Asyut Hotel

.Leaving Luxor

We got up bright and early, packed our bags and went down for breakfast, we wanted to leave by 8am as we had over 600km to do to get to Giza, quickly finished breaky and went to check out, only to be told that all roads had been closed due to bad weather, great, now what!  The only road that was still open was the one south to Aswan, we didn’t need to go there and we certainly had spent enough time in Luxor.  We ended up staying in the hotel till 12:noon when finally the tourist police told us that the roads had now been opened, so off we went, it was windy and there was a lot of sand on the roads but it didn’t seem too bad.  We took the east side of the Nile to Qena then crossed the Nile onto the West side, it was slow going because of lots of villages and speed bumps not to mention the checkpoints and people wanting you to stop, it was a bit of a worry at times because they would grab the bike and you and ask for money as we slowed down to go over the speed bumps, yikes.

I had read that the armed escort you needed for this part of the trip thru Egypt called “Upper Egypt” had been cancelled, this is the area from Luxor to Cairo, it started back in 1998 when a group of tourists had been ambushed and killed, but I also had read that as of 2002 it had stopped, not so, we were escorted from Sohag all the way into Asyut, each vehicle had 4 policemen and all were armed, although it was nice to know that we were with the police, one did wonder why this was all necessary, not very relaxing, that alone gave you a sense of uneasiness.

As we got into the city limits of Asyut they stopped and turned around to head back, we were left to find a hotel room, now in the dark, what a gross city, don’t bother stopping here there is nothing to see but the everyday lives of the Egyptian people which is pretty poor.  We checked out a couple of hotels, the first quoted $67US a night, way too high, we had just come from Luxor paying $28./night, we decided to check out a couple more, gross, gross, gross, I cant believe people can even have the gaul to ask for any money for such shit, we ended up back at the first place for $67 and asked him to discount it which he did down to $45.  As we got off the elevator it was obvious what we were in for another crappy room, the outside of the elevator trims were falling off, it looked like they were under renovation from all the concrete and rebar that we could see but we learnt they were not.  The room had two beds, one as you can see from the pictures had about 4 boards supporting the foam mattress so that was going to be my bed as when Trev sat on it he fell thru, the room had no windows, the bathroom curtain was stiff as a board and dirty and the ceiling of the bathroom was completely crumbling and moldy and you can imagine the state of the toilet and all this luxury for $45 US a night.

We didn’t bother getting changed when we got in we just went back out on the street to find some dinner, Trevor managed to find a gyro type sandwich but I refused to eat any meat from here, so i picked a back of potato chips, a tin of 7up and a Dairy Milk chocolate bar and we shared a doughy vegy pizza from the bakery.  Back at the hotel we tucked into our “yummy” dinners only to find that the bag of chips i picked were meat flavoured, gross they smelt like goat! I couldn’t eat them so i just had some bready pizza with chocolate, not so bad..  Time to hit the sack, i didn’t want to have a shower in the disgusting bathroom and Trev said the water felt “greasy” anyway, i kept most of my clothes on and as we climbed into bed i looked over at Trev and said, “hmm the only nice thing about this room is YOU, I think Im coming over to your bed”!!

In the morning we loaded the bike and who should be waiting outside for us but the Police Escort again, they continued to escort us all the way to the desert highway about another hours drive and then we were on our way to Giza on our own again, all very strange. 

I would have to say that I am not enjoying Egypt, it is much poorer it seems than the other Middle East countries or maybe its just that there are so many people here, not sure.  We had a hard time every time we walked out the hotel door with all the street vendors etc. Wanting you to buy from them, the carriage drivers and the taxi cabs etc. All so pesky, we both used the “F” word a few times not like us!  At least not on this trip anyway.  The sights were all great, other than the Mummy Museum I wouldn’t bother with that again it took us all of 10mins to go thru, we saw all the Nile cruise boats sitting along the side of the Nile and were very glad we didn’t end up doing this over the xmas week as the boats looked very old and grotty, i don’t mean the Felucca’s but the bigger ones.

We are definitely a novelty over here, I don’t like to stand out like this and be the centre of attention, its just not my thing, I like to hide in the background so Im able to observe from a distance, with the bike we stand out big time.  Most people just say hi and welcome you to Egypt but you always get the ones that want money, that gets really annoying, plus people beckon you their way just to talk to you and if you are not wise to them you end up getting yourself into situations you don’t want to be in so mostly we wave, smile, say hi and keep moving forward.  I think for Trevor he gets annoyed because he likes to be happy and friendly and chatty with them but because they all want something from you it makes you not be able to be “NICE!!” I am really good at ignoring them and they don’t bother me too much but with Trevs big smile and happy face they are right in there, today at the Pyramids he lost it a couple of times, once because of course he wasn’t allowed to take his camera in and once because of a poor horse that was pulling a carriage with tourists in but the horse was obviously lame and yet the carriage driver totally ignored that, it was really sad to see, very cruel.  At least in Jordan at Petra they regulate the carriages to make sure the horses are well cared for..