This morning we got up at 4:30 and stumbled down to the hotel lobby for our ride. While I wasn’t able to get Bill onto a camel in Giza, he was totally up for a hot air balloon ride, even though it involved two boats and great heights. Again, it is strange and kind of nice that nobody is here. Nice for us, that is, not for all the people working in the tourism industry in a tourist area with no tourists.
The ferry ride to the west bank included coffee and twinkies. We were seated with some other guests from our hotel and I got to chat with a man from Nottingham about Hong Kong. He lived there for a while about ten years ago. On the other side, we are divided up into different vans to go to the launch site. Bill and I somehow end up in a van with the film crew that videos the flight and tries to sell DVDs which interested us not at all. At the launch site, several balloons are getting underway.
We’re the last people to get into ours and then we are off. This is a new experience for both of us, and one I genuinely enjoyed. We got a wonderful view of the tombs and the west bank area.
We also got two flights as a group of tourists arrived late by train (George told us the sleeper train had gotten less reliable) and our balloon landed out on a flat, sandy area near a road to pick them up. It was so fast they didn’t take the time to drag out the steps. As the British lady next to me said, “they’re just chucking ‘em in!” That made for a slightly more crowded flight, but I was able to finagle my way back to the outside corner, so I didn’t mind. The second landing was a bit more interesting. He brought us down in the middle of the farmland much to the annoyance of the farmer. And to the delight of children who got to dance around laughing at the balloon deflating and beg for change.
Our van on the way back didn’t even include the film crew (I guess they went where there might be business), so we had a private ride to the docks followed by a ferry to ourselves. Paradise so exclusive it only includes us.
After breakfast, we headed back out with a new tour guide with a couple of archeology degrees under his belt who is looking into getting a doctorate. When we get to Karnak Temple, he asks if we want the lecture tour, the highlights tour, or just to be left alone to wander around. Being the sort of people who watch things on the Harvard Youtube channel, we obviously opted for the lecture tour. I’m pretty sure that the vast amount of typing Bill has been doing is a summary of the history, so I’ll stick with observational commentary.
Bill tried a couple of times to get the tour guide to talk about the drop off in tourism and his responses were evasive. He seemed quite determined to project the current experience as typical even though we mostly had the place to ourselves.
There is a downside to having the run of the place – the vast number of people who are trying to get money from you have not decreased proportionally. While in both Karnak and Luxor Temples, so long as our guide was in sight, nobody bothered us. His philosophy was that he’d give us a tour with a lot of history about the structures, point out places where the original colors were still visible, explain some of the scenes carved into walls, and then he’d give us some time to wander around and take pictures on our own. As soon as he was out of sight, the vultures would descend.
I read Bill’s comments about feeling bad that he’s ignoring people trying to be nice at the pyramids and my response was that he’s never been a single woman. He feels bad because he is making the mistake of letting them define his context. And those were guys with services and products to sell.
These guys don’t have anything but the desire to take your money. They are constantly calling out to you, “Please, sir, please ma’am, let me show you this, there’s a photograph here, there’s a story to this panel.” Whatever they can to try to lure you into an isolated area and then make the universal gesture for greasing their palms with your cash because they’ve just done so much for you.
I decided it might be an interesting experience to see how they operated and let one lead me off in Luxor with only a token of resistance on my part. He was super polite the entire time that he was forcing me into an isolated area, taking my hands to make me touch some carving he didn’t explain, tugging at my camera to take a picture of me I wasn’t interested in, generally playing off of the societal expectation of politeness to keep me from yelling at him or running away before asking for money. I handed him a twenty, which is about $3.30, because it was the smallest bill I had. Pretty generous for someone who has done nothing but waste my time and harass me, but I did elect to try the experience. He held the bill up and said, “No, you don’t understand, 100.” I laughed at him and walked off. So, yeah, douche bag frat guys have the same operating principles. Here’s the picture. Obviously worth every penny.
Shields back up, here are some pictures of Karnak Temple.
And Luxor Temple.
After our tours, we returned to the comfort of our hotel and again wiled away the rest of the day enjoying the weather and relaxing as boats glide. Sipping drinks on the banks of the Nile while the sun goes down is a pretty nice way to end the day.
The ferry ride to the west bank included coffee and twinkies. We were seated with some other guests from our hotel and I got to chat with a man from Nottingham about Hong Kong. He lived there for a while about ten years ago. On the other side, we are divided up into different vans to go to the launch site. Bill and I somehow end up in a van with the film crew that videos the flight and tries to sell DVDs which interested us not at all. At the launch site, several balloons are getting underway.
We’re the last people to get into ours and then we are off. This is a new experience for both of us, and one I genuinely enjoyed. We got a wonderful view of the tombs and the west bank area.
We also got two flights as a group of tourists arrived late by train (George told us the sleeper train had gotten less reliable) and our balloon landed out on a flat, sandy area near a road to pick them up. It was so fast they didn’t take the time to drag out the steps. As the British lady next to me said, “they’re just chucking ‘em in!” That made for a slightly more crowded flight, but I was able to finagle my way back to the outside corner, so I didn’t mind. The second landing was a bit more interesting. He brought us down in the middle of the farmland much to the annoyance of the farmer. And to the delight of children who got to dance around laughing at the balloon deflating and beg for change.
Our van on the way back didn’t even include the film crew (I guess they went where there might be business), so we had a private ride to the docks followed by a ferry to ourselves. Paradise so exclusive it only includes us.
After breakfast, we headed back out with a new tour guide with a couple of archeology degrees under his belt who is looking into getting a doctorate. When we get to Karnak Temple, he asks if we want the lecture tour, the highlights tour, or just to be left alone to wander around. Being the sort of people who watch things on the Harvard Youtube channel, we obviously opted for the lecture tour. I’m pretty sure that the vast amount of typing Bill has been doing is a summary of the history, so I’ll stick with observational commentary.
Bill tried a couple of times to get the tour guide to talk about the drop off in tourism and his responses were evasive. He seemed quite determined to project the current experience as typical even though we mostly had the place to ourselves.
There is a downside to having the run of the place – the vast number of people who are trying to get money from you have not decreased proportionally. While in both Karnak and Luxor Temples, so long as our guide was in sight, nobody bothered us. His philosophy was that he’d give us a tour with a lot of history about the structures, point out places where the original colors were still visible, explain some of the scenes carved into walls, and then he’d give us some time to wander around and take pictures on our own. As soon as he was out of sight, the vultures would descend.
I read Bill’s comments about feeling bad that he’s ignoring people trying to be nice at the pyramids and my response was that he’s never been a single woman. He feels bad because he is making the mistake of letting them define his context. And those were guys with services and products to sell.
These guys don’t have anything but the desire to take your money. They are constantly calling out to you, “Please, sir, please ma’am, let me show you this, there’s a photograph here, there’s a story to this panel.” Whatever they can to try to lure you into an isolated area and then make the universal gesture for greasing their palms with your cash because they’ve just done so much for you.
I decided it might be an interesting experience to see how they operated and let one lead me off in Luxor with only a token of resistance on my part. He was super polite the entire time that he was forcing me into an isolated area, taking my hands to make me touch some carving he didn’t explain, tugging at my camera to take a picture of me I wasn’t interested in, generally playing off of the societal expectation of politeness to keep me from yelling at him or running away before asking for money. I handed him a twenty, which is about $3.30, because it was the smallest bill I had. Pretty generous for someone who has done nothing but waste my time and harass me, but I did elect to try the experience. He held the bill up and said, “No, you don’t understand, 100.” I laughed at him and walked off. So, yeah, douche bag frat guys have the same operating principles. Here’s the picture. Obviously worth every penny.
Shields back up, here are some pictures of Karnak Temple.
And Luxor Temple.
After our tours, we returned to the comfort of our hotel and again wiled away the rest of the day enjoying the weather and relaxing as boats glide. Sipping drinks on the banks of the Nile while the sun goes down is a pretty nice way to end the day.
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