The next morning we woke up at 7 am. Before we left from the hostel one of the staff members asked us about yesterday night and what we had been talking about. He told us that in order for us to be safe he wants to tell us Marc's real age. We was born in May 1972, so at the time he was 39-years-old. He had lied to everyone his age by ten years! We were a bit shocked but we kind of already knew that he had lied to us.
At the airport we called Mohammed like we had earlier promised to him. He came to meet us with three other airport segurity guys. We put our backpacks to the cargo hold and we were escorted to the check in with our own bodyguards. We felt like celebrities. We were really early at the airport so we had much time. Mohammed and his friend Ahmed (called BakkarBeko) had a 12-hour work day and they had two hours of per swift and they took the two hours to hang around with us. We had a good time talking with them at the airport. They walked us all the way to the gate and made sure we got to the airport bus going to the plane. Mohammed wrote a note to his friend who had a shift on a plane and I had to give the note to him (Eslam). On every EgyptAir flight there is one segurity guy on board. We had our own guard on the plane also. Eslam came to ask from us if we were fine or if we needed anything. During the flight I was a bit nervous about the Marc situation and how we were going to act around him.
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| Saija at Luxor airport |
At the Luxor airport there are no local buses going anywhere so we were forced to take a taxi to get out from the airport. The longer we postponed to accept the prices they offered the lower the prices finally got. We got of from the taxi at the Luxor temple and tried to find our hostel. Immediatelly we noticed that it was much much hotter in Luxor than it had been in Cairo! We found a way to our hostel by accident. We were trying to look some map on the corner of the street (in the end it wasn't even a map..) when this man asked us if we needed help. We were a bit rude to him at first. He didn't give up and finally he said that he's the owner of Bob Marley house hostel, the same hostel we were trying to find.. He wanted to take us there with his scooter. He, me and Saija and two huge backpacks on one scooter.
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| The narrow street to our hostel |
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The hostel was situated at the end of this narrow alley (in my opinion you can't even call that a street). The place was super hippie and it was covered with Bob Marleys face on walls, wallpapers, carpets etc. We noticed Marc immediately reading his book on one of the couches. He was so into his book that he didn't hear us at all. At first. When he finally got his eyes and ears of the book we told him really rudely that we want to get our backpacks to our own room (we had our own room with Saija) and then we were going to eat something. He looked a bit stunned. However, we promised to him that we could go together to the Luxor temple later on the same day.
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| Common Room |
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| Reception |
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| Outside the hostel "door" |
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| From in front of the temple |
Luxor temple looked nice but at this point it started to look like every other sight we had seen. We paid something to get in to the temple area. It was an old ruined temple with huge statues inside the temple. It also had hieroglyphs inside the walls. With Marc we behaved pretty nicely but tried to be more distance from him that we had been. And we really avoided taking pictures with him. We first walked though the temple and it was still sunny but when the sun got down so quickly Saija wanted to go around it another time because it looked a bit different with all the lights on.
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| Inside the temple |
After the Luxor temple we thought about going the see the Karnak temple near but me and Saija had seen enough temples for the day and were too tired. Later we heard that we missed something for not seeing the place. Well maybe we did but at that point we didn't want to go there and we really don't know or we're not that interested in about history, so I think for us it would have been just an other temple with statues. Instead we took a horse garriage ride and Saija absolutely loved it sitting on the front seat with the driver. I got stuck with Marc on the back seat.. Thank god it wasn't that long time. After the horse ride we walked through the Old Market Street where we tried to look for something to buy but the men were too irritating. I bought only one bracelet from there. Oh, and now I have to say that where ever we went with Marc or walked with him either Saija or myself were thought of being Marc's wife. Or that Marc had two wifes! "Lucky man with two wives!!" or the best one and the most embarrasing one for Marc was when people thought that he was our father! :D Me and Saija were constantly thought of being sisters.
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| Old Marker Street |
We found an internet cafe where we found out that Kurt and Greg had sent me an inbox in facebook asking if we were still alive and how it had gone with Marc. That was a really nice thing from them to do. We answered them that yes, we are still alive but Marc and we were the only ones in the hostel of maybe 100 beds..!
The first two nights we planned to stay on the East bank side of Luxor and one night in the West bank side since we almost immediatelly found that the city was really "empty" or that
we would have nothing to do to spend six days there. East bank side is the side were the two temples are located and where the majority of hotels/hostels and tourist facilities can be found. It's where all the tourists stay at. We found the city being very simple. The Luxor temple is in the middle of everything and we could walk everywhere. The West bank is the place where The Valley of the Kings and Queens are located and it's more countryside than the other side of River Nile and also most of the locals stay on the West.
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| Outside the hostel |
Learnt in Luxor:
- most of the men were wearing the Dishdashah; a long sleeved one piece dress that covers the whole body which helps to cool the body in long hot summer days. Men didn't wear those that much in Cairo.
- much hotter than in Cairo
- East Bank = tourists, West Bank = locals
- Haggle the prices! The prices could go down from 230 to 30 pounds. They test are you dumb enough the pay the crazy prices.
- Don't trust anyone, people try to make business and use you.
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