no humour please, we're german

arabic: so i dropped the lessons. i had originally planned to have four classes, but the sessions themselves became such a circus that i was unable to bring myself to continue after lesson number two. the 'teaching' took place in the foyer of the hotel with extended family and friends present watching TV at 500 decibels, and consisted of going through the letters of the arabic alphabet with the 'teacher', saied, trying to think of every word he could think of starting with that letter and writing it down. afterwards there was stilted conversation practice in which i couldn't milk relevant phrases out of him. he sat there smoking a sheesha pipe and adjusting his cock through his gown every 5 seconds which i found unconducive to learning.

i was still in luxor, and headed over to karnak the following morning, which contains the enormous amun temple complex. i hired a bike which turned out to be a girls bike (replete with a little basket infront where i could stow my bonnet) and this was convenient and gave me the independence i needed to get around the mediumly spaced out sites around luxor. the complex was very impressive, and unlike castle and church fatigue with which i suffered terribly in europe, i find that i'm more and more interested in the sites here as time goes on, noticing the differences in the statues and the hieroglyphics (which i love) over different ages, and getting a feel for life in egypt 1000-2000 BCE. there was a note in the amun complex which said that the main hall was bigger than st peter's and st paul's combined. i simply wasn't impressed, and couldn't help thinking that even a small victorian forest is much bigger than st peter's and st paul's combined. do you know what i'm saying?

the next day i got up late and moseyed on over to the valley of the kings. the tombs were impressive - hundred metre chambers dug deep into the rock and decorated beautifully, all in the middle of a desolate nowhere. much of the details in these tombs have been preserved - not just the colour of the hieroglyphics remain, but different shadings of colour within the same hieroglyph could be seen, giving the character depth.

it was on this day that i started feeling lonely. after two days visiting some of the most popular sites in the country, i felt like i was the only person in the whole of egypt who wasn't on a tour. in fact, when i chained up my bike at the entrance to the valley of the kings, it stood alone. i counted, however, over 40 buses.

that evening, as i basked on the roof of my hostel, a lovely 27 year old german boy called stephan appeared from nowhere: we have spent the last three days travelling together :)

the following morning, after watching sunrise from the roof, we crossed the nile (bilharzia) and conquered the mountain above the valley of the kings. it was wonderful. on one side you could see down into the valley of the kings (picture on left), on the other the valley of the queens, behind you was the bilharzia glistening in the morning sun, and in front was the vast expanse of the libyan/sahara desert - nothing but sand and rock stretching for thousands of kilometres. you could fit a million st peters and st pauls into that.

from the mountain we descended to the hatshepsut temple complex - a beautiful temple carved into the cliffside, built by ancient egypt's only female pharoah. this was the site of the 1997 luxor massacre, in which 58 foreign tourists were shot, beheaded and disemboweled by muslim extremists in an attempt to reclaim egypt for islam. i could handle being shot, and even beheaded (haven't you always wanted to know if you can still see and hear as your head is flying through the air?) but even the word 'disemboweled' makes me want to crawl. i saw enough of it during my last rotation at latrobe regional hospital to last me a lifetime. i only read about the massacre on the net after i had visited the temple, which was good because it gave me the heebie jeebies and i felt sad. security has been ramped up since then (don't worry mum!)

i'll mention that i've become addicted to date cookies. they sell them by the kilogram here, and i buy them by the kilogram. it's just the sort of ultra-high GI rush that i've always been looking for. my belly had been disappearing, but it's making a come-back thanks to the date biscuits. at least i'm regular.

on that topic, i have to mention one of the best things about egypt: the nozzle. whilst many of the toilets in this country are hideous (flashback to kharga-luxor train toilet nightmare sequence), all toilets at hotels have that little nozzle where you turn on the tap and it squirts you right in the hole. banished are the vulgar, unhygienic days of using paper to smear faeces all over your perineum - with just a few quick squirts from the nozzle, your hole is so clean that you could eat (off) it. i find that it gives me that special kick-start that i need to face my day with renewed confidence.

stephan and i caught the train to aswan the following day and spent a lazy afternoon floating on the bilharzia in a felucca (a small sail boat with a triangular sail) and riding a camel up to an old mud-brick coptic monastery. delightful :)

this morning we met at 3:30am for a 4am bus to take us to abu simbel. all the buses go in a convoy, so you have about 20 buses leaving from all parts of aswan taking hundreds of tourists the 250km south to abu simbel together. it's supposed to be due to a security threat in the south from the fundamentalists which have a strong-hold there, but the buses race each other to abu-simbel, and at times we were out of sight of any other buses, so i'm not sure what the point of the convoy was at all.

abu simbel was impressive - a large temple built into a cliff with four huge seated statues of ramses II out the front. inside the cliff is a large temple complex, with halls and chambers all covered in exquisitely detailed depictions and hieroglyphic descriptions of ramses II life and exploits. the whole thing is all the more incredible because the entire temple complex was moved to avoid being submerged when the bilharzia was dammed. afterwards we went to the philae temple complex on an island between the old and new dams (also relocated) and then made our way back to aswan.

i want to mention here that egypt is the most sexually frustrated place i've ever been to (for the residents, not for me). i've had three gay run-ins so far, all of which went along the same lines. i am approached by a guy on the street who asks a few opening questions (what's your name, where are you from) and then says "so you like egyptian women?" to which my answer is usually a shrug of the shoulders or a polite 'no'. after a few moments of similar 'sizing up' type talk or offers of massage, there comes the question: "are you gay?" followed quickly by "you wanna fuck?" to which my answer is always 'no'. after this there are invariably several minutes of clarification: you're gay? you don't want to fuck? do you speak english? are you confused? wait a minute - are you gay? do you understand? what do you mean no - do you speak english?!

this rubbish is by no means restricted to the gays in egypt (who must suffer terribly with the extreme homophobia here) - every time a single western woman goes anywhere, almost every single guy she passes starts following her with his tongue dragging along the ground desperate for a fuck (every non-muslim woman is a slut).

it's because there is no outlet for expression of sexuality or sexual desire here, and everyone's going crazy with it - they're all stumbling around, bleary-eyed, in a stuporous state of permanent masturbatory fantasy.

i'm going to spend maybe another day or two here before i head back to luxor. i want to do a three night trip in a felucca down the bilharzia, but it might depend on whether i can find other people to go with. we'll see!