Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for September, 2009
Phils Travel Blog – Part 5
28 September 2009
Lou’s documents have not yet turned up, Sam our guide still thinks that this will be the most likely way that her dilemma will be resolved. Most of us are unconvinced. There are twelve in the group, mostly Aussies wanting to get away from the pub and cinema lifestyle for a few weeks. There is an American traveler, Ron, a lovely man with a childhood dream of exploring the antiquities of Egypt. His parents used to read him bedtime stories of the Kings and Queens of Egypt. Somehow the be-headings and bodily decimations made for good fairy stories, and now he wants to see where these things actually happened. It doesn’t take long for him to get his wish, for before the sleep is out of our eyes, we are in a tour bus and headed across Cairo. Sam has just given us a new take on the rules of driving in Cairo. The amended rules read: (1)Good Horn (2) Good brakes and (3) Good luck. That seems to fit more than ever. We just managed to avoid another 14 human hood ornaments on the way to the Great Pyramid. Did I mention the joy one feels at the first glimpse of the pyramids through the houses and smog. Well a day later that same glimpse is equally breathtaking, in the same way that the Sydney Opera House will always give you a rush of joy, even if you work in Sydney ciy\ty every day. That surely is the ultimate compliment to any architect. A funny thing happens though when you are close to these majestic pyramids. I found that when I was within metres of of the Great Pyramid, the magic disappeared. It was as if it was a giant pile of rocks (which in truth it is). The majesty can really be felt in the context of distance. Maybe the heat of the desert takes something away from it. My breath was more captured by the sight of camels against the skyline a la Indiana Jones. When it comes down to it, the living seem to have the energy that the dead can never muster. And yes, the tomb of the Great Pyramid was raided within days of the King’s body being laid to rest.. And his son in the next pyramid, and his son’s son in the next pyramid. Apparently though, the Kings, who must’ve been incredibly slow learners, cottoned on to the whole thieving thing eventually, and started insisting on burial further south at Luxor, which is where where we’ll be in a few days.
Phil’s Travel Blog – Part 4
22 September 2009
Last night we took a train trip south to Aswan. the stopping off point for the temple of Philae and Abu Simble, two temples of great archeological significance. These are where the Egyptian and the Greek empires crossed over. In Philae (a Greek name) the original Egyptian temple was expanded by the ancient Greeks, so there is a semi-weird mixture of styles, sort of like if the French built an Eiffel Tower on the top of New York’s Chryler Centre. It could be a car crash, but in the case of Philae it somehow works. To the train trip first though. The Orient Express it was not. We had sleeping carriages which were quite tiny. There was no way Jac and I could recreate the fight scene between Robert Shaw and Sean Connery in From Russia With Love, we would’ve put our elbows out. Although the tiny space did at times tend to make us want to do a similat contretemps. Still, there is nothing like a train, a very ancient train covered in Egyptian dust, flying past abode after abode like, as the great Australian poet Kenneth Slessor once compared, a roll of celluloid film, the windows of the houses as the frames in the movie. The rattles of the cabin ladder and the door chain lulling, rather than annoying us awake. Sam lets us have no rest before taking us to a Nubian household on camelback across the Sahara desert, In truth it was only a bit of the Sahara, but a camel’s a camel, and the Sahara’s the Sahara. Great photos and great bonding with the group, which is proving to be a great bunch of people.The Nubians were badly treated by Egyptian leaders past, like Abdul Nasser, the man who nationalised the Suez Canal and built the Aswan Dam, a n endeavour that flooded the Nubian homeland and if it wasn’t for UNESCO, their temples and antiquities. Being vegan, the Nubian food was a delight. I could love this place, even with its heat. At least tomorrow we have some free time.
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Phil’s Travel blog – Part 2
22 September 2009
The driver Mo arranged turned up on time. On Egyptian time. Which means an hour later than the appointed time. He was a charming man named Abdullah who drove his proudly decorated Mitsubishi like to was driving his eldest daughter to her wedding. He was diverted, intolerant and constantly wiping dust from the dashboard. We negotiated the Cairo traffic according to the rules set out in a previous email, which meant often driving on the wrong side of the road. Cars zoomed between each other with an apparent carelessness that was anything but careless. These people knew exactly were they were going. Brave pedestrians walked through the middle of this high-speed melee and in every case seemed to barely avoid becoming hood ornaments. I sat in the front, as a futile antidote to the car sicknesses brought on by the swerving nature of this kind of driving maneuver. Then I saw them. Through the smog and the buildings I saw my first sight of the Pyramids of Giza. Now for those who don’t know, Giza used to be quite some distance from Cairo, but as Cairo expanded in population, it expanded outwards and Giza is now well within the boundaries of the city. To see these magnificent structures seemingly surrounded by blocks of flats is something at once awful and wonderful. Mostly wonderful. It is a sight I will remember all my life. But we are not going to the Pyramids of Giza today. That’s for tomorrow. Today we go to the Pyramid less visited (less visited simply because it is an inconvenient half hour further away). This is the Step Pyramid, so named because it looks like it has giant steps etched into its side. This, Abdullah assures us, is a better Pyramid because there will not be so many tourists there. Being tourists ourselves I find the reasoning amusing. Now your first Pyramid is something to remember. These monoliths are huge, beyond any Sydney Harbour Bridge or Opera House or Eiffel Tower. They are the greatest example of how humans can mark their land, etch it it in way that will stand for centuries, kind of like an ancient version of global warming. But the Step Pyramid has to keep its distance, because we tourists are not allowed near it, which can only be a good thing. Actually, we can go to it, touch it even, if we pay the guards with machine guns an Egyptian Pound to climb over the barrier (how do I know this? Because almost every guard touts for business by holding up the barrier rope and inviting us to break the law this his gun is meant to protect). No way, I say to Jac behind me. I’m not going to touch this ancient stone and let my oily fingerprints further decay the surface. Don’t you agree Jac? Alas she can’t hear me, because she’s under the rope and at the pyramid wall touching in a spiritual fervour, a grinning guard flipping his new Pound.
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Another car drive further away from Cairo and we are at the Red Pyramid, where Abdullah assures us we can go inside, once we pay the police guard, the man at the gate ad the other fellow sitting at the entrance to the Tomb. These people seem to do very little except accept money, but hell, what’s a U.S. dollar here and there. We can go into the Tomb, but first need to climb about a third of the way up the Red Pyramid, then through a tiny door (Ancient Egyptians were obviously Ronnie Corbett sized) then climb down 135 rungs on a steep wooden platform in claustrophobic conditions until we reach a chamber that is real magnificent, a cathedral in the centre of the Red Pyramid. It is absolutely clean inside. Not a treasure, etching, nothing. Just smooth stone walls and the sound of generators ensuring we can keep on breathing. What’s that at the end of the chamber? A set of modern stairs that seem to rise forever to another hole in the wall. We bend over again through a Corbett passageway to the chamber of chambers. This was where the King was buried. This was where the clever King planned his own burial plot to ensure that he would never be found. Unfortunately he told his priests about the location (they needed to know so they could bury him). The day after the King’s internment the priests broke into the pyramid, took the treasures, ate the food left for the King’s returning soul, got very merry, and went on to buy a slab of condos in Acapulco. The King is dead indeed. When we get back to the car Abdullah is expiring. A word here about Ramadan. It is a spiritual time, a holy fasting month where all good Muslims do not eat between four am or thereabouts, and six in the afternoon. Not only not eat food, but take water too. So poor Abdullah has been driving in the heat of the day with no water touching his lips. He is a little cranky by now, not at us, just cranky. I don’t know how they do it. No wonder air conditioning is compulsory in Egypt. It also explains why in pre-air conditioning days Arabs always took a siesta in the middle of the day. It was siesta or death. Now that Egypt, like so many other countries are getting more competitive, the siesta has passed from usage, and air conditioning lets people go on working with no water and no food. In somethings the world really has gone backwards.
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Today we met our guide for the next week. His name is Sam. He lives in the expanding new parts of Cairo, way past the Giza pyramids. He is one of those people you like on first meeting. A young man, Sam has been leading Egyptian tours for nearly three years, and he proves his mettle immediately. One of our group (yes we join a group today) has had her bag stolen from her room. In it were her passport, cash and credit cards. Louise is a feisty New Zealander, but is not so feisty at this moment, Barely able to keep back tears, she does her best to be glad to be here, and genuinely interested in what we have done so far on the trip, but it is obvious her mind is on her passport and what the thieves are doing with her credit cards at this moment. Sam steps in, gives the hotel an Egyptian bollocking, cancels her cards, organises a replacement passport from the New Zealand embassy and reassures Lou that all will turn out well. Also on the tour are the eclectic collection of people you meet on such tours. On the plane coming over we happened to watch Nia Vadarlos’ new film My Life in Ruins, where she plays a tour guide in Athens. She starts the film by saying every tour group has the same characters: the clown (this this case probably me), the bitter divorcees out for a new romance, the complainer, the shouter, the now-it-all, the quiet one, the boozer. Happily our group appears to be nothing like that. We’ll know for sure tomorrow.
Phil’s Travel Blog Begins From Before He Even Left – Part 1
22 September 2009
And so it starts. This morning I woke to my last day in Melbourne, and the sound of the good wife proving that it was all lies when she said that if we packed last night, we would have the day free to do whatever we wanted before we went to the airport. I had been awake for three hours and already the house had to be re-vacuumed, the dog walked, the bags weighed (again), and a new decision made on whether to take the hiking boots. We are going to Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Turkey she says. Why would you want to take hiking boots, she says. Well my love, I answer in disguised exasperation. because we re going to be hiking in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. I get to take the hiking boots, but I pay for it by having to agree to take her cosmetics, toiletries, four changes of skirt, hair dryer and those hiking boots in my backpack. Our friend Vivian, who is looking after the house, dog, fish and invasive pigeons who demand a daily meal in order to poo on our clothes line, has just arrived to take us to the airport. I usually like to get to the airport in plenty of time but I miscued the time, and will be lucky to make the plane. A great start.
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We made the bag drop in time, but showed that funny element of human nature that when you manage to avoid the scimitar, you tend to get cocky. The gate was open, boarding and closing, yet both of us still tried to buy discs for our video camera. And also in that funny way of human nature, the attendant at the airport lounge tech shop was the slowest of any such attendant I had known. When he eventually managed to saunter to the counter, the till and scanner he usually used wasn’t working. This didn’t stop him trying to scan the discs again and again. Hell, I was beside hm and even I could tell that the counter wasn’t working. ‘Isnt it working I ask, one eye on the boarding gate, where the flight attendants are scanning tickets are the stragglers. I feel an urge to ask my server whether perhaps he could borrow the scanner from the gate, when I see that there is another counter, one that seems to have an operational red line coming from its scanner. Err, could you try that scanner, I ask. ‘That’s John’s!’, he amazed that I could make such a suggestion. The flight attendants have now finished with the stragglers and are standing t the gate looking at the list of missing passengers, with Jac and my names undoubtedly glaring at them. My slow attendant has now decided that perhaps John’s till would be worth a try. It’s locked. ‘I have to find John’, he says and before we can do anything, he goes off to find his mythical co-worker. He returns with John as the flight attendants are swiveling their eyes round the terminal, ominously like Stalag guards looking for Steve McQueen. John puts in his key and my package is scanned. Meanwhile Jac is off looking at the new iPod, the very one that she forbids me to have because ‘we don’t need it. How many songs do you need to carry around with you?’. She is obviously enchanted by the pink one. John’s scanner works, but his credit card reader doesn’t, as the flight attendants prepare to make what will probably be an annoyed announcement for a guy with an unpronounceable name and his wife to come immediately to the gate because the plane is fully boarded and his fellow passengers are waiting for him for an immediate departure. The card scans on the fifth attempt, I grab the discs, the pod-ogling wife, the day packs and run for the counter, the least I could do was to make to make it look like an emergency. I think I even limped a little. Boarding Passes scanned, we are half way down the aerobridge when I see that the attendant in the tech shop had given me tapes instead of discs. That’s karma for you.
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Abu Dhabi airport was a joy wrapped in a covering of drama with a seasoning of chaos. A fitting introduction to the Middle East, I predict. Being vegans, we had little expectation of the food we would be served on this trip. Felafel, tabouli and hommus. The three restaurants at Abu Dhabi airport do not know what Felafel is. Used as we are to airport food in Australia, we fear to eat anything that is wrapped in cellophane. One man promises us a vegan special, which he promises will have the very best cheese. Once we have made it known that vegan and cheese are, in the strict sense of the word mutually exclusive, we are served a repast that is delicious and most un-airport-like. Afterwards we wander the first floor of this circular transfer area and pass an open room where people are sleeping on carpets and embroidered pillows. It is a sleepng room available to everyone. After checking that it would not be a cultural faux pas for Jac to lie with me the scattered men, many of whom are Muslims, we find a spot and sleep for an hour in bliss. This sleeping room idea is a work of genius, obviously coming out of the siesta concept, but brilliant for any human being who suffers fatigue in air travel, and there are a few of us. The sight of Norwegian tourists slumped over seats in Sydney’s Kingsford-Smith airport has been burned in my brain since I was a weeny traveler. A room with carpets and quiet. A simple thing that could make air travel easier and healthier for everybody. I might send a letter about it when I get back to Melbourne, but I don;t hold out much hope. If airport authorities have a choice between traveler comfort and another McDonalds franchise, I know which one will get the space.
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Ah Cairo. If you’ve ever seen the Indiana Jones movie where Indy somehow is chasing around in the sewers of Paris being chased by Middle East extremists, and manages an escape by going up through a street sewer grate in the middle of a sidewalk cafe. He helps his obligatory girl up after him, dusts off his clothes and says, to the amazement of the startled diners: ‘Ah Paris!’, then you’ll know my feeling after escaping from twenty hours of flight and taxis to emerge on the streets of this ancient capital. Actually, not that ancient. That capital of Egypt was originally far south of Cairo, but one of the country’s many invading colonizers chose to move it to its present location in the north of the country, where the Nile was sure to be at its most polluted, and is. The traffic is amazingly heavy, even by Asian standards, so much so that I wished for the peace of Kuala Lumpur. There also seems to be no road rules. Our guide explained a few hours later that there are three road rules in Cairo: (1) There are no road rules (2) Try not to kill anyone (and the mortality rate is absurdly low, given that people choose which side of the road they drive on by whim) ad (3).. err… no-one knows. I am struck by how the ancient area of Dokki (pronounced doh-hee) is so similar to central Guangzhou in China, and Gyfadia in Athens, right down to the house numbers in enamel white on blue and the dusty stunted trees that seems not to grow out of the even dustier concrete with not a skerrick of soil in sight. Of course plastic bags of various vintage are ground into the street. I was admiring this uniformity of cities when we met Mo (short for Mohammad) who asks us if we need directions. Yes we say, we are trying to find a shop to buy some bottled water for the hot night. No problem, he says. There’s a good shop around the corner. e leads us there and warns us to pay no more than one U.S. dollar for a bottle. After savouring his advice and having made this financial killing, we chat with Mo further. He has been to Australia, and wants to go back very soon. He is an artist, he says. I tell him that I used to be an arts reporter and that Jac is in the arts too. Would we like to see his work? It’s just two houses away. Of course. Thrilled, he offers a Rosehip tea, which is great for hot weather. Two hours later we have bought one of his works and have booked with a cousin to be taken to the ‘real’ pyramids the next day. We go to bed wondering whether he saw us coming. The next morning at the hotel other travelers were also seen by Mo. They all have his artworks.
I’m off to Egypt and a whole of other places.
11 September 2009
Today is my last day on Radio Australia Today for about five weeks.
I’m off on a sojourn through the Middle East, starting with Egypt, where my grandmother grew up. Ah, the Pyramids and the Sphinx and the glorious markets. It might be genetic, but I love chatting and dealing with muslim people, so I’ll probably buy more than I need, but who cares. From there we head by train to Jordan and then Syria, and finally heading onto Turkey, a land where my grandfather (on the other side of the family) used to go to every weekend in his little fishing boat from his home island of Castellorizo. It was 1905 and he was a vibrant 15 year old, desperate to make his fortune. He took goods in the boat and would buy and sell with the Turks just across the waters.
So it’ll be a trip that’s part history, part family odyssey, part holiday and part photo opportunity.
I hope to be blogging from some of these wonderful places, so that you too can come along with me on this fabulous trip through history.
Till then..
- Phil
