Baksheesh

This is a post about Luxor, a city which should be renamed Baksheesh or Marlboro. Baksheesh is the tip you have to give everybody and their dog. Marlboro because apparently everybody needs the money to buy their cigarettes.

We had to be downstairs very early this morning - 6:30 - to try and make up for missing yesterday. The poor kids were so tired, but they were troopers. Tyeb met us downstairs, and it as off to our first destination of the day - the Valley of the Kings. It's on the west bank, while the hotels are all on the east, so it was about a 40 minute drive. On the way, we passed Howard Carter's house. 

We got to the VoK before all the crowds, which was awesome. On the way in, there is the ubiquitous small market trying to sell you stuff, as well as the people following you selling stuff. Luckily, though, most of the shop owners were still setting up their wares, so they were too busy to hassle us much.

I wanted to see King Tut's tomb. People online had said that there wasn't much to see, and it wasn't worth the $20 ticket, but I didn't care. Tut's mummy was in there. So, I told Tyeb, and he went to get us the tickets. I only had euro or dollars, though, and the place took Egyptian pounds (LE) only. The tour company had told us a few times that we wouldn't need Egyptian money at all, so I didn't have very much of it. Tyeb talked to them, and they let us pay in euro. I'm so glad, I would have been really sad if we had missed it.

He took us in, and told us a bit about the VoK and what we would see inside the tombs. Our VoK tickets allowed us three tombs, and our Tut ticket gave us the addition of Tut's tomb. He showed us which three were the best, and since no tour guiding is allowed in the tombs, he waited for us outside. We looked for a tomb without a group, and went in there first. The ticket taker followed us. He told us who was on the walls, mostly. It was nice, but I could have figured out most of it on my own. The tomb was awesome. Every bit of the walls were covered in paintings. The colors were magnificent. Being sealed for so long, and then still having the protection of being in the mountain away from the elements had kept the paintings bright and still mostly intact. It's really awe inspiring. The guy of course wanted money afterwards. I gave it to him, what could I do? But, in the other tombs, I let the guys who started to follow us know that we had no money. They didn't follow us after that. In one tomb, the ticket taker handed us flashlights. We took them, figuring we'd need them. We descended into a perfectly lit tomb, and never used the flashlights. The guy still wanted money when we returned that flashlights. He really hassled Mom. We didn't give him anything. In the tombs where the ticket takers didn't follow us, there were guys waiting inside to guide us and ask for money. We told all of them we didn't have any.

Then it was time for King Tut. Everybody online was right, there isn't much to see in there. But, Tut himself is in there, and that's worth a lot of paintings. If you have the chance to see Tut's mummy, how can you not go? I've loved Tut  (and ancient Egypt in general) since I was a little kid looking at the catalog of treasures from the book my grandma had of the exhibition that went to the US in the 70's. My dream came true today. I saw wonderful things, to paraphrase Howard Carter. I was sad that there are no cameras allowed at all in VoK. I had to leave it in the van, so i couldn't hip shot anything. If you don't leave your cameras in the van, you have to give them to the tomb guards when you go in the tombs.  I can see them holding them for ransom. Tyeb showed us a pack of photos taken by a professional photographer that we could buy. The photos were nice, and I wanted them, because they were all labeled as being from so-and-so's 'tomp,'  but they were 15 euro, and I didn't want to pay 15 euro. I can buy something better on Amazon. I thought about getting one of the little books everybody was selling, but I only had 20s in both dollars and euro, and I didn't want to deal with trying to get the correct change from one of those guys.

Next was Queen Hapshepsut's temple. On the way, Tyeb told us about alabaster, and how he could take us to an alabaster factory. I said that was fine, but we were uninterested in buying any alabaster.

Hatshepsut's tomb was pretty neat. It had an excellent view of the Nile Valley, but it was hazy, and I couldn't tell what I was taking a picture of, really. But I  took a few anyway. 

We told every "helpful" gentleman we had no money. A few left us alone, but a few still showed us a couple of things.

On the way back to the east bank, we stopped at the Colossi of Memnon. I hopped out and took a few photos. 

We headed of ti the east bank for Karnak. As the ancient Egyptians saw it, the east bank was for the living, because the sun rose on that side. The west back was for the dead, since the sun set on that side. So, all of the tombs and funerary temples are on the west bank, and the two religious temples - Karnak and Luxor - are on the east. The museums are also on the east.

As we were driving, I was trying to get a video of what an adventure it is driving here. Anyway, I have a tendency to forget that I have it set on video, and then when I want to take a picture, I accidentally take another video. I did that this time. Instead of just leaving it, though, I decided to delete it. It asked me if I wanted to delete that or or all the frames. I thought it meant the frames of that video, so I said all. Crap. I erased all the pictures on the card. Luckily, the only thing that Mom hadn't gotten too were the Colossi, and I hadn't been allowed to have my camera in the VoK anyway. So, we weren't out too much. Maybe Max can recover them when we get home.

Karnak is amazing. It's just so huge and overwhelming. It's actually a temple complex. The large temple to the god Amun-Ra is still mostly intact. There were also 9 other smaller temples that are now in ruins. Not nearly as much of the color survives, because it's been exposed to the elements for thousands of years, but there is still a bit. 

On the parts that are in good shape, you can still see so much of the carving. Besides all of that, it's just so huge! The columns that hold up the colonnade court are truly massive. I had seen so many pictures and paintings of that area that I was overjoyed to see it in real life.

After Karnak, we went to lunch. Tyeb took us to an Egyptian restaurant he liked. Em desperately wanted the pigeon, because she had never had it before, but they didn't have it in stock. So, she and I got the chicken plate, while the others got the mixed grill. The chicken was pretty dry, but the soup that came with it was superb. You also got to choose rice or macaroni. Macaroni turned out to be a lunch-sized bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce. Very strange. As we were waiting for our food, we saw a woman across the street lower a bucket out of her window. On the street below was a guy with a fruit stand. He put some oranges in the basket, and she lifted it back up.

The Luxor Museum was next. There, they have a bunch of the statues and other significant pieces that can't be kept at the temples and tombs themselves. Everything in there is from a local temple or tomb. It was so nice to have seen the original locations, because I was able to picture them there. The colors on some of those were still excellent.

We had finished our tour early, but it was too late to go back over to the other side and see the there ancient things. Almost all of the things to see are on the west bank. We also didn't have the money to do any extra things (sooo many charges adding up, from luggage charges to the millions of dollars we' hemorrhaging in tips) So, they dropped us off at the hotel, saying they'd be back to get us at 4:30. How we had missed an entire day of sightseeing and still finished early the make up day, I have no idea.

Well, we no longer had rooms, so we had to just sit in the lobby. We chose a corner near a door and away from the main area, so hopefully, it wouldn't be so smoky. It didn't work. By the end of the couple of hours, Mom and I were both feeling pretty bad from it. It didn't seem to both the kids this time. In the middle of our time, we decided we needed a couple of drinks. We went to the shops at the back of the hotel, but none of them had drinks. We went to the front of the hotel, and as soon as we stepped out of the door, we were accosted by people wanting us to take their taxi. We said no thank you, they just kept yelling. We went less than a block, and I swear we had 50 men yell at us. We found a place with sodas and got them. We were yelled at another 50 times on the way back.

At 4:30, Ahmed came to get us. When we got to the airport, there were men literally running after the van to get to our bags. As soon as the van stopped, they were opening the trunk to get them out. We had five men each carrying a bag. I had one guy wrestle my bag out of my hand! I'm so glad we had gotten drinks, or I wouldn't have had enough coins to pay them all. As it was, some were mad that others got more than they did. They dropped the bags at the door and held out their hands. They were like toddlers when somebody is handing out candy, jostling with their hands out. I just wanted to hit them all. They were yelling and shoving their open hands at me. I held up my fingers and yelled at them to wait, just as if they were the naughty children that their behavior suggested. They listened, a bit. They at least backed off a little. I gave them what coins I had. We got inside and everything went smoothly. The plane that claimed to be on time was half an hour late, but other than that, it was fine.

We got to the Cairo airport, and didn't see our guide. He wasn't with the other guy with a sign we saw, and the other Egypt guide had met us before baggage claim. So, I was a bit worried. The bags all got here, though, so that's good! We decided to head out of baggae claim,to see if our guide was out further in the airport. He was, thank goodness. We got into the van and headed to the hotel. OMG, traffic is crazy here. It's worse than Luxor. Most of the streets I've seen don't even have lanes painted on them, though they are obviously meant for 3 or 4. Why waste the money, I guess, since nobody will pay attention to them anyway? People will turn left from the right, and right from the left. 3 cars will all make the same turn at the same time. Horse and donkey carts are in the road with cars and vans, as are people on bikes and people on foot, both with goods balanced on their heads. Again, no headlights and lots of honking. Our tour guide told us that there are no traffic laws in Cairo. I'm not sure if he was exaggerating, or if the really aren't, but I could believe it. When you want to pull over to the side, you do so. No matter who may be there, or whether cars need to now go around you.

We got to the hotel and settled in. It's a nice hotel, and it has a nonsmoking lobby. Woo! There are ashtrays in the rooms, but they don't smell like smoke, thank goodness.

All in all, I'm very, very glad that we got to see so many amazing things, but Luxor is not a city I care to ever visit again.

Emma says - It was really really busy, but it was fun. The VoK was different from what I imagined. We've been reading a book series where they're working in the VoK, so it was cool to see the real thing.