Tickets and Bags Please

We’ll the departure day had to come eventually. 17th of August – 20 hours of flying across the world to experience things we’ve only seen on TV and read in books. And what an experience it has been so far…

Adelaide to KL was a brilliant flight. Flew Malaysia Airlines and had delicious food, decent(ish) coffee and even a few cheeky beers. Tim and I played the inflight entertainment gizmo for ages, engaging in a best of 17 game of pong. Our row consisting myself, Matty and Timbo and a young couple from Melbourne also played 7 rounds of Trivia for 3 hours to pass the time. Basically this is the standard of a good flight…

Now for the standard of a shit flight. We learnt in Adelaide that we were to fly from KL to Cairo via Air Egypt instead of Malaysia. We didn’t have any qualms about this as Malaysia is the carrier for Egypt. We just didn’t want to lose our bags…
Anyway, we boarded what was supposed to be an 11 and a half hour flight. Now being used to creature comforts, we expected comfortable seats, good staff, air con and TVs’. Nothing. Shit seats, shit hostess’ 25 degree cabin temperatures and no TVs’. We tried to sleep, but it would have been more comfortable sleeping on a pile of carrots. Mixed with nails. Matt tried to ask for water 3 times before he actually received it - an hour later. We attempted to sleep, but with backbreaking seats and 25 degree cabin temperature we had next to none. We arrived in Cairo at 4.57am and walked through customs by purchasing $15 visas from shifty banks. We entered the arrival hall. No bags. Nothing topped off with bad English speaking ‘helpers’. At the time they had no idea if our bags were even in orbit of the planet. Tim was dead set about to break somebody’s spine. All we could do was lodge a claim and what for a ‘call’ from the airport to say when/if our bags would arrive.

Its been 6 days and 66.66666% of our bags have arrived. Matt and Timbo’s are here in Cairo, whereas mine is somewhere within the realms of earth, perhaps closer to Narnia. On Thursday we spent a solid 14 hours in the airport being fucked around by ridiculous ‘staff’ employed by Egypt Air. We waited around in burger king for four hours alone before we went on a quest to find our bags. Inevitably we had to receive special permission to venture into the depths of the Egypt Air luggage store where the two lads found their bags. Obviously I was pretty gutted, a 6 month journey and my first stop I lose my bag. We’ve ventured to the airport 4 out of 6 days so far so I’m a bit over it…with any luck, Egypt Air will accidently send my bag to cairo -_-
We have recently transferred accommodation too. Moving from downtown in a $6 hostel, to our tour hotel which is 4 stars or something. Whilst it’s lovely having the creature comforts around, by general consensus I and the other two members of our circus miss the Dahab Youth Hostel. There we met some amazing people. Seriously Amazing. Amazing X100. On the first day we met a group of Christian workers who (long story short) are travelling the world assisting the less fortunate. In particular we started hanging out with a large Croatian/Australian guy named Ivan. Possibly one of the funniest most welcoming, awesome people on the planet. Within 20 minutes of chatting with the big fella, he asked if he could bunk with us. Of course being awesome blokes we accepted. Bad move…haha. Nah not really, Ivan showed us around Cairo on the first day, helping us suss out our luggage problem. He told us good cheap places to eat and even took us to a free Ramadan feast which we frequented after that. We also started hanging out with another of the Christian workers, Darko. Darko was from Bosnia & Herzegovina and is one awesome bloke. One night we just sat out on the balcony just chatting with him about life for about 3 hours just sharing stories on girls, awkward situations and shit like that. Its nice people like that - that make adjusting to life on the ‘road’ so much easier. On our 2nd last night in the hostel, we also started chatting with an English dude, Charlie. Fucking. Top. Bloke. Sat out on the balcony for four hours chatting about cricket. The next night we went found a bar and smashed beers and chatted more cricket and shit like that. Whilst we will probably meet hundreds of people these 3 guys get a massive mention for being the first dudes we befriended on our trip.
We had a look around the Pyramids today also. Absolutely fantastic, although Matt did fear for his life at one stage. Basically at the great pyramid, there are a lot of scammers. One suss character approached young, naïve Matthew James and wrapped a headscarf around his head. This suss character who I will name for the sake of the story Habib. Anyway, Habib wrapped this headscarf on Matty’s head and yelled ‘free photo’. Obviously we knew it was a shitty deal, so we thought ‘yeah, we’ll get the photo and then just bail’. We’ll it didn’t exactly turn out like that. What happened is Matt somehow ended up on a camel for the ‘free photo’ whilst Tim and I went up onto a rock to get a good vantage point to get the happy snap. Habib then proceeds to smack the camel which gets up and under the guidance of Habib and some other shit bloke, Matt is taken behind a massive rock away from us and the main tourist section. I bailed because a man was rubbing me with a stick, whilst Tim stood there and did some rubbing of his own. In the meantime, Habib and shit bloke begin to heckle Matt, grabbing at his pockets demanding him for money. Luckily Matt had bugger all in his pockets and nothing was stolen but said ‘I’ll get off and get money off my friends’ which was fair. Now because I was still weirded out by the stick rubbing man, I was off chilling in Mordor and managed to score a pretty good seat for today’s entertainment. What proceeded to happen was Matt and Tim walked off toward me, closely pursued by Habib, Shit Bloke and Stick Man. In the middle of the tourist section of Giza Pyramids a shouting match between the two sides broke out. Habib and his convoy of shit demanding Matt for money in their loudest voice. Matty and T-slice giving as good as they got. After about two minutes of solid abuse from both parties the boys walked off and the battle seemed to diminish. Now if we are to learn anything from that it is whilst the sights may be amazing and awe inspiring, never trust anybody who works or has any connection with camels.

Anyway, this was week 1 of everything and already so much amazing and shit stuff has happened, but I and we are having an amazing time. Will keep you updated with our adventures and hopefully Matt or Big Time Timmy Jim can sneak in a blog or two along the way.

Wherever, Whenever
Chad Xx.