A Bus Trip from ****

You may have read enough about amazing in sights in Egypt. If so, scroll down to the next paragraph! Luxor was a pretty amazing place and I only wish that I had more time there to really explore the city and just relax. It seemed truly an amazing place. Lots of things to see, lots of freidly people and a pretty managable city. Karnak Temple was HUGE and awesome, certainly a highlight of my trip. A room with 134 columns supporting a stone ceiling as an entry way....really pretty nice. The Temple of Hatshepsut (restored by the Polish Mission) also pretty amazing. I was there with a million other tourists but these places are so big thta you can still find your peace and solitude. The Valley of the Kings was nice; an important place to see. It wasn't as amazing as I had hoped. Oh yeah, King Tut? He was a shorty. Seriously short. HI stomb was nothinga ll that exciting until you really put toether what they were able to take out of it!

I took a bus to Dahab. Dahab is this tiny city on the Red Sea, famous for it's diving. Pretty cool to be here. I love it already and it has only been a few hours. Getting here was a mission. It was a 19 hour bus journey. NINETEEN hours. Do you know how long that is? On a bus. With no bathroom. Wow. Let's just say that we did it all. There was a fight in the seat next to (and in front of) about how far someone should be able to put there seat back. Screaming in Arabic and pointing at each other. I was sure I was going to get punched but I couldn't escape I was surrounded! Everytime the bus stopped everyone got off to have a cigarette. I feel like they must have been through at least a pack on the bus journey. There was some "illegal" smoking of cigarettes on the bus. We stopped often, sometimes for extended periods of time. Not sure why, but we stopped. There was constant yelling at each other in Arabic. A really aggressive kind of yelling. People also played music out loud on their phones, talked loudly on their phones and got text messages and calls all through the night. My favorite (read the sarcasm) text message alert was "Hey Boss I think you just got a text message". I heard it probably 30 times. The sliver lining in some of this was that the movie wouldn't play, and therefore the driver wasn't playing the speakers loud throughout the ride.

Did I mention the crazy driver? I mean crazy. Too much yelling, too much pointing, too much volume, just too much everything!

Driving in Egypt you are required to stop at police checkpoints. Over a long journey there are probably 100 check points. You can't drive straight you must weave around the barriers. Also, sometimes you get boarded and they take people off the bus for a while. Sometimes they look at your passports. The worst part of the journey though was probably the speedbumps. Apparently Egypt doesn't believe in traffic lights, only speedbumps. We probably went over 500 ( a conservative estimate). thump thump. thump thump. thmup thump. over and over again. It really slows down the bus!

We did have some fun times on the bus. I learned some Arabic from the guys on the bus. They were excited to teach us our number and some other basic phrases. ONe guy had some (very poor quality) porn on his phone and was quietly showing us for fun. We took bets on what time we would arrive in Dahab. The bus is notoriously late. We had late night snacks (street food!) at the crazy road side rest stops. And we arrived in this most magnificent beach side town. I am sure that I will say it was worth the trip tomorrow. Today, I am just hoping to get some sleep and enjoy the sun. 19 hours is a long, long time to be sitting on a bus. Shame.