Today’s the day! Yes today was the day we visited the Great Pryamids of
Ok so I exaggerate.. but you get my point… we took a cab down to the Pyramids (was about 20 mins from where we stayed) and upon getting out of the cab, we were stopped by some guys asking if we wanted a horse ride, horse carriage ride or camel ride into the pyramids.. Tabbee wasn’t up for the camel so we settled for horse carriage instead… wasn’t too bad except for the occasional bumpy roads, and the occasional farting and shitting from the horse (since the carriage was behind the horse, we could pretty much see everything)…
Anyway, we traveled the Pyramids… they looked quite small until you see the tour buses parked near it… and then when you see the tiny human figures around it, you get a sense of how huge they really are… unfortunately, due to robbers and erosion, the exteriors of the pyramids are no longer as grand as in the days they were built but to be able to stand there and see them was quite something… imagine the thousands of people who would have died in constructing these structures.. did they really love their kinds that much?
So anyhow, we continued on… I stopped to get a ticket to enter the 2nd Pyramid… the guide said it’s a waste of money cos there’s nothing to see in there but I figured I would be quite stupid to pay S$1074 to fly to Egypt, pay 10 LE for a cab to the area, pay 50 LE for entry into the compound, pay 60 LE for the carriage ride and not fork out 25 LE to go inside the Pyramids… so I did just that.. had to climb down a passage (while bent 90 degree because it was that low) which they modified with wooden pieces so you climb it like steps, and then climb up a similar passage to get to a room, which still held a sarcophagus.. it was dark, musty, warm and definitely not for the claustrophobic.. but an interesting experience nonetheless…
After that, we headed on to visit the Sphinx… I missed it at first, because I was expecting something a lot bigger and was looking too far in the distance… the Sphinx was less than 100 metres long and about the height of 2 or 2.5 floors in our Singapore HDB… it was carved out of the rock structures in the area and houses a Temple within… due to time and weather, parts of it is deteriorating, with most of its nose already gone… perhaps it was due to that, its size and the fact that there were about 500 tourists swarming around it that it just didn’t look that grand or magnificent..
Tabbee was commenting after that that she didn’t feel that much in awe when looking at the Pyramids, which is kind of true… perhaps if we could have spent more quiet time there, without people bugging us to get back to the carriage or tour bus, without people bugging us to buy souvenirs, without seeing so many people who obviously weren’t Egyptian… then the effect would have been better…
But then again, it’s hard to blame, because without the Pyramids, so many more people and the neighbouring towns wouldn’t be able to survive today… so how do we find the balance I wonder… will we find it?
(to get a sense of how dependent on tourism the area is, we visited a Papyrus Arts shop nearby… we saw a piece selling for 280 LE… and I was quoted 80 LE for a similar sized piece yesterday.. after I bought that piece, I got a free accompany piece with that purchase so it’s almost like 80 LE for 2 pieces… in comparison, that’s almost a 600% difference in price!!)
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