Upper Egypt, Luxor & Aswan trip (1)

Assalamualaikum and hi!

I feel good today and I would like to post a series of my vacation diary to Luxor & Aswan during last January. I am documenting my beautiful memory along the vacation while my memories is still fresh-but-not-too-fresh. :p. It was 4 days and 5 nights by Shaqr Travel. Guess what? It was cool!

28^th January 2013:

My friends and I started our journey from our place by minibus at about 8pm and reached two and half hour later at 10^th street, Cairo. There, we waited for other friends while eating hot ‘togen’ in very cold surrounding at the side of the road during night. It was superb. lols. We were so hungry that time. Then, we left Cairo at about 2am due to some problem using an aerobus.  It took around 12 hrs to reach Luxor. Wow, ‘splendid’ hours in the bus! -_- Slept then awake, we kept repeating this cycle till we reached a stop at Ras Gharib for Subh prayer after 4 hrs journey. Ras Gharib was colder than our last stop in Cairo. The chilly wind plus water exposure was like a great package that really made me shivering. Only Allah knows. We managed to watch sunrise even it was short.

We prayed outside.. cold~

Beautiful scenery along the journey.:)

29^th January 2013:

 Yes, we continued our journey and went to Hurghada to fill the solar/gas. Hurghada is very beautiful place but we can do nothing about it.

Only this picture i got at Hurghada. The windmill! 

 We were sitting in our bus and we just kept waiting and waiting in line for solar. Since Egypt Revolution, there are problems with supplying system of the solar/gas in Upper Egypt. Oh yea, while we boring-ing ourselves inside the bus, we got special things from our travel agent and it was………..Food!! Yeay!  It’s been a long time I didn’t eat Ayam Balado’. So, this was my chance! After about 2hr, our bus finished the process. We proceeded our journey to Luxor and reached there at about 3pm. We performed Zuhr & Asr prayers and met Mr Hassan at Karnak Temple.

 At first, I thought ‘Who is he? Why he lead us?” Even the word tourist guide itself didn’t floating in my mind. Haha..  (right in the picture with black leather coat)

This is the entrance of Karnak temple

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I was just following my new friends whenever they went and stopped when hearing Mr Hassan explanations. However my friends and i did our extra own things snapping pictures and did whatever pose we have. Lols.

See! Me in green was doing my own business. lol. :p

Additional actors behind. :p

With Yukinohanian.<3 td="">

 It was a short tour. The sun was setting down. We got into the bus and at that time, i knew that Mr Hassan was our tourist guide.. He introduced himself and explained a bit on Egypt history. We reached Golden Palace Hotel and checked in. 

Was so Golden Palace~

We planned to go out that night to nearby area but our limb doesn’t allow us to do it as we were very tired. We ate rice that had been cooked by our travel agent staffs. Cool~  We relaxed ourselves and slept early as we needed to check out very early in the next morning.

30^th  January 2013

We woke up early in the morning and prepared ourselves. Guess what, we were the early bird who checked out very early in the morning. Congratulation dear!  The others still didn’t come down to the lobby yet. We waited for them while eating bar of Cadbury chocolate and talking to new friends of Fifi and Feeza. After all met up at the lobby, we got into the bus.  It about 7 am when we moved to Aswan approximately and we got chocolate banana and apam' for breakfast.

The journey was about 4 hrs. When we reached Aswan, I was very amazed of its scenery. So beautiful. I saw the oldest and big dam’, black rocks, lakes, boat and others. We stopped at Philae Valley. Before we went out from the bus, Mr Hassan told us that is not necessary to bring out our coat. However when we went down, the weather seems a bit windy and we took ours back in the bus and wore it. We were ambling and seeing the survenirs sold. There were boys who sold postcard for only 5le. Wow, it was dirt cheap! Along the way to our boat, I saw black men were selling their man-made merchandise like Egypt bead necklace, bracelets, Nubian kit-kopiah’, unique camel woodcraft and others.

camel woodcraft .. sooooo many~

Sculpture? All in black skin colour..:p

Pretty picture~ I was not in the picture.:( role as photographer.

Cute right??

Philae temple from far view

We arrived Philae temple after few minutes by boat. Mr Hassan explained the history of this temple with full of spirit. He also chose some of participant to be his model of whoever involve in this history. Lol. In my opinion, it was not necessary to told us much detail about it.

He was in excited stage.

 We interested more to take much pictures. After so much explanation, we were allowed to take picture for only 5 minutes duration. It was not fair! By the way, we made it longer by ourselves. So many picture were taken there. 

personal shot..:P

We asked a mat salleh to take this snap.. lol. nice picture!

I love this picture! 

Then we got back on the boat to Philae valley again and bought some souvenir. My housemate and I managed to buy our friendship bracelet with cool price! After that, we went back to the bus and go to our hotel.

------------------ will be continue in part 2----------------------