Perhaps the rot has set in after this length of time in Egypt. Or am I just being led astray by the colourful company I keep? At any rate, during this past week, it seems that I have been spending a disproportionate amount of time on hotel roofs. So commented my darling bride when I emailed during the week to report in on my activities, including after work drinks on the roof of the Nile Hilton and from the lobby bar at the Grand Hyatt. At least in the latter I was inside and on the ground floor, albeit watching the Nile flow by through the tinted glass of a bottle or two of Sakkara Gold, and over the silver bowl of accompanying nibbles, illuminated by the floating scented candle.



I have to admit that the Grand Hyatt is a “flasher” pub than my digs since the start of November. Very opulent, very large, very smart – but would they bring my morning omelette to me, just the way I like it, and without me having to order it, at the Grand Hyatt I ask? We had bee-lined for the very high top floor (so high that one’s ears pop in the elevator) for the bar at the lounge in the revolving restaurant but it didn’t open for an hour, so we roughed it in the lobby bar.

We were buoyed with confidence to do this having roof-topped at the Nile Hilton on the previous evening. That location provides a somewhat unique opportunity to see the Egyptian sun sink brightly and “pinkly” over the Giza plateau, illuminating and then almost silhouetting the pyramids nicely. It also provides delightful panoramas of the Nile putting itself to sleep (or does it only awaken at dusk?) and of my personal favourite, the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities, from above. So that you can share in some of this I include some snapshots from the Nile Hilton roof in this posting.

Very pleasant on the roof of Cairo …. but also very cold. Maybe that, or maybe too close a contact with my French colleague from Rome was the reason for my demise. He was clearly suffering from a heavy cold by the time of our farewell dinner for him and for my Spanish colleague at the Khan el Kahilly restaurant on the third night of the week, but yours truly experienced the second head cold of the sojourn in Egypt. It actually showed the first signs of its arrival before my birthday (and, to be fair, before Monsieur’s arrival), but took nearly a week to really manifest itself. So I bet on my immune system being primed and able to defeat it totally before departure this Thursday. I don’t really want to spend over 20 hours at altitude with blocked sinuses. The good news is that it is almost gone now after only two or three days of that miserable “cold” feeling.

But the cold did have me opt out of other social engagements towards the end of the week. I mostly took it very quietly on Australia Day, sleeping, reading, typing .. and absorbing some of the Aussie spirit by listening to Slim Dusty music that, serendipitously, I had at some time downloaded to my laptop. Quiet that is, except for a wonderful Australia Day reception at our Ambassador’s residence.

It would probably be reasonable to say “Ambassador’s mansion” because from the little I saw of it, the residence does Australia no shame in the Middle East. A delightful cocktail party, a distinct lack of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie…. Oi! Oi! Oi!” but a nice mix of around 50 ex-pats and locals. The function had a second purpose in acknowledging Australia’s long history (25 years) of input into archaeology in Egypt and its partnership with Egypt in that. I met some very young archaeologists (one here for the first time) and some more mature archaeologists (one here for the twenty-second year in a row).

So two valuable experiences from the function were, first an astounding appreciation of the varied things that Australians do when abroad – makes one want to do more oneself – and, second, how great Australian wine is – certainly my first glass of decent white wine in three months.

The Egyptian reds are drinkable but would not sell well in Australia. The whites are, in everyone’s assessment (at least everyone who I have met), plainly undrinkable. This contrasts with the local beers, Stellar (a slightly cheaper but nicely bitter ale) and Sakkara (a very pleasant and light beer). The local beer is not only drinkable but also reasonably priced at about 20 - 25 Egyptian pounds for a 500ml bottle in restaurants normally (around $5 Australian), although dearer in the flash hotels with the Nile views and nibbles.

And probably my final solo outing was on Saturday – a return to Coptic Cairo by underground. Once again, another place where each subsequent visit will unearth previously unrevealed dimensions.

A new, senior mission is here from Rome for the start of this, my last week here. That presence and a pretty heavy program will occupy these remaining hours for me.

I would be lying to say that I wasn’t excited, intimidated and a little sad to be heading out to the airport on Thursday evening. At this stage I can look back at the past three months and ponder what a great opportunity this has been. It really has been an experience that I will always recall with fond memories. But, I can’t wait to get home and pick up the threads of my more normal life. Between my Cairo life and my Brisbane life lies what is always a “trial by ordeal” – a lengthy journey, made much more bearable by an excellent airline, but still a challenge. Leave on Thursday night, get home on Saturday morning. Wish me well.

OK! I’m over it! I’m over my wife leaving me.

Sounds like a broken marriage – but in my case my darling wife is back ensconced in Brisbane and I have it on good authority (not just from herself) that she is well and feeling good after her five week sojourn here.

It was horrible when she went, but being back in email contact is good and it has been over a week now. With my own time running out, I haven’t time to feel sorry for myself.

Anyway, we are none of us getting any younger and it was my birthday on Thursday (our equivalent of a Brisbane Friday night). One of my work colleagues went well beyond the call of duty and arranged a party for me at her apartment. A small event but just great – with party whistles, a cake and all. There were eight of us there, and no two the same nationality (oddly, no one an Egyptian either). It really is like the United Nations here and that is a great part of the fun. My gracious hostess is Norwegian and the other guests were French, Spanish, Dutch, English, Swedish and Japanese. A great time was had by all but this was the latest night I had had since being here. The five of us staying at my hotel returned around 2:30am (we started late!) to find this place really bopping.

In the foyer small children were running about doing what small children do everywhere and being noisy about it, but …. At 2:30am? In the restaurant, up on the “Mezzanine”, (the restaurant where I have had so many meals at 7 or 8 pm, totally alone), it was standing room only and filled with shisha smoke and middle eastern music. This is a totally different social arrangement here, although I am sure my sons find this normal. But many of these people were potential pensioners like me.

For some reason I have been waking early every day and despite the late night, Friday was no different so I had an early breakfast and indulged in domestic chores, reading and resting. But on Saturday, I indulged myself in the one thing that I had been saving up for this time after Cathy’s departure – a visit to the Egyptian Museum (of Antiquities). Cathy and Maryann made the visit a month ago, and Cathy and I had been there as part of an organised group late in 2005, but the visit was far too short.

I mentioned in a much earlier posting the beautiful and unique pink building that is this world famous museum. It is old and massive and, even if it were empty, it would be worth the visit, a museum piece in itself. In walking in, despite the x-ray security machines, I still feel as if I have time travelled back to the time of Agatha Christie.

So I spent over 2½ hours wandering around, looking at and trying to “feel” the exhibits. It is mostly about the Pharaonic period, all of the “kingdoms” but also covers the Ptolemaic and Greco-Roman times. The popular highlight has to be the treasure trove of Tut Ankh Amon, of which all but Tut himself, his inner coffin (or sarcophagus) and a few items on loan to an overseas display are in this museum. The young pharaoh actually still resides in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. We had entered his tomb in 2005 on the holiday trip and, although extensive, the rooms seemed far too small to accommodate the supposedly 5 000 items that now sit in a wing of the museum.

He actually lay for thousands of years in bandages, in a funeral mask, in a coffin, in a coffin, in a coffin, in a stone sarcophagus, in a wooden “box”, in a wooden box, in a wooden box, in a room (full of the last box). He was the original Russian doll.

Replete with chariots, beds, bows, jewellery, even food. There are still discernible loaves of bread – and we complain about preservatives in our loaves. Much of the goodies are gold or alabaster and mostly highly decorated, intricate and in great condition. But Tut is but one of many mummies and sarcophaguses in the museum. One can get up close and personal with Ramses II - unveiled. His fine reddish hair is still visible.

And not only people were mummified. One collection includes lots of mummified animals. I found these particularly interesting – can’t imagine why. In some, pathology was clearly evident; I guess that’s why they died.

Amidst the many statues and mummies of pharaohs and noblemen, are the equivalents in Ptolemaic and Greco-Roman periods. Statues look a bit like a cross between Tut and Julius Caesar with a Pharaoh’s clothing and stance but aquiline noses and curly fringes on their foreheads. And the mummies, sans separate funeral masks, have in their place portraits painted on the cloth near where the face would be. These are largely in the style of the orthodox Christian icons, some good - some amateurish, and generally not showing the skilled art of the earlier Egyptians.

The museum is big enough to get lost in – typically I did several times, although thankfully I always knew I was in the museum, just not sure which part of it. Among all the wonderful things to experience in Egypt, a trip here is worthwhile just to see the wonderful exhibits in this museum. But better be quick. A new museum is being built out near the pyramids. I am sure its display will be better – they really do the new museums in Egypt well. We have visited superb museums for the building itself and the display in Aswan and Alexandria. And I am sure it will be air-conditioned, making it better for the treasures and for the visitors (it gets stiflingly hot in summer in the existing one, and for my visit, the thermometers in the display cases read 18 degrees C – it felt colder, certainly on the tip of my nose). But the romance factor can never be as strong as in the present museum on Tahrir Square.

My stay in Egypt has come down to “I depart on Thursday of next week”. It will be exciting to get back to the people and places that I enjoy, and three months has been a long time to spend in a hotel room with my meagre possessions. I am heartily sick of eating in restaurants, long for some of the foods and drinks that I cannot consume here, and I have a growing sense that I have done what I came here to do and that it is time to move on.

Three months is a long time to be doing this – but my visit to the museum, and my contemplation of the very ancient wonders it contains, makes it seem an absolute blink in the space-time continuum. I will be leaving soon but leaving with a wealth of memories and pleasant recollections to think about from time to time, not to mention over a thousand photographs, some of which appear here.

Woe is me … poor, poor pitiful me!!

It’s just not fair to have a place’s reputation affected by how the observer feels at the time of the “observing” – a comment I made just over a month ago when my quality of life improved dramatically with the arrival in Egypt of the love of my life. But now the table has been turned. As I write this, my darling Cathy is on her way back to Australia. So this makes my world dull and glum and much of the colour of Cairo has disappeared for me.

My remaining 2½ weeks here will, I expect, be largely now only of a work purpose. Before Cathy arrived I, pretty much, elected not to be a tourist and my enjoyment of my temporary “home town” rested mostly in the thrill of discovery. While I was with her (and we were blest with a number of bonus days when I could not be at work due to the holidays) we had a ball. Now I am without Cathy and I feel much more comfortable with Cairo so the spirit of adventure has waned. The next few weeks will seem mundane. While Cathy had Maryann with her while I was working, Cathy’s pleasure was much greater. So all of this highlights the sort of “home is where the heart is” argument and, for me is a timely reminder that the people in our lives are the very essence of our lives.

I had been very concerned that Cathy would be “bored” or frustrated by the days when she was alone here without either Maryann or me (I think 11 days in all). But Cathy is fairly irrepressible and although she spent a few days mostly reading and relaxing in the hotel room, she continued to “attack” Cairo – heading for new places on her own in subway trains and taxis, and revisiting the previously visited, discovering even more interest in them.

Perhaps demonstrative of her adventurous spirit and her gregarious nature, last week Cathy made a new friend in Cairo and they spent a couple of days together as Cathy showed her the ropes. Her friend had just arrived from Melbourne to spend some time with her husband who is working here for an even longer stint than me and they met in a dress shop. It is truly a small world when such things can happen. This chance event gave Cathy a boost for her last few days here and we two couples even managed a night out together at a Zamalek Italian restaurant.



My days of pleasant dinners with my bride in Cairo are over now and I have to face nights alone in my room where one is drawn to pathetic therapeutic activities like taking photos of one’s feet while watching CNN. But there will be a procession of work colleagues visiting Cairo in the next couple of weeks so I expect that I will have some company at most meals. Just as well perhaps as I doubt my resolve to dine alone in our now familiar dining rooms.

I truly am counting down the days now – with but 15 working days remaining and yet much to do, I have to make every work day a winner and this requires some careful juggling of the remaining hours I have here. And there are just two weekends left, likely to be spent working on my laptop and maybe re-visiting a couple of sites here that have particularly impressed me and pretty much lend themselves to a re-visit alone.

All this bodes for some fairly dull material for the blog so maybe we will see abridged versions in future.

Meanwhile, my thoughts are clearly with my darling wife as she negotiates the 27 hour journey from Cairo airport to Brisbane airport – a journey across half a world, a great gulf of tradition and culture, and across the seasons. I will be spiritually sharing every moment of her trip with her.

Those who have been worried by the recent news of our ill health will be much pleased that we are now fully recovered from the trials of food borne illness and are now as healthy as bulls (or cows).

We are just emerging from the Egyptian holiday season. It did make for a very quiet time at work because, while I was “shoulder to the wheel”, just about everyone else was away and taking it easy. Cairo was a very easy place to move about in during this period – the traffic was generally light, delays few and the pollution levels fairly low.

During the past week we have enjoyed some delightful days with bright blue skies and crisp airs. We have also had some bleak weather with clouds and winds and a sort of “bone-chilling” cold that is very unlike what one would expect of the Middle East.

We took advantage of one of those clear days to visit, or perhaps more accurately, to “make a pilgrimage” to, the Giza pyramids. We had made the visit in December 2005 and did the full tourist deal then, walking about the plateau and venturing into one pyramid, but we were there early in the morning and a dense fog made visibility difficult. So this time we went in the middle of a beautiful day and saw the ancient miracles in clear air.

Oddly, for mine, the pyramids are not much up close. The effect is achieved from the distance. Certainly it is one of life’s little pleasures to actually touch a pyramid, but having done that it remains only to marvel at their size and age. So we felt like rebellious tourists in being unique in not actually going through the turnstiles this time. And we did have the expertise to know that the very best view is obtained from the upper floors of the Giza Pizza Hut and KFC, so our pilgrimage included a Colonel Sanders approach.

Cathy celebrated her birthday early in the week, so we had a night out. Still smarting from our lack of results from top restaurants and nervous about another bout, we initially went for a tea at the Conrad on the Corniche, but realising that I had stayed there for a week last May and lived to tell the tale, we opted for dinner at a table for two overlooking the Nile. Afterwards, we strolled down the Nile to the Ramses Hilton and its associated shopping mall. We took tea at the Hilton at another table overlooking the Nile and then wandered on to the Nile Hilton before returning home.

We also did some other walking on the long weekend and visited the Grand Hyatt on Rhoda Island on one day and the Four Seasons on the Corniche on another (there are a number of Four Seasons Hotels in Cairo). So we had more or less done a five star “pub crawl”. This is, in itself, interesting to us because it highlights the contrasts and contradictions that are Cairo.

Our most recent day of walking saw us take a new tack and we caught the metro to Mohamed Naguib station, one stop beyond the busy “Sadat” on the main Tahrir Square, just near the Egyptian Museum. The plan was to “cruise” back down towards the Nile through the downtown shopping streets. But – we left our book of maps at home and headed off in the wrong direction (again!) eventually striking the Nile a mile or so downstream of where we intended and missing the shopping areas.

A note on navigation in Cairo. A number of phenomena work against us. There are few cross roads or parallel streets, rather the roads curve and veer off in odd directions – main roads "morph" into minor roads. Street signs are either in Arabic or say little unless you are in the heart of things where you already know the score. The streets are narrow and bordered by tall buildings so the landmarks that are visible are few. This day was cloudy so the sun was not so obvious, but worse, this is the northern hemisphere and the winter sun oscillates the southern sky, something that I am not used to. So north, south, east and west never seem to be where they are supposed to be. And when asked which way the Nile is flowing it always seems natural to assume the wrong way. Upper Egypt is actually south of Lower Egypt and the Nile flows “uphill” to the north and to the Mediterranean.

But the beauty of being lost is that you get to go to places that you would never dream of going otherwise. Such was our “flight” from Mohamed Naguib station. We walked for around an hour and a half down streets where tourists and expats no doubt never venture and in doing so we saw the real Cairo as it is for the locals. There is an absolute absence of any shops that sell anything to tourists and shops and stalls that provide the locals with their needs. So food stalls and bakeries abound and the shops are much more practical and stock the essentials of life.

This contrasts discordantly with the other Cairo in the lobbies of five star hotels – places where the bulk of Cairenes would (or could) never venture. There are also plenty of clubs where the well-off locals are members and where they can relax in their upper or middle class microenvironments. But in Cairo, reality is never far away, and bazaars and carpet factories coexist with the luxury of world class hotels. The shadows of these tall and elegant buildings, clad with marble and glass, pass strangely over the Cairo that more accurately represents the living arrangements for the main part of Cairo and for the vast bulk of Cairenes.

After living for a couple of months here, I think I am now more aware that when I leave in a few weeks time there will be a lot that I do not understand about Egypt, but I am also conscious that my understanding of this unique place has grown tremendously in that time. It has been a blessing to be able to spend a significant period here – a period that means I can be more than a tourist (but still be a tourist!!).

I am not sure ….. but I think I am starting to become a little more “Egyptian” ….. I think I may even be “looking” more Egyptian.

By popular request, I have included some photos in the blog now, including the back issues. I have learnt how to do that but not how to add captions – if I find I can do that I will add them later.

Happy New Year to you all. The Eid continues here, and Coptic Christmas is still a few days off, but the 25th December Christmas and New Year have been and gone. Our part-time travelling companion, Maryann, has also come and gone and returned and now left and is safely tucked away in Brisbane again. She came back to Cairo for one night on the 30th which gave us a chance to hear of her adventures “up the Nile”.

Our Christmas was not your usual Brisbane affair. We enjoyed Christmas Eve here in our hotel, choosing that over offers to go to various Cairo venues. The Christmas celebrations here tend to be on the eve rather than on the night. The hotel put on a delightful four course dinner with special decorations and superlative service. There was also a special organist cum singer who could play almost anything in the vibrant “belly dancing” style so typical of the Middle East. We are somewhat “institutions” here as I don’t think that anyone else has ever stayed here for so long. I am reminded of the “Colonel” from Falty Towers. But we receive wonderful service now, well above the norm.

On Christmas day we went to Saqqara to the tomb and pyramid area. This was the original site of the pyramids – where the first prototypes were built. There are also loads of tombs and the area is far more interesting than Giza. Saqqara is some distance south from Cairo but from it you can see the Giza pyramids and the Dahshur pyramids. Dahshur is the site of the “bent” pyramid where the original slope of the walls proved to produce too high a structure, so the upper part was built with a lesser slope.

A new museum was opened at Saqqara last April and we had a guided tour from an archaeologist of that and of the site, going into one pyramid and some tombs. All a wonderful experience.

That night we attended a Christmas service at a small church in Zamalek. The church is beautifully decorated with a series of mosaics and is a fine merger of the Middle Eastern and Italian styles. I was struck by the fact that, for the first time in my experience, I did not sweat at a Christmas service – the beauty of the northern hemisphere.

We went from there to “a leading hotel” nearby and had a delightful dinner at an Italian restaurant within the hotel. The food tasted great and the atmosphere was delightful, but I say “leading hotel” because I do not wish to defame their reputation when I discuss the food poisoning I “scored”. A mild illness, but one that lasted until New Year.

My debility did not prevent us from visiting the Manyal Palace later in the week. This was the home of King Farouk and involves a house that is being restored, gardens, a hunting lodge (complete with scores of stuffed heads – from animals who were rendered “stuffed” by the King), and a private mosque. We received some extra treatment there also, enabling us to see some special areas – we now understand how a King’s bathroom works.

From there we went to the Citadel, perched high above Cairo with the best views in town. An old fortress, and including a couple of mosques, this is one of the gems of Cairo. I had not seen it before but Cathy had been a couple of weeks ago. None the less, as we have so often found, on a second visit we find more to the places than our first visit suggested.

Before Maryann’s departure we celebrated at one of our favoured restaurants where we had some good and bad fortune. The good news was that only two of the three of us suffered from food poisoning and Maryann was the one who missed out (Cathy and I made the same menu selection). That was especially important because Maryann had to leave on the long flight home the next day and I would hate to think what that might be like as sick as we were.

I went down first, possibly because I was still recovering from Christmas night but I quickly dehydrated and was fortunate that Cathy was able to nurse me with electrolytes etc., but by morning she was herself sick and we spent New Year’s eve taking it very quietly. By the 1st January we were pretty much back to normal although still a little weak due to effectively 36 hours without food. Hopefully, we are over it now and will not suffer a recurrence. I must admit that this was the most severe food-borne illness that I can remember suffering and for a while there I could see myself spending the New Year in a hospital.

I have been in the Middle East for a total of 16 weeks since November 2005, and have had three trips to Indonesia, the most recent lasting 6 weeks, and this is the first case of the Pharaoh’s Revenge in all that time. We have really been pretty fortunate with illness while travelling and it was far better to be sick in the convenient environment of our hotel than while on a tour. Both episodes were associated with “better class” establishments and whilst we were adhering to our “anti-food poisoning” protocols. I guess it goes to prove that dining at a 5 star hotel or restaurant is no guarantee of safety.

At any rate, we are back firing on all cylinders now and the events have become but travellers’ tales. I have been away from Brisbane for all of November and all of December now, and will not return until early February. With just 22 standard working days left, it has come down to programming each and every day for maximum impact, so I expect that the remainder of my stay will fly past.

We have, by and large, enjoyed our holiday season so far, complete with the remains of slaughtered animals on the footpaths, and have a good idea of what the “silly season” means in Egypt.