A Trip to Egypt 劉偉澍－活得精采，劉偉澍的學習網站

A Trip to Egypt by David W. S. Liu

January 27 to February 6, 2004

Egypt size is about 1 million square k.m. with population of 70 million people.

70 million people live in 4% both side of Nile River. It is highly populated in two big city, Cairo (capital of Egypt, 17 million people) and Alexandria (the largest commercial and harbor city in Egypt, 9 million people).

The weather in the winter in north Egypt is abut 18 degrees in the day time and only 8 degrees in the night. When sunshine it is very hot can reach 30-35 degrees. It is a typical desert weather. After 8 days in Egypt my face has sun tan and it will take some time to back to my original color.

劉偉澍

It seems to me, there are four kind of different races in Egypt; i.e. 1. Egyptian original, 2. Black and darker skin from the south, 3. European (mainly Greek and Rome during Alexander and Roman conquest Egypt) whiter skin and 4. people immigrant from Arabian a lighter dark skin.

Egypt is still an agriculture country, 80% of people are farmers. Personal income on average is about US$100 per month only. Egyptian major income comes from tourists, export of gasoline, electricity power from Nile River and export of cotton.

Winter is the best season for tour in Egypt. A lot of tourists come from Japan, China, Taiwan (Asia groups) and European countries and almost NO tour groups from U.S. Security check is very sever, you can see a lot of policemen with machine guns on the road, kind of scaring. My impression of Egypt is

* Very hot, even in winter is still hot;

* Very dry and need to drink a lot of water;

* Very slow, every thing is very slow even in a 5-star hotel the service is slow as well. You need to slow down a little bite and you need to be very patient to adjust for local life style.

Cruise tour on the Nile River from Luxor to Aswan (4-day cruise) is very entertaining. Nile River is the longest river in the world. The Nile winds its way 6,500 kilometers from its origins in the Great African lakes to Mediterranean. It is also kind of entertaining to have a Nile cruise dinner with an original belly dancer in the Nile, Cairo. I am glad to see Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, Egyptian Museum, the great temple of Karanak, Abu Simbel Temples, … etc. We stayed one night at Mena House Hotel, the palace at the pyramids which was Cairo Conference at World War II. I don’t like Egyptian sourvenior businessman always chase tourist and often time there is no toilet at scenery spots. I took 10-rolls of photos and again I will select pictures and edit to an travel album book with subtitle to share with my students and my friends.

On my way back from Cairo to Bangkok, we could not catch our transit flight at Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. and we need to spent one more day at UAE, therefore we arranged a half day city tour at Abu Dhabi which I didn’t expect to visit Arabian country (Bahrain and UAE two countries in this trip).

While I am writing this note, I also listen to the very attractive Arabian CD music. It is quite a unique travel experience for me (similar to silk road), especially when I walked alone in the Luxor night market and I was surrounded by a lot of Egyptian local peop

les.