"YOUR HOME OUT YOUR COURTRY"

So we have seen the Pyramids. They were interesting. Big and impressive. We have seen the Sphinx. Also big and impressive. We have seen the Nile. It's like football in mud--dirty and brown but kinda fun. We have seen the Egyptian Museum, and it also big and very easy to get lost in. But the lasting image of Egypt that I have is the band on the Nile dinner cruise, warbling out-of-key renditions of old Stevie Wonder songs with only a bass and synthesizer to back up the enthusiastic, if tonally disadvantaged singers. I gotta say, the Japanese tourists ate it all up......

So the English language isn't really that hard, but some of the mistranslations can be hilarious, such as the one up above. A hostel had clearly gone to great pains to make their setup more American, including naming it The Big Apple, and placing pictures of New York City in the windows, but it sort of broke down with the motto on the sign apparently trying to say "Home Away From Home."

Suez is an interesting place, mainly for the fish and the great logic bubbles that apparently exist there. We started out for our tour by having the tour guide tell the security checkpoint that we were Australian. We generally considered this to be an insult to Australians everywhere, including any still in Australia. But since the option of telling them we were American involved a 2 hour wait for an escorted van to come take us to our destination, we went along with it. Apparently they think the general populace is a little bit touchy about the whole Iraq issue. So we merely got the motorcycle escort into town. We were assigned a chubby motorcycle policeman, who clearly expected to be one of the party. He did what we did, ate what we ate, and happily wandered through town with us, taking bribes wherever he could get them. He clearly enjoyed his celebrity and the free food even more.

But the most funny part about Suez is that they wouldn't let us actually see the locks. Which is strange, because they cited security reasons. Now, that I would understand, except they let, and get ready for this part, but they let SHIPS through the locks, and I have it on good authority that some of the ships have people on them. Cruise ships even! So we may need to let them know that they have a major security breach. If anyone's Aunt Margaret gets arrested for looking at the locks on a Red Sea Cruise, don't say I didn't warn you. Seth and I did have good fish, though. They have a saying in Suez, "If you've been to Suez, and haven't eaten the fish, you haven't been to Suez." I haven't seen the locks, but I've clearly been to Suez because I had a lot of fish, and it was good. We settled for swimming in the Red Sea where it joins the Suez canal, but the policeman didn't come. Something about not knowing how to swim and being afraid of accidentally seeing the locks, but I think he just wanted more free fish. Did you know that they nationalized the Suez canal about 20 years ago, taking it from the French and British companies so they could use the fares to finance the Aswan Dam? It's known as Anti-Capitalism, and you can find it in Egypt, just left of the Pyramid of Cheops.

By the way, we were at the Citadel of Cairo, built by Saladin during the crusades to protect Cairo, on the Islamic holy day (Friday) at the time of the main call to prayer, and we had a fantastic view of the city. All of Cairo, with its 16 million in the greater area, was visible, with the thousands of minarets poking through the afternoon haze. When the call to prayer went out, each minaret picked it up with their own Imam making the cry from loudspeakers attached to the towers. The entire city was alive with it. It's hard to describe a feeling from a moment like that, with the cry echoing and re-echoing across the city, and I'm not sure whether it was really a good or a bad feeling, but it was unlike anything I have ever experienced before. There's a random thought for you.

By the way, they made a serious mistake in our flight bookings. They accidentally got us on a good airline. After losing contents of bags, having electric items carefully padded in the center of the bag broken, being charged for water, and getting neckaches from rough landings, we were mistakenly booked on Royal Jordanian. Now there is a airline. They stuff food and drinks down your throat from beginning to end, and when we discovered that we had a 10 hour layover in Amman, we didn't even suspect that we were going to get a hotel room and a bus for the interim, complete with a buffet lunch. Nice. So we abandoned our plans of trying to sneak out of the airport to see a little of the town, and instead booked a full city tour complete with a trip to the Dead Sea.

I have some advice for you, if you're ever at the Dead Sea. Don't try to drink the water to see what it tastes like. Amazingly nasty stuff--just unbelievably salty. Amman is a somewhat interesting city, mainly because there is an edict out there that all buildings must be built with white stone. Makes the city strangely homogenous, and I was not left with a strong impression of the city or the people. Not really a friendly bunch, to be honest. We pestered the tour guide with all of our usual questions, but he could give a clam lessons in shutting up.

"DEHLI: A GOOD PLACE TO PEE"

I am proposing the foregoing motto for the city of Dehli. I apologize for the apparent crudeness, but really, try the alternatives: none of them work well in a motto, and most of them are much, much cruder. I have a problem with a city where you can relieve yourself whenever, and wherever you like. They do have interesting taxis, though. They replaced the hand-pulled cart with motortrikes in the last few years, and man, they can fly for tricycles with a riding mower engine strapped on the back. They also have the microbus. You can picture one like this: Take a Toyota minivan, vintage 1985, and shrink it by about 40%. Then stuff the same amount of people in it as a normal minivan, and give it a louder horn, and you've got your average microvan. Also, the idea of a family car is a little bit different here. In America, if you have two kids, you're thinking about a fancy minivan or a large SUV. Here they think: Motorscooter time! You can actually get 4 people on one, provided two are kids. The signs on the trike-taxis are good, too. They say, "Horn Please," and "Stay Back." They got the horn part down, believe me, but there's a better chance that a Hollywood marriage will last than of anybody staying back.

"PLEASE SIR, MAY I SHINE YOUR HYUNDAI?"

I had a real moment in India. It happened like this: we were driving back from Agra, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a car come past. It was a Hyundai Acccent, new model, tinted back windows, nice rims, and an arm out the passenger side window. It passed everyone with ease, and shot away, music blaring, and my actual thought was, "Man, that's a nice car!" I really need to get out of central Asia......

India is weird. We were greated by signs advertising "Cheap Local STD'S!" I was thinking that truth in advertising had gone a little too far, but then we realized that it is some sort of telecommunications service. The signs are everywhere. They also, in actual fact, do let animals roam free everywhere, and no one touches them or shooes them away. Cows in the road, cows in the street, cows laying down in front of shops. Dogs everywhere, pigs running in herds--it's all there. They even had a herd of cows and bulls docily walking down the highway to Agra and the Taj Mahal.

By the way, the Taj Mahal is beautiful. Big surprise, I know, but it is. They have actually banned cars in the near area and polluting industry within 50 kilometers because the pollution is staining the previously snow-white marble. Because of time restraints, we didn't really eat anything the whole day we were going to the Taj, and I think our driver thought we were nuts. I considered explaining to him that in OUR country, the Taj Mahal is always a restraurant, so we just assumed we'd eat there, but his English was a little sketchy and my Hindi even worse. In any event, there was no Taj Mahal Special for us.

It appears that just about everyone wants to get out of Dehli. We were approached by a waiter, a very nice guy, who was just desperate for us to fix his Visa for him, which had been canceled. What he really wanted to do, and I am not making this up, is to move to New Jersey to work with his brother at a gas station. He might have been a little confused, though, because he'd never heard of a 7-11. He was very disappointed to find out we couldn't give him a job at OUR gas station.

JS®