April 2010 Archives

Spending the night in Nuweiba, we awake to our beach surroundings and see the following view:

We decide we can take our time leaving Egypt and at least stay until lunch, which is spear-fished straight from the sea by the owners:

We head down towards the bus stop to head over to the border at Taba, and see one of the funniest sights while in town.

A taxi driver from last night, absolutely loaded to the brim with luggage.

We say goodbye to Egypt, take our bags and cross into Israel/Palestine, catching the sunset over Egypt from the Israel side.

We spend the night in Eilat before taking a bus over to the Dead Sea for an obligatory swim. We almost miss our stop.

Obligatory Dead Sea floating picture and salt crystal on bottle of coke.

This wasn't my first time swimming in a hypersaline lake, having previously done so in the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan.

From the Dead Sea, we hitch hike to Jerusalem and are picked up by a Palestinian man with Israeli nationality. He's fluent in English, Hebrew and Arabic and tells us of the many difficulties he and his family face. Most of his family only hold Palestinian passports, which are practically useless for travel - many Palestinians also hold Jordanian passports. They are unable to visit him in Jerusalem as the Israeli checkpoints turn them back.

Coming into Jerusalem, we cross through an Israeli checkpoint, and see that a bus full of Palestinians is stopped and there is a queue of almost sixty Arab people waiting to cross the checkpoint. Just before we're in Jerusalem, we see the West Bank wall; an 8m high wall being built to separate "Israel" from the West Bank.

After all of our Dahab adventures, my sister and I bid farewell to the town and start hitchhiking to Mount Sinai, to see St. Catherine's monastery, to climb the mountain where Moses received the 10 commandments, and to hitch our way to Eilat in Israel/Palestine.

We start by hitchhiking a lift to the police checkpoint just outside Dahab, the driver offers to take us all the way to the monastery for free, but only if my sister will kiss him.

We wait at the checkpoint, eventually a car pulls up and the police man at the checkpoint negotiates with the driver of the car. The driver wants a lot of money, we politely refuse, the passengers inside look pretty keen to take us. The car eventually drives off when we say we are broke, only to stop 200m later. The passengers get out and wave us over to join them.

The passengers are all Russian tourists from Krasnodarsky Krai and are very happy to take us with them, they insisted that the driver stop and give us a lift.

View through the desert along the way to Mount Sinai and St. Catherine's Monastery at the base of Mount Sinai.

When we arrive at the mountain, we're told by our driver that we need a guide up the mountain by law. We tell him to piss off. The entire trip up, we're followed by Bedouin's on camels offering us to ride them up the mountain. We also tell them to piss off.

Our group heading up the mountain, Alex, Me, Stephan, Dasha and Dasha.

Walking up the mountain, there are shops along the way, selling souvenirs, holy rocks and hot and cold drinks.

Eventually, we reach the church at the top of the mountain from where we watch the sunset.

The guide that our companions were given didn't tell us anything about the area or the mountain. He also spent a lot of time with his friends at the shops just before the summit.

Attention, Danger!

In the evening, we drive back towards Dahab in pitch blackness. Our driver refuses to turn on his headlights as he sings Arabic songs and speeds down the highway. He says the light interferes with his night vision.

We get out on the main road towards Israel and try and hitch our way to the border. We make it as far as Nuweiba, where Moses and his followers supposedly crossed the Red Sea. We spend the night in a beach bungalow of a small Bedouin camp.

Part three of my top 100 travel photos, starts in Siem Reap, Cambodia, from where I headed back to Vietnam and towards Hoi Anh before going to Hue and crossing into Laos to catch the end of the Laos New Year Festival.

11. Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia

Without a doubt, Cambodia's star attraction, the temples at Angkor. As the best maintained temple, Angkor Wat is the most easily recognised and is featured on the Cambodian flag. While taking this photo, I was standing amongst a crowd of close to 100 people waiting for the sunrise.

12. Wat near Tuol Sleng, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

13. Vegetable Garden, Hoi Anh, Vietnam

I went out on a bike ride with a friend I'd met on the bus coming into Hoi Anh and saw some of the poorest people in Vietnam, working their hardest to eek out an existence.

14. Fishing Trip, Hoi Anh, Vietnam

My friend Vuong invited us to his place for lunch one day. He suggested we go on a fishing trip with his mother one day, to explore the waters around the town.

15. That Ing Hang Stupa, Savannakhet, Laos

I came into Laos on the last day of Bpee Mai (Songkran aka Thai/Laos New Year), a three day festival that consists of a daily water fight. Worshippers went here during the festival to pour oil on each of the Buddha statues in the area. It is believed that some of Buddha's remains are stored here.

The photos for this post and more like it are found in the photo galleries for Angkor Temples, Tuol Sleng, Vegetable Farm, Hoi An and Savannakhet.

My sister and I decide to hitchhike to St. Catherine's monastery, a monastery at the base of the Mount Sinai, where Moses received the 10 Commandments from God. We are picked up by a taxi already carrying passengers and after a miscommunication, end up at the neighbouring town, a mere five kilometres from our camp in Dahab.

Not particularly phased at the mix-up, we have lunch, some of the best seafood ever at a small cafe and after an hour start walking back towards Dahab town centre.

We've only been walking for a few minutes when a little puppy runs up to us to play. He is wearing a rusty chain around his neck, dragging it behind him on the road and looking to be in a bit of discomfort. My sister, being prepared for encounters with animals of all kind, digs into her pocket and fishes out a bread roll to give to the puppy who is so excited to be fed that he takes the entire roll and runs off across the road.

We see the puppy running, we see the car approaching, time slows down, the puppy's tail is wagging as he turns back to us. The car is too close, it slams on the brakes but the puppy is under its path and we watch in horror as the wheels go over the small body of the puppy.

We run across the road, the driver stops, the puppy lies there and starts letting out blood curling screams, soils itself and starts panting what appears to be his last few breaths. Pain has never been so apparent as was written across his eyes, he knew he was going to die. Everyone just stares with blank expressions.

A foreigner woman comes out of nowhere, takes one look at the dog, says he is in pain and needs to be put down and walks off. Thanks lady.

We scoop the dog in our arms, jump in the back of the truck and head towards the vet we had mere moments ago walked past. The vet is out of town, the dog is still whimpering, waiting, wanting to die. We take him to the pharmacy next door.

The pharmacist gives the dog a pain killing injection, cleans and disinfects the wounds and assesses the damage. A severely broken leg, but not a terminal prognosis, we are ecstatic.

Another foreigner walks in, and is saddened to see the puppy in its state. "You saved him." she says. We're speechless. "The chain around it's neck" she continues, "Bedouin children chain them up and torture them, they're rarely fed and often die, you met the puppy and now that he's with you, he's away from the near certain death he would have faced. He probably only just escaped". The chain is very tight around his neck, we cut it off.

The puppy is soon feeling better, we pay for the medication and thank the pharmacist and get back into the car and ask them to drive us to the town centre. They almost killed the dog when they ran over it, it's the least they could do.

Ten Egyptian Pounds, after the lift to the pharmacist and back to town, that's what the driver wants. Sure, he almost ran over the dog and killed it, he still wants to get paid. There's no point for outrage at his lack of human decency, we pay him and leave.

My sister find the perfect name for him as we search for a new home. Sphinxies (pronounced: Sfink-sees), there were tourist trinket vendors all along our trip that would have a small Sphinx to sell and would offer it as follows: "Want a sphinxies? Very cheap".

My sister carries Sphinxies as we ask people if they want a beautiful puppy; we're leaving Dahab in a few days so can't look after him.

Chance is a wonderful thing. We're walking along and offer the dog to a couple of tourists with a familiar accent. We spot the accent at the same time, it's the same English accent that our parents have, that of the Russian native speaker.

We start talking to Irina who introduces herself as the assistant of Dr Igor Charkovsky, the Soviet pioneer of water birthing, the process of giving birth while immersed in warm water. They're here for the month, will happily look after Spinxies in the time. They've come to Dahab for Dr Charkovsky to deliver a baby two days earlier and are very excited to show it to us.

Dr Charkovsky with the two day old baby girl. He stipulates that movement is good for new born babies and shows my sister and I some of the stretches that he has pioneered through his fifty year career.

Dr Charkovsky is a well respected midwife and he shares some of his ideas with us his latest publications, relating to dolphin assisted birthing, a concept that's gaining traction and popularity around the world.

More on water birthing, Dr Igor Charkovsky, Dr. Igor Charkovsky in Google Scholar, on birthing with dolphins, and how dolphin birthing began in the Black Sea.

After drinking tea with Igor and Irina, we bid them and Sphinxies farewell before heading back home. Sure, we didn't reach Mount Sinai, but we sure had one big adventure that day.

Ever overpay for new years celebrations? $100+ dollars to go on a boat cruise where the boat is over-packed, the lines for the bar are too long and the music sucks?

Is there an alternative?

We happened to be in Dahab for New Years ;a beach town on the Red Sea coast, renowned world wide for its amazing scuba diving and snorkelling.

Every restaurant up and down the strip is having specials on seafood - 20% off, free drinks, free dessert. Total cost for dinner - $10

On the left Marco and Linda from Montreal - met them on the Felucca. Next is Susan, with her brother Wilson on the far right, Chinese Americans who are such incredible people and myself and my sister Dasha.

Check out Susan's travel writings Simply Everywhere, she's an amazing photographer who has a photography blog. My sister, one of the biggest inspirations for my travels also has her own musings from her world travels - I Thought I'd Name My Bike Sasha.

After dinner, we meet with some CouchSurfers and head out to a free club to see in the new year.

The next club we head to wants a $10 cover charge, we get it down to $2 with a free drink included. We each order a $5 cocktail. Life is good.

How was your New Years?

For those of you heading to Dahab, I suggest getting in touch with Nader, he's such an amazing person with so much knowledge of the area and a heart of absolute gold.

Our overnight Cairo to Dahab bus is stopped several times throughout the night for police to check our passports, of course that's all after we spend an hour walking around trying to find the right bus stop (we ended up at the local bus terminal which is several kilometres from the airconditioned tourist bus terminal).

Dahab is predominantly inhabited by Bedouin people, a formerly nomadic people who roamed the deserts with their herds of goats or camels. It's also a tourist town, and as such, my sister and I have our guard up for dodgy scammers around every corner.

We get off the bus and spend ten minutes negotiating the taxi to our hotel. Hilarity ensues when the driver drops us off at the main strip (but not at our guesthouse) and we take our time paying him, ensuring he's too late to rip off tourists coming in from the next bus.

Dahab, and all of the Red Sea and Sinai Peninsula are renowned for their diving (take a look at this flickr gallery to see why) and so we decide to join in the fun and book a couple of dives. Problem is, I've only dived once, when I was 13, at the Great Barrier Reef, and there was no way I was going to spend the time doing a diving course or to stick to the 5m diving limit for unlicensed divers, so we explain this to the diving guys that take us.

Long story short, we go on an "assisted/introductory" dive, though the dive master quickly sees how comfortable I am in the water and so lets me explore to my heart's content.

The most amazing thing about scuba diving in Dahab is that from the surface, it doesn't look like much, the coast is nothing but desert and mountains, but once you wade out into the water, you are immersed in the amazing coral life.

Snorkelling is also good around the Blue Hole, where you can find an underwater arch 55m underwater, a popular freediving location.

Who are the Copts? The Copts, descendants of the Ancient Egyptians were the early adopters of Christianity in Egypt. Christianity spread to Egypt shortly after the death and ascension of Christ in 42 A.D. through Saint Mark, whose work, the Gospel of Mark was found in the Coptic Language (the successor to the Egyptian Language of Ancient Egypt).

Not many people associate Egypt with Christianity or modern monotheistic religions, however there is a strong amount of history to be found, after all Moses received the 10 commandments in Egypt and spent 40 years wandering the desert from Egypt to modern day Israel.

Two different takes on St. George, the dragon slayer.

Different Coptic churches in the Coptic District of Cairo.

Coptic Cemetery, notice on the tombstone epitaph that the writing is in Arabic, commonly associated only with Islam.

The area has gone through so many changes over the times, the restoration and excavation work has led to the discovery of previously buried church foundations and the creation of the network of streets throughout the Coptic district.

Archangel Michael's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Aswan, distinctly Coptic in architectural style.