Egypt - Arrival

Our first stop was Cairo, the Capital of Egypt. We were greeted by our tour guide and escorted to our hotel. The airport was a bit run down but so far everything looks good. Then we got into the Cairo Traffic Jam! We have never seen a City which is so busy and in fact quite dirty. We were shocked at the traffic jam. If you think Traffic Jams in Kuala Lumpur are bad... think again... this one tops the chart without trying. Drivers in Cairo would never make it around the City if their car do not have any honks. They just honk at each other repeatedly. All drivers in Cairo must have been trained from Hell! We were told that's just the way driving life is in Cairo.

We noticed straight away that Traffic Lights were almost non existence. Sure we saw one or two of them... but they don't work at all. The reason given was that Egyptians just don't like them and they never obey them anyway. To top it all, there are about 22 million people in Cairo alone and about 4 million cars!

Checking into our hotel was a breeze since the tour guide does everything for us. We just sat there and wait for our room keys. Ahhh.... what a life! I must admit their service is very good. I guess that's because tourism is one of their main source of income. The security they had was also very high. For a second, we thought perhaps President Bush was staying in the same hotel! Metal detectors, sniffing dogs, the whole works!

Our room was magnificient! Jusk look at the view! We can see the pyramids from our balcony.


You can see from above how beautiful the Pyramid is (well for those of you who actually appreciates things like this!)

We just couldn't imagine how the Egyptian could built such big structure more than 4,500 years ago?


See the statue with the head of a man and body of a lion? Wonder where did they come up with this idea? It's suppose to be some kind of protection to the three pyramids. So they say! The poor statue was missing part of its nose. How sad!


The first event for us was the Sound & Light Show! It was really nice with all the special lighting effects and audio commentaries telling us how the Pyramids started. It was a bit pricey at USD35 per person but worth the money! I mean we probably won't be coming this way again forever, right?

We didn't go out at nights because we were not sure if the City was safe. So we went back to the hotel and try to sleep. Getting ready for the start of our day tour tomorrow. So stay tuned for Part II.