nile looks great no matter how you shoot it. Its blue-ness is just so mesmerizing.

OMG look carefully at the guard...he's carrying a gun!! (Fortunately I didn't do anything provocative)

Exploring the ruins and relief.

In the RPG feel again - dungeon crawling, minus random encounters with monsters.

I found the treasure!!! (phew...I don't have to face a boss fight before this...)

After rejecting many felucca offers by roadside touts, we decided give our first (and final) ride to the most beautiful part of Nile. Once again, we haggled the price and the boatman agreed reluctantly.

TLBT Tip No.16: Haggling for service (eg. felucca rides, camel rides) is different from haggling for goods in the bazaar, or for taxi fare. For goods purchases, you get to see and touch what you want before you start haggling. If successful, you get what you want at a cheaper price. No surprises. For taxi fare, you pay the haggled price when you reach the your destination. No extra charge.

However for service, anything can happen even after the price has been negotiated. The more intense the haggling, the more unhappy and reluctant the 'service provider' will get. And thus you won't be able to get the 'full service', as they will try ways to shortchange you. This means that even if you succeed in negotiating, it doesn't mean you've won. It like arguing with a chef about a strand of hair on a dish, and then the chef goes back to the kitchen, removes the hair and spits on your food, then serves it to you again....

In the case where they remain super-nice and try to give you their best service, it simply means they didn't give up yet. They are trying to get into your good books and make you fork out more tips for them. After the whole thing, they stretch out their hand and say 'You are happy right? Then give me more!'. (Yeah these people are not afraid of being direct with their words) It's quite sad that these people see $$$ flowing out from tourists' smiles. Anyway this tip amount has to be factored in when you haggle with them at the start. If the deal closes at 200 pounds, be prepared to pay 250 pounds in total. Personally I hate it when they start stretching their hands or rubbing their fingers, so it's better to show them the cash quickly.

Setting up the sail for the long-awaited felucca ride!

Drifting away from the shore.

A long, hot, exhausting day gets rewarded by this beautiful sunset by Nile.

Another felucca approaching!

There are many other feluccas here as well. We realised that ours is travelling really slow...as the boatman didn't want to bring us that far. One of the many instances of being shortchanged due to haggling...

It seems that these cruise passengers are taking a boat tour around Nile. After staying in cheap hostels for several days, I'm craving for a cruise haha.

Good views come and go really fast... The river water was soooo cooling that I even scooped some to drink. But then kena diarrhoea later...urgh.

The sun has set. The tombs at the West Bank lights up =)

After all these Nile adventures, we finally packed up and set off for Aswan Airport, where we took a domestic flight back to Cairo, before proceeding to our next destination.

As this is a small airport, there is no skybridge. Thus we have to take a shuttle bus to reach our plane.

Boarding Egyptair - Egypt's national carrier. Egypt's airspace is basically dominated by Egyptair.

Back to Cairo...oh I spotted the Step Pyramid!!

Egyptair is not bad, but not fantastic either. The service was alright, though it didn't leave any impression. Other than the food, I've no other complaints haha.

Onboard the longer (and bigger) flight from Cairo to our next destination. Wow...This is the first time I see a flight with all male attendants and no stewardess. But why do they look like...pilots?!

That's all for Egypt. Hope you've enjoyed looking at the exotic pictures I took. At least they are different from commonly visited countries like Taiwan haha.

The ancient monuments and relics were beautiful and amazing. This trip has also made me realize the beauty of mosques. However the people are just...(sad to say) ugly. Of course I've met genuinely kind Egyptians who try their best to make our trip enjoyable, but majority of the people showed me the ugly side of humanity. There are times during the trip when I felt true kindness is dead haha, and grew suspicious of everyone around haha. Fortunately only the beautiful parts are captured on photos. The ugly parts in my mind shall be hidden and kept in the closet (and be allowed to rot).

The Land Before Time: Papyrus XV - Abu Simbel

Abu Simbel is a small town located further south of Aswan along Nile. As you can see from the map, it lies very close to the Egypt/Sudan border. For security reasons, land transport from Aswan to Abu Simbel is by a group convoy. Not advisable for tourists to travel on individual basis.

The trip to Abu Simbel is a half-day trip, a 3-hour (one-way) ride through the desert. Ya the 2-way travelling time already takes a whopping 6 hours. The convoy leaves Aswan at around 4am (yawnzz), reaches Abu Simbel at around 7am just in time for the morning sun. Only spent about 1.5-2 hours there before returning to Aswan again.

Took this during a pit stop. The sun has just risen. Surrounding is just desert wilderness. It's bye bye if you get lost here.

It's not total wilderness though. There are still electrical pylons carrying power lines - means that other settlements still exist beyond. Anyway there are strange footprints on the sand...

The sand here is soooo smooth. Had to make some kind of marking to proof my presence. SERVBOT IS HERE!!

View of Lake Nasser...so peaceful.

Nice contours of the hills.

Approaching the main highlight of Abu Simbel...

Ta da! Here we are! This is Abu Simbel Temple...a really massive rock temple. Glad to be able to take this picture without any sign of human activity haha. Among the convoy we were the first to reach there heh heh.

Damn...someone photobombed my individual shot...

Can you spot me? Hohoho...

The first thing I thought when I look up at these colossal statues: They have huge elephant legs! Lol.

The head of that statue fell off due to an earthquake (and went missing). Poor thing...

No photography inside. This is the best I could take from outside.

Once again, an attempt to be part of these statues...haha.

As you can see, the lighting of the temples by the morning sun is perfect. This is because the temples are facing the east. Later in the day, the sun will cast a shadow on the statues, making photography difficult. This is why the convoys leave Aswan so early at dawn. Moreover the temperatures might reach unbearable levels close to noon.

Many tourists make an effort to visit this must-see attraction of Egypt, even if the total travel time takes 6 hours and they only spend 1-2 hours there.

TLBT Tip No.15: When we tour overseas, we often hope to have lesser tourists around so that we can enjoy the sights and attraction without the annoying crowd. However for Egypt it would probably be better to have more tourists around, for few reasons:

1) To act as buffer against touts - If there are more tourists, touts are less likely to approach you. And they will be less persistent, changing targets easily when they see that you're totally not interested in their offer, instead of following and tagging along as you walk.
2) To be leeched of information - For F&E travellers without local guides, it might be good to eavesdrop what other guides have to introduce about the place. They may give interesting information that you didn't bother to find out. It's easier to listen to guides than read the guidebooks right? Came across some Chinese-speaking local guides and was wow-ed by their fluency. =p
3) To test water - When there are lots of tourists around, there are bound to have some 'deviants' who try to test the rules, or do things that people normally won't think of doing. If they aren't stopped, you may do the same at your pleasure lol. Examples include photography (when nothing is stated), touching the relics (for curiosity sake), avoiding baksheesh (if possible you won't want to give any extra cash for trivial services), looking at hidden corners/spots (you may find something interesting there!)

In fact I feel more uneasy when I'm alone in an attraction with the guards/touts.

The previous location of Abu Simbel temples. It was so close to the river...faced great danger of flooding due to Aswan Dam construction.

Therefore, they decided to shift the temples to a higher ground. Bottom - before. Top - after (present location). The relocation took 4 years and it was considered an engineering feat to shift all the heavy blocks of stone, by breaking them up and reassembling them again.

*Pant pant*...Not easy to climb such slopes during a hot weather.

Oh...something is carved here too. But I can't read haha...

Hope the statues enjoy their stay here looking at Lake Nasser.

Backdoor to the temples??

Going back to Aswan. Glad to be inside an air-conditioned vehicle. It was noon and it looked super hot outside.

Witnessed for my first time a phenomenon that normally occurs in the desert when it's very hot - mirage. Prefer the chinese name - 海市蜃楼. The hills really appears to be floating in mid air. And its reflection also makes it seems there is water below. Thirsty travellers in the desert are often fooled by such mirage. Also witnessed another kind of mirage - 'water puddles' on the road that disappears when you get close. Wow interesting.