Warning! Very long post (c/o Simon)

Hey there,

I was ill for 5 days - this is the longest I have ever been ill and made me really quite cross. But I'm better now so I should attempt to rustle up some sort of e-mail updatey type thing. Unfortunately Hurghada may be the sex tourism capital of Egypt but it sure ain't speedy when it comes to internet connections - it's kind of like typing in gravy - so soz for continuing delays, etc, etc. I like to think that my continuing slackness is softening you up for my sojourn in Sudan; everything I do is out of love for you - you personally!

After the true gem of Dakhla I moved onto Al-Kharga oasis, the last in the chain of oases. The Egyptian government has attempted to create a new town here rather in the manner of the soviets; all wide, empty, leafy streets and large official buildings fronted by large flags and
statues. In an effort to add to the vaguely oppressive atmosphere all people were banned from the streets when I arrived, except for the most clearly obvious 'undercover' cop I'd ever seen. Dressed in a smart cardigan, way too tight trousers, and weird platform shoes that actually enforced a goosestep, he surreptitiously followed me around the empty streets. The first hotel I went into doubled their prices when he sidled in after me, and I caused all kinds of issues
when I decided to stay at the government guest house.

I had to sit still whilst various police and army personal milled around and phone calls were made. I got to see the room but was locked out. The pompous, fat receptionist made me take a photo of him. When he saw how pompous and fat he looked, he made me take another photo of him, holding a clay ashtray. Perhaps he thought it made him look humble but it rather
resembled those pictures people take of Nigerian scammers standing on one leg with a fish on their head, especially as he wore his turban in a rather unconventional style.

This entertainment over we settled in to wait. I was asked what my plans were going to be, when I would leave, and everyone expressed amazement that I was planning to walk the 2 - 3 kilometres to the attractions outside of town. Dakhla was not a walky place. In fact, Egypt's not a walky place. Egyptians are constantly surprised when I say I want to walk - only the poorest person wouldn't take public transport which is cheap and plentiful, and in a country which gets
over 40 degrees in the summer that's understandable. They sometimes get really upset if I won't get in, even offering the trip for free.

They also think that people don't like being alone. The Egyptians legendery friendliness can also be a bit of a drawback as getting a book read can actually be a rather arduous task - people will see you alone and come for a chat to be welcoming. And once they've started talking to you, you're their friend, so they'll want to talk for hours, and come and visit you at your hotel, and just generally play a part in making you love Egypt. Which is great. Most of the time.
But given the Egyptian idea of hell is walking on your own, which is kind of my idea of heaven, there's bound to be misunderstandings. The question I'm most often asked is "Where are you going?" The second most common, after I say I'm just walking around having a look, is
"But where are you going?"

Anyway, at this point (or the point before the digression), pompous guy's screamingly camp friend turned up. There seems to be a culture hear rather like 70s Britain where gays are okay as long as they are hilariously gay (bearing in mind that only the passive partner is
officially gay here). This was the second guy I'd met who would dance around and shout "I'm free!" in Arabic and have everyone rolling in the aisles. His act continued till eventually we got a final call saying I could stay, but the price had once again doubled. At this point I'd spent 4 hours trying to get accommodation and I rather embarrassingly lost it, storming out trailed by soldiers and people who definitely weren't cops. Luckily there was a rather lovely sunset going on so I calmed down and checked into a lovely, friendly hotel.

The next morning there was a bang on the door at 7:30:

"Where you go today? When you go? When you go to Luxor?"

Unfortunately I got pissed off for the second time in 24 hours, though the worst thing I could say in Arabic was "[Not, Not, NOT GOOD!]" and eventually slammed the door in the cops face and went back to bed. Sara had taught me something to do with people's sisters and their
sexual proclivities but I think I was lucky I couldn't remember it. When I went downstairs I found that I could get rid of the cops by telling them where I was going - as long as I had a definite plan (or pretended I did) it was fine. Given that there were cops every 50 metres along the road I don't think I was in much danger. I would literally pass them every couple of minutes, and they'd all wave and we'd exchange "salaams!"

There was a great museum in town, and a cool, practically complete temple just outside it (which was closed), but I did also go and visit a Christian necropolis from Byzantine times with some fascinating art, and stumble across the desert to an old monastery amidst dunes and
blighted trees. Later I sat on the old ruins of another temple and watched another
spectacular sunset (Dakhla seemed particularly blessed with them for some reason), and all the time I made sure I told the Police where I was to be heading next.

This ploy was something I carried over to Minya, the next city I visited. It was mainly Coptic Christian (girls with hair again!) and had just been opened up to tourists properly - I signed a peice of paper saying I didn't require a Police escort and whenever Policemen who just happened to be hanging around hotels asked me where I was going I'd just say "Tea" and they were pretty happy.

The Copts are pretty interesting. A lot of the men have a cross tattooed between finger & thumb on their right hand, and it seems obligatory for them to have crosses festooned over their houses. One had a three story beach towel of George killing the dragon up the
whole side of their house. Their churches are normally quite spectacular from the outside but rather gauche inside.

On the whole they seemed very friendly and happy, though one Doctor launched into a massive tirade of how much he hated Egypt, Egyptians, Muslims - pretty much everything. "I hate this fucking dirty country, everyone will slit your throat and steal your money. Why would you come here instead of Europe? Everyone here is so unfriendly." Whilst he was saying this I was being helped by someone to find a truck to take me to the tombs - everyone I met in Upper Egypt was ridiculously friendly and went totally out of their way to help me, and I very rarely got asked for Bakhsheesh. It does seem to be a theme though that any rich Egyptians I meet berate and hate their country whilst those lower down have a fierce pride bordering on blindness.

Indeed, when I've talked to Egyptians about politics (always prefacing it with a joke about throwing my shoes at George Bush which splits their sides) people have told me how much they love the current government, even though it's thoroughly corrupt and is about to try
and pass the same law which brought about the Oligarchy in Russia and is universally derided as one of the worst laws ever, & which only benefits elites. They also tell me how much they admire both ex-president Sadat & Nasser, which is a bit like saying that you thought both Thatcher & Scargill were tippety top, as they followed diametrically opposed policies. I compare it to the political awareness and hunger for debate that I found in Pakistan and find it a bit wanting. But then, I think they're also desperate to give a good impression of their country.

The main reason to visit Minya is to visit the Pharonic Middle Kingdom tombs of Beni Hasan. Travelling through sugar cane fields in tuk-tuk and the crowded backs of pick-ups, crossing the Nile by a fat-man's ferry, wandering through fields alone up rocky valley sides, to the greatest Middle Kingdom site where tourists barely venture. Once the tombs are unlocked by a
somnambulent ghaffir resplendent in blue turban and gallibellia, I gaze on the fresh paintings of wrestling and hunting from 3 millenia ago. One wall is an astounding picture of a man hunting birds through swamps and reeds; I know his whole life story but finally was able to absorb wide-eyed his memorial to himself - the wonder of life he sought to continue for eternity. The colours are bright and the lines clear. It's astonishing.

The next day I went to see the remains of Tell El-Amarna, the city founded by Akhenaten, the first guy to think monotheism might be a good idea. He founded a new city to get away from the old religion and start worshipping one fella only, but looking at the blasted plain
scarred with old canals and roads you can tell it didn't work out too well. Only the tombs remain,
again fabulously decorated, but you can tell where the King should be as he's been carefully chiselled out of all the friezes, leaving only his outline. And what an outline! Along with coming up with the idea of 'just one god', he also started an artistic revolution where instead of the perfect platonic ideals of most Egyptian art everyone had distended heads with bizarre features and slumping pot-bellies.

I then returned to Cairo. It was great to be back in this vital, churning city. It was less great to be hit with some kind of bug and have to convaless under my mosquito net; it did make me feel rather colonial though. Sadly it ate up half my time there, though I did manage to go and see Aida before hand - my new favourite opera albiet with very meagre competition, even after another run in with a Tie Fascist who Did Not like the cut of my jib - but I was already feeling
pretty ropey when I went to see the Luxor Breakbeat explosion. I thought this sounded pretty exciting, till I found they were fronted by a man who looked like an Egyptian gene splice of Bill Bailey & Jean Reno. The fact that he played piano exactly like Bailey's bad Belgian jazzman almost made me wonder if it was a disguise and some kind of meta-joke, but the skull-crushing tedium of a man playing the worst sort of jazz with occasional embellishments from accordian and long, long bass solos did not raise a wry grin, except on the exceedingly satisfied bassist's face. At one stage Belgian Jazz Daddy brought on a man with a box to introduce his 'new direction', which was some electronic music on its own for 5 minutes until his off-key 'jazz'
chords took over and the rest of the band played what seemed like exactly the same kind of music as before. I was not ecstatic.

Still, after the illness was passed I tried to cram in everything I'd been missing. There's just so much to see and do in this wonderful city. I went to the city of the dead, which is notable for, aside from it's superlative mosques, the fact that people actually live amongst the tombs. It's not as bad as it sounds, the tombs were designed to make quite nice houses so that the dead would be
remembered, and it's a fairly decent neighbourhood. People come and picnic here. They also go and pray in the Qaitbey Mosque, which is my second favourite in the world. It's a lot smaller than my favourite one, petite even, and has a exquisitely carved dome, reputedly never
bettered (though I thought the one nearby was pretty tidy as well). Inside it's a beautiful music box, perfectly balanced, different stripes of stone playing off against the circular arches and
arabesqued windows. It was also home to several extremely vocal birds, which made it an even nicer place to come and chill in. After that I went to the only park in Cairo, which is as relaxing as you would imagine a small but perfectly formed park in the middle of a city of 20 million people who all really want to go to a park would be. Nice views over Islamic Cairo though, and in the middle you couldn't hear any car horns - perhaps drowned out by the bustle.

I also went to Coptic Cairo, which is the old part of the city that has been there since Roman times. I went on a Sunday when all the Copts in the city turn up and hang out and flirt. To be honest that was probably the best bit, seeing how these modern Copts took their heritage very lightly, though they would kiss all the relics. There was a cool museum as well - the Copts were turning out clothes with Matisse prints on them over a thousand years ago.

Other highlights were a trip to the other, older Pyramids at Saqara. Apparently these are the oldest stone bricked memorials in the world, or summat, and they were pretty impressive, especially under a baleful sun shining through wan clouds. The whole thing took on quite a
post-apocalyptic look, especially with all the dogs wandering across the desert. Again, there were amazing tombs (Old Kingdom this time), which had lots of great images of hippos, fish, and lots of day to day scenes. I'm not sure Tez would have approved though as they quite often put the hands on the wrong way round. Its kind of difficult to find different words to describe all the different tombs you see, and seeing as I'm in Luxor now I've got to save some for the next e-mail, so I'll keep schtum on this other than to say Saqara was actually a real highlight. They're still digging up things here (including another pyramid they found whilst I've been in Egypt - obviously bit smaller than the great one) and I could come again should I have the fortune to return to the country.

Admittedly though one of my favourite things was going to an Electro night at the French Cultural Centre. It was just really different, as in it was like a really good night back home, but with more pretty French girls dancing and lots of ridiculously smily Arab men bouncing
around like they'd achieved oneness with Allah. They'd brought some French guy over to DJ and do a live set because "yoo are not knoweeng zees music in zees city." There was a slight air of the absurd as there were also some French families there and some of the little girls did over-excited-wedding-dancing in the smoke machine. It was just good, and a bit of home out here, which is nice.

I was also thinking of going to the cinema, but they were still showing the same Arabic movies that were playing when I first arrived. And Saw V. Fair enough I guess. On the flipside though, the one souvenir I had thought I'd let myself buy is a t-shirt with some Arabic on it. I can now officially state that there is not one single garment of clothing in Egypt with Arabic writing on it (though I didn't check the washing instructions), it's mostly brands in English or big statements like LA MOTHERFUCKER. There was one I dearly wanted to buy for Matt but I'm afraid you'll have to make do with a photo of it once I get to Ethiopia. I can't imagine anyone ever buying it so
if you're ever in Cairo I can point out the shop.

I also spent lots of time in the wonderful coffeshop of dreams again, though due to my throat sheesha was out, and caught a few more concerts. There's some surprisingly good museums - it turns out the Egyptians aren't shit at modern art - and a good museum of impressionist and post-impressionist peices. All in all though, by the end, I'd started to feel like I needed to either move on or actually have a life there. There was a few people I knew, and quite a few others who would recognise me, but I think after you spend a month somewhere you need to properly plug into the city, get a home/job/social scene/project or whatever, or it starts feeling a bit
weird. Cairo's a great city; I could imagine living there, perhaps October - April or summat to avoid the summer, and maybe when they've finally finished the 3rd metro line, which actually connects up the places you'd want to go. But it was definitely time for me to move on, though I would be sad to think that I'd never see Cairo again.

I decided to break up the trip to Luxor at Hurghada, halfway down on the coast, partly because I doubt there'll be many seaside resorts in Sudan or Ethiopia, and partly because I felt like doing some diving again. The journey down through the eastern desert at sunset, listening to a remixed requiem as we drove past the birthplace of monasticism and a giant windfarm, was pretty awesome.

Hurghada, though, is a burp of a city. It's not awful, with a lovely setting tossed between sandy hills around a few bays, each overlooking a handful of islands, but the hotels and apartments have been belched out haphazardly. All the beach space has been bought up by downmarket
package holiday hotels, and out of town the all inclusive resort strip stretches for miles. Some of these hotels, modelled on Islamic architecture, can be quite striking. One was modelled on an ocean liner and was called the Titanic hotel (I was thinking of setting up a rival Piper Alpha hotel next door). Wherever you are, and I was in the very cheapest hotel, as soon as you step out the door you're onto scrotty, litterswept streets lined with building sites. Luckily, they're all being constructed on Egyptian time, so you're never disturbed by much noise of working.

It was also here that I made the rather unsavoury discovery that Hurghada is the Egyptian sex tourism capital. This being an Islamic country, it's all 40s and 50s women coming to find some Egyptian cock. I'd seen a bit in Sinai, but never been sure, but here in Hurghada the bars in the Egyptian part of town I was staying in was packed with them. I've got to say that I was less disgusted by the whole thing than I thought I might be. I have no idea about any financial
transactions taking place, but both parties seemed pretty happy about the relationship. I did hear a few sob stories from Egyptians telling me about their 'girlfriend' in England who they hadn't heard anything from in 2 years; would I just help them write a valentines message?,
so maybe it's more exploitative than I think. Maybe it's just part of the same bullshit attitude that makes tabloids go phwoar! whenever a female teacher sleeps with one of her male pupils, but bays for blood should the opposite occur. Having never seen any 'traditional' sex
tourism I couldn't be sure.

At one point though I got a bit manic (/pissed) whilst in a bar for some live music. The band were a fairly awful latin cover band (damn that Ricky Martin) with skinny european girls sucking in their cheeks and trying the best to cover their germanic accents. Suddenly a local
belly dancer jumped up and started gyrating and there was a swarm of men, both local and foreign, crowding round, leaving all the women at their tables alone. I got a bit confused and believed I was watching the end of civilisation or the last days of Rome, just more tawdry and
tired.

However, the next day I went out on a boat and had 3 dives. There were loads of rays, a sea snake and the infamous fish which I have been assured was not as big as any type of Fiat car (sorry), but was still, in all probability, over 2 metres long. It was certainly the
biggest Napoleon our divemaster had seen, and it was genuinely, hugely, massively big. The only problem was a russian guy I was diving with. The first time I saw him snap off a big bit of coral I
thought he was just having problems with his buouyancy and had stuck his hand out randomly, but on the next dive I saw him pause, reach out and purposively break off about 20-30 years worth of growth, then drop it. I literally screamed out under water, which didn't achieve much,
and considered berating him back on the boat but the only Russian I can remember is "Please, Good, Thankyou," which I thought would insufficiently get my feelings across. I'd heard that Russians treated the sea with contempt, and it's tempting to come up with some idea of Russians feeling at war with nature because of the climate of their homeland, but really I just think he was a massive twat. Dick. Still, it was great to be back in the water and it was a lot more natural this time.

Ir was also great to climb one of the sandy bluffs and stare down over the mess beneath at sunset, with the sounds of all the call to prayers ringing around you. I had some nice fish. I chilled out. I met some nice Egyptians.

That night, at a bar, the live music was an old European guy perhaps not blessed with the best singing tone, with a drum he occasionally beat roughly in time with the backing track. He did medleys of Abba, a whole load of real shit, but for some reason I was ecstatically happy. At one point, a couple jumped up unbidden and started jiving to "Thankyou for the Music" The sins of the previous night were washed away. People are great, yadah yadah.

Anyway, I need to get this finally sent. I've almost caught up, and the above's a hell of a lot for you to get through as it is. Do please send me your stories or lack thereof. You can imagine how
upset I am to be missing the financial story of our lifetimes so let me know what it actually feels like. Does it feel like the start of a great depression, or does it just feel cold? Has there been a
noticible increase in tumbleweed? Are the cranes still building away over Sheffield or has someone realised that they might not be able to fill all the new shops, leaving the moor as one big crater? These are the kind of things I need to know. And also, like, if you've spent all weekend spanking nozz and cooking roast dinners. TELL ME.

Some may also have detected a hint of my 3 month crisis in the above. There were times I was getting a bit sick of things, but I've met some great people in Luxor, I'm really excited about the Sudan, and I think I'm through it now.

Love and wonderfulness, you know you matter,

Simon