Hello readers! Today I have decided to write a blog post. Why? Look at the title. What does it say? Car Crash 1. That’s right, I’ve had my first car crash. And no, I wasn’t driving. Nor (to her credit) was mum. No, our driver was a Bedouin smuggler (whose name I can’t, shan’t and won’t spell) who accidentally drove his 4×4 into a hole at 30mph. To his credit, we were the 11th car or tuk-tuk (yes, they have those in Egypt) to crash into the hole. And it was at night.

It’s a weird process. One second I was sitting in a seatbelt-free Land Rover, the next I was flying and then mum cannoned into me and my jaw struck the headrest. Then, when I came back to my senses, I was curled up on the floor of the car (I think). DON’T WORRY! I’m fine. The headrest was cushioned and took the impact. I am okay. Mum, however, was in a somewhat different state. I’m sure she has a post on her site, but here’s my take.

When mum woke up (according to her) she felt what she thought was cold water down her face. It was blood. Her head had smashed the window. She’s fine now, although she did have concussion. She slept that off, and all she has left is a headache. U wear seat belts now u hear me!? Lol. Uh, okay, so just read mum’s one cause I have run out of  words ink for my typewriter.

Heyo! Today I am going to relate to you my experience of the Library of Alexandria. No, not the old one, you twit. The new one. It’s a cool piece of architecture. It’s called the Sun Disc, and it has earned its title because a) it’s disc shaped, b) it reflects the sun and c) because it has the spherical Planetarium “orbiting” it (e.g Earth).

Now, into greater detail. It’s a very efficient design, covered in windows with little “eyelashes” to keep the dust off, but they still clean it daily. It has little bits of coloured glass around the eyes, symbolising (apparently) land and water. Inside, it’s less child-friendly. There is a children’s library and an art gallery. The rest is out of bounds.

I mean, it’s all very well if you’re reading 100-page books and stuff like that, but for a boy who’s read an Iain M. Banks novel? No. I only got a peek of their impressive archives (sporting a military-level supercomputer and a huge internet database) while on a guided tour. How sad. Other than that, great place.

Yup. A felucca. Bet you don’t even know what that is. The spellchecker doesn’t, so I’ll tell ye. A felucca is like a sailing boat. A small-ish one, and (naturally) cheap (to a point). But that is all about whether you take the return trip, the captain, whether you’re a derp, etcetera. We paid about 2000 Egyptian pounds (derp price). I do feel somewhat embarrassed about it, though. The price, I mean.

Right, new paragraph. On the first day we set off and I was very excited. There’s some goodly fun to be had on said sailing vessel. For the well-heeled traveller, there are Dahabiyyas (literally meaning golden boats). I don’t really like them ’cause they get tugged (no matter what the Lonely Planet cretins say) by a very noisy little boat that has a habit of spoiling the atmosphere. Although, they do have good accommodation.

They also have generators (probably also noisy). And a restaurant on top. But I would rather go on the somewhat more charming Sudan (I had the privilege of seeing it in action), Egypt’s last functioning paddle steamer. That, I think, is much nicer as the noise is a part of the atmosphere, not an intrusion on it. I feel sorry for people who pay their life’s savings for a Dahabiyya and spend the duration being tugged.

Gosh, this is getting to be a mini guide to Nile boating, isn’t it? Anyway, bottom of the list are cruise ships. There are some good (and pricey) ships out there, travelling solo, but the majority travel in convoys of 3 to 6 and look like warped renditions of Soviet prison ships. Um, so that’s all I’ve got for now. I’m in the midst of a f**king huge sandstorm (no relevance to the post), and I wish you all

Good luck and smooth sailing!

Hello again! Today I am reporting from Abu Simbel (the village next to the Great Temple of Ramses II). I’m in a really laid-back place and all, and it has (obviously) got internet. So, we’ve gone to the Great Temple of R-2 (Ramses II) to see the sound and light show. Today we’ll be going back to see it in the daytime. As for the light show, it was… pretty cheesy, actually. Yup, I’m about to launch into a description. *Dramatic music*

It starts with slightly choppy thunder sounds accompanied by a couple of light projector-based thingies. Amazing. Then it starts to get interesting. The narrator turns out to be the ‘spirit of the desert’. Still not that bad. Oh yes, it’s ever-so-slightly biased towards, uh, fair Nubia and to UNESCO, the ‘miracle of human brotherhood’. Hmm. Still, it’s sort of worth sitting through the endless supply of soppy and cheesy lines (courtesy of queen/high consort Nefertari) to see the spectacular laser FX which come at the end.

Oh, and at the end you get to have a glimpse of the exterior of the temples. You see, thanks to the 1960s High Dam project, a large portion of the temples were under threat of being submerged by what is now Lake Nasser (courtesy of Egypt’s former dictator Nasser), so UNESCO popped in and relocated the temples. Of course, some of them went to countries who participated (human brotherhood don’t come cheap) and you can find one in NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Anyways, UNESCO cut the Great Temple of R-2 (the one with the 4 massive seated statues) and the Temple of Hathor (shamelessly devoted to R-2 and Nefertari) into blocks and reconstructed them against concrete mountains. Oh, and there’s another relic there too: Authentic 19th century vandalism. That means adventurers carving their names there.

Fare thee well.

Yeah. I’ve been to the pyramids. That’s on everybody’s to do list, and I’m going to try not to brag about it. So, let’s see. First, I scrambled around the pyramid of Khafre until the guards sort of yelled. Pyramids are good to climb on. They’re also, frankly, awe-inspiringly imposing  Unfortunately certain ****tarded tourists find it cool (or funny, or whatever) to scrawl their names on thousands-of-years-old Egyptian ruins. Cool. Nice handwriting, *******.

Then we went inside Khufu’s pyramid. The one belonging to Khafre (Khufu’s son) is the only pyramid left with any of the famously smooth, gleaming limestone. It was a very long, poky shaft that went up at about a 25° angle, made humid (and probably weathered) by the breath of tourists. Then we got to the burial chamber. Nice and space-y, and a high ceiling too. And because of the shade (strip-lit, naturally) it was cool too.

Then there’s the Sphinx. Large, monolithic and utterly nose-free, the half-lion half-man depicts the chosen form of the god Harmachis (god of the rising sun, I thinx) when he went to destroy the forces of Set the Evil One. Unfortunately, it seems to be decaying internally and a series of dodgy ‘reconstruction’ efforts (hence the shiny new -and tiled, which screws up the fact that it’s carved from a single piece of bedrock- paws) have only sped up the process.

Howzat for a blog post?

Hello readers (however small your numbers might be)! I am in… guess… China! Nah, I’m in Egypt. First probable question: “Have you been to see the Pyramids?” Answer: No, and not the Sphinx either. If you really want to know, I’m in Dahab. I think that means gold. Oh yeah, I’ve been quadbiking too. I love quadbiking. I have done for ages. This one was awesome, although I got a bit worried when I found that I’d broken three safety precautions (no under 16s allowed to drive, no riding on public roads and no passengers) at once. Although, as my new friend Steve said, they’d been shipped in from a place where the rules applied to a place where they forgot to remove the stickers.

I’m enjoying Dahab. It’s a really laid-back place. And it’s got internet. That helps. Go ahead and comment now, cos this is the end of the post.

Trolololollll!

Hullo, readers!  I’m going to Egypt! I’ll be going on the 1st of march. So I’ve got some shots for Monday and a ride down to London on Wednesday and I’m gonna miss Fred again, but I’m still looking forward to travelling. So I guess I’ll be reporting from Egypt. Let me tell you, I will really miss ginger biccies. I think I want to go back to Oz for a spell. It’s a nice place to go, and there’s a lot for kids to do. WARNING: Darwin is super-racist.

But anyway, I don’t know what we’ll do, really. Our RTW plans are never set in stone. Thanks for reading!

Thanks to Flight Centre for their support of my blog. They offer flights to Australia if you’re thinking of going there yourself.