Singapore

This is the new Orchid Road centre in Singapore.  My hotel is round the corner in Scotts Road.  This area is all shopping centres and hotels but that's fine for me at the moment because I'm into recovery mode.  

On the seven hour overnight flight from Dubai I passed out in the aisle and when I came round a large Russian woman was yelling at me and fighting the Singapore airlines cabin staff over where to put the blood pressure cuff on my limp wrist.  The combination of Dubai heat, Egypt belly and cabin pressure had got to me.  The up side was that I scored a row of seats to lie down for the rest of the trip.

So I spent yesterday in my hotel room sorting myself out although I did manage to cross the road to a shopping centre and have a manicure and pedicure.  Today I've ventured further afield and ordered myself two silk suits to be made up for me to pick up tomorrow afternoon before I fly out.  I've always wanted to do that in Singapore!  I also had a full body lymphatic massage and that made me feel great!

The other thing I did today was walk down to the Botanic gardens.  It's a lovely area at one end of Orchard Road and it has won several International awards as a great urban jungle.  I spent a few hours wandering through the ginger garden, the rainforest, and beside the lakes.

Tomorrow I'll go and get my hair cut after my late check out and before picking up my tailoring and hope that the flight to Brisbane will be gentle on me.

Dubai

Just to touch base and promise later posts on my trip to Oman - Muscat and Salalah - as well as something about Dubai.  I'm back in Dubai arriving late last night and am catching up on internet stuff before my flight to Singapore this afternoon.  I'll edit my previous post with the last bit about Mt Sinai.  I've put up a photo of Rameses here taken in Luxor because my guide here in Dubai pointed with pride at the Raffles hotel (same chain as the famous Raffles in Singapore where I am heading next) which is built like a pyramid with massive Rameses statues at the entrance.  Dubai is like a collection point for all the icons of the world!

Mt Sinai

Yesterday I watched the dawn from the top of Mt Sinai and today I am writing this in Cairo International airport on my way to Zurich for an overnight stop before carrying on to Dubai and Oman.  Life is full of miracles!

At first I misunderstood the guide's briefing about my trip to the mountain and I waited in the hotel lobby at 10.00 am rather than 10.00 pm.  Once I'd worked that out, I spent the day trying to get as much rest as I could because it seemed I would be climbing a mountain all night!  When the minivan arrived for me, the first thing they explained was how to put the seats down so I could rest!  So I dozed most of the two and a half hour trip.

I think they've just called my flight so I'll finish when I can.  

Just a move from one waiting area to another!  But this one is much quieter and I still have wireless!

So I arrived at a carpark after midnight.  There was a bus with many tourists sitting inside, several minivans, Bedouin men hanging around the inevitable street market.  I got out and Bishay my guide directed me to the toilet saying it would be 2 Egyptian pounds.  I'm off again - boarding this time.

So now I'm in Dubai where I have wireless access in my room.  I'll write about Dubai and the gentle rain in Zurich in my next post, but for now I need to finish off the story of Mt Sinai.

The guide who was to lead me up the mountain arrived and Bishay handed me a torch and pointed me in the right direction.  The mountain guide asked me if I wanted a camel, but I said no, I wanted to walk if it wasn't too difficult.  We set off at a cracking pace and I had to concentrate on my feet in the little circle of light from the torch to make sure I didn't stumble on the uneven path.  Every so often I would hear strange grunts and a camel would be lead past on silent feet.  Each time, the camel was offered.  There didn't seem to be anyone else on the mountain at this time of the morning and when we stopped at the little rest shops on the way, there was no-one apart from the man behind the tea counter.  By the second stop, a camel driver who was more persuasive than the others sold me his camel by saying I had only come a quarter of the way and things got very steep at the top.

I have never been on a camel before, but my training at getting on my brother-in-law's motor bike in California stood me in good stead.  The rhythm made it a bit more uncomfortable and there was nowhere to rest your feet, but once I'd got the hang of it I was able to look up at the stars and the eerie mountains round about.  It was great not to have to stare down at my feet.  The camel driver and my mountain guide walked ahead chatting quietly and I drank in the craggy mountains that occasionally glowed white like smoke.  I didn't think too much about the possibility of the camel stepping over the edge or crushing my leg against the rocks on the other side.

We arrived at the top camel station and the guide explained that it got too difficult for the camel from here on as it was continuous steps for about 40 minutes.  The camel did the classic kneel and I got off stiffly.  We set off and the camel driver was right!  We were also quite high up now too so I told myself that it was the thin air that was making me breathe so heavily.  We stopped regularly and eventually we made it to a hut that was near the summit.  Here we went in and I accepted the offer of tea.  There were big piles of blankets all down one side and the usual carpet-covered benches all round.  My guide promptly settled in a corner and went to sleep so I figured that I should do the same but I refused their offer of a blanket and got out my jacket and bedouin scarf.  After dozing for a while, the hut started filling up with people so I had to sit up and there was a constant sales patter for blankets and hot drinks.  

The tiredness made me impatient with the hordes of Russian tourists who were piling in and who have a different way of dealing with close proximity than I do.  My guide continued to sleep on under his blanket so I got up and went outside.  The sky was beginning to pale and there was a constant stream of people heading on up the path.  Just as I was starting to feel anxious, my guide appeared and said "We go?"

I thought it was just a few more steps but it turned out to be quite a bit further and the mountain was filling up with people.  My guide found us a spot just before the summit and pointed towards the slightly reddening horizon.  I found myself a seat on a ledge and pulled my jacket collar up against the cold.  The guide disappeared and I settled down to watch the dawn.  Or so I thought.  A Russian woman came and sat on the rock in front of me and before I knew it I was jammed in between a whole tribe of tourists who proceeded to get out their breakfast and scatter paper and bread crusts all over Mt Sinai.  On a different mountain, it would have become the story of the feeding of the five thousand!

I sat there bristling and almost missed the first red curve of the sun as it came up over the craggy mountain tops.  People clapped and there was a lot of noise!  No self-focussed communing with nature on this mountain top!

Coming down, I was again offered camels but was determined to walk now that it was downhill and in daylight.  It was a good decision because the landscape is dramatic and I felt good striding out now that I could see where my feet were treading.  The thousands who were on the summit got spread out on the zig-zag path and it didn't feel like a mall on late night shopping.

Towards the bottom where St Catherine's  monastery blends into the red-brown mountains, there were occasional small children selling quartz thunder eggs and I got conned into paying 5 Egyptian pounds for a small, inferior quality egg for my uncle in Wollengong who is a prospector.  The young man didn't have change so we eventually came up with a complicated arrangement whereby I would take the egg and give the money to my guide later who would then bring it to the seller.  I figured that it was only two and a half pees!

The monastery is fascinating in its own right.  Reputed to be the oldest monastery in the world.  I have to go as my pick up is here to take me to the airport to fly to Muscat.

Finishing in Dubai after my trip to Oman.  The Monastery at the base of Mt Sinai has a large blackberry bush reputed to be the burning bush as seen by Moses.  It also has St Catherine's knuckle bone and a room full of the skulls of ancient monks.  When I got to that bit there were two Americans in front taking photos through the bars and taking so long that an enormous queue built up behind me so I glanced in and left.  Somehow relics don't work for me.  But the monastery is interesting and adds to a picture of the roots of Christianity in the same soil as Islam.

Felucca

The photo is of Ali Khan's tomb taken through the rigging of our felucca at Aswan.   The guide woke me up at 12.30 the night before to tell me to put my clock forward (I had already done it) and to get the 10.15 ferry from the hotel and he would meet me at 10.30 to take me on our felucca ride.  When I got on the ferry in good time, a young couple already on board looked familiar.  It turned out that Marcelle and Jez were also from Malta and were going on the same trip with me.  

The felucca we went on was one of the smaller, older boats and it was great to watch how the young man handled it.  At first there wasn't much wind, but once we cut across the river, we were heading down with the current and the wind behind so we went at quite a clip.  We passed the botanic gardens set up by Lord Kitchener and Elephantine Island where they used to have camel and elephant markets.  It was magic.  Lots of other feluccas to watch and people enjoying the Nile river.  Some people were swimming and I wondered about the increase in the snail-borne disease my brother had told me had increased in prevalence since the building of the high dam.

We rounded an island a little upstream from the hotel we had stayed at and then the boatman put the centre board down as we started to tack up river against the current.  The wind had come up nicely so it was still easy sailing.  We passed the Old Cataract hotel where Agatha Christie had stayed when she was writing Death on the Nile.

The boatman got out his cloth and spread out his necklaces and trinkets.  I didn't really want to buy anything but admired the way he kept sailing so competently whilst he was doing it, so I got a little necklace for 10 Egyptian pounds.  When we got back to the jetty, he deftly sorted the sail and guided the boat back between the other feluccas to a good spot to scramble off across other boats.  As I got up to leave, another 20 pounds fell out of my pocket so I decided that the god of the Nile was telling me the boatman deserved a tip and I tucked it under his cloth.  I love how the river is such a part of daily life here.

Sharm el Sheik

A few days ago, somewhere on the Nile, I reached that point in traveling where I loose track of what's happening and everything blurs together into the immediate.  It happened in Libya and in Ireland.  It happens when I am continuously moving rather than based in one place.  I will have to settle to complete writing up the story of the trip from Aswan to Luxor and then to here in Sinai.

I don't much like Sharm el Sheik.  It has no reason for being, apart from the throngs of tourists who crowd the lounges on the beach or stroll in their bikinis through the restaurants and cafes that line the esplanade.  But the Red Sea remains and the stunning mountains rise out of the desert all around.  

The first day here, I went snorkeling.  There was a misunderstanding about time, but I got picked up as arranged and the only other person in the minibus was a charming young woman from Tunisia who was working at the embassy in Malta.  So I wasn't prepared for the sheer numbers of people who were lining the jetties to get onto the boats taking us to the National Park.  Fortunately we had a smaller boat so there was only about 20 people with us but we still had to shuffle in queues to board our cruiser. 

All the boats headed out in the same direction and our guide explained that we would have three stops for snorkeling - two in the  National Park area and one in the bay on the way back.  The scenery of mountains and desert running down to the sea is stunning.  The photo is of our third stop where there was also two submarines taking tourists along the edge of the reef.

But the first two stops made it worthwhile.   There were one or two other boats anchored up when we arrived at our first spot.  Our guide had prepared us as best he could on the trip out but there were still several people who had never snorkeled before.  I was one of the first in and turned in time to see my Tunisian traveling companion loose her mask as she jumped in.  The guide was busy helping others to stop hyper-ventilating so I dived down and saved the mask just as it was sinking below the level of my ear drum tolerance!  I remembered the excitement of diving down to touch bottom in the middle of St Georges bay in Malta when I was a child.

Unlike the Great Barrier reef, the Red Sea reefs are close to shore so we were able to swim easily along the edge of the reef and then go ashore on the sandy beach to rest.  The guide worked very hard to keep us together as he was rightly concerned about loosing some of us. 

There were very different levels of ability in the group and also several other groups swimming on the same reef and crossing our path from time to time.  But we saw an eagle ray almost straight away and once we had found the edge of the reef, we were able to work our way along.  At first I thought it was similar to the Australian reef and it is, but it differs in the quantity and colour of the fish which left me quiet with the beauty of it. 

The second reef was even more stunning.  It was in more shallow water than the first and the shoals of sparkling fish drifted around massive purple corals whilst pairs of angel fish hid in holes and crevasses.  I went willingly into this other world, only vaguely keeping one ear open for the whistle of our guide to keep us together.  By the time it was time to go back to the boat, we had drifted some way away and several other boats and groups had arrived.  The woman from Tunisia was tired and the guide had to help her on the swim back.  As we swam across, yet another boat arrived and kept sounding his horn because he wanted to cut across where we were swimming.  There is no doubt there is an accident waiting to happen around this magnificent reef, but fortunately it didn't happen that day.

I didn't go in for the third dive because surprisingly I was cold and we had just eaten our excellent lunch.  The site looked even more exploited than the first two that were protected by National Park status.  But I feel very glad that I have been able to see some of the Red Sea reef before we loose it to global warming or over exploitation.  Tonight I go to St Catherine's monastery and climb Mt Sinai to see the dawn.