Egypt: More than you wanted to know...

We are back in Cairo. Yippie. I missed all the exhaust and cigarette smoke and black snot that I get as a result. So glad I'm back to blowing out black boogers again. Anyway, the trip down south was awesome. I think I left off going to get an Egyptian massage at our hotel in Luxor the last time I wrote. And that was...in-ter-esting. Here's the rundown:

• For starters, it was in the evening, and for some reason, the windows were thrown wide open. This meant I was fighting hypothermia and frostbite the whole time.
• Secondly, the sanitation. Not good. The massage chair had no towels or barrier between your face and the plastic. All I could think during the massage was that my face sweat was intermingling with hundreds of others face sweat and most notably, that of the hairy Dutch man before me.
• My masseuse...how can I put this nicely...was quite, uh...liberal with the massage oil. Whereas a typical masseuse uses oil on a more as-needed basis, this homegirl was dousing me with it. We're talking five or six squirts per every six inches! I was in awe. I soaped up THREE times immediately following my massage and still glistened. It looked like I had dived into a vat of Astroglide for days.
• The style of massage I received cannot be described any more accurately than "light tickling". I tried asking my masseuse to be "harder" at one point thinking the one or two English words/phrases she might know as a masseuse would be "harder," "softer" and perhaps "cheap golden shower, please" but no such luck. This only seemed to result in more massage oil squirting on my butt cheeks so I quickly shut up.

But here's what was awesome and made it all worthwhile- because the windows were thrown wide open and it appears impossible to be any further than ten feet from a blaring mosque loudspeaker here, I got to hear the call for Friday prayers during a large portion of my massage. Listening to the prayer chants and being massaged by a woman in a veil was very surreal for the Hawaiian redneck in me.

We had a phenomenal time there since we were in a great resort in the heart of Luxor. One day we did a hike from the Valley of the Kings to a temple on the other side of a mountain that was just astonishing. While we were traipsing around the mountain we passed a herd of donkeys and collected beautiful rocks. We also went to Luxor temple at night. Seeing the temple illuminated was definitely a highlight. What wasn't was the cheesy belly dancing performance we went to in our hotel there. For starters, our belly dancer could have been a male transvestite. Secondly, he/she pulled me up on stage! MORTIFYING. This was definitely my karma for years of heckling all the pasty, white tourists in Hawaii who got suckered into dancing the hukilau. Let's just say that the world is safe from me ever baring my belly to the general public as well. Can we please ban things like forced karaoke performances and clumsy tourist dances?

Anyway, after two days in Aswan and three days in Luxor we caught the night train back to Cairo and arrived here yesterday. Last night we went to watch a performance of sufi dancers (whirling dervishes) at a huge open marketplace. This was the same marketplace that I got clocked in the head by someone carrying stuff on their head (it is amazing what people can balance on their heads here- children, bags of fruit, chickens, bicycles...) and told I was chubby (long story that I've already retold ten times to every English speaker I know for attention and pity).

Anyway, we went back to the same marketplace that evening so that we could see a troupe of men twirl for over 40 minutes without vomiting, staggering or skipping a beat. Inspired by their discipline to attain a trace-like state that would also bring me closer to God, I attempted to twirl a few times in our hotel room. Roughly eight rapid twirls later, well...Rich is downstairs in the lobby trying to pay for our broken room lamp and I'm wiping vomit off the bed covers.

This morning we hailed a taxi and bought our bus tickets to Sinai. We leave tomorrow. Solo. Just the two of us. Should be loads of fun. Judging from how cheap our tickets were, I'm quite confident we'll be perched on the roof of the bus among bird-flu carrying chickens and diarrhea-inflicted goats. We're staying at a monastery our first night (which *surprisingly* costs more than the four star resorts we've been staying at), and a resort on the Red Sea the second two nights.

On the itinerary there is a hike up Mt. Sinai (I have a feeling God is long overdue for a new prophet and I'm probably just the person he's looking for), a visit to the St. Katherine's monastery (this used to be a pilgrimage for the Coptic Christians for hundreds of years, but I hear now they have a kick ass dinner buffet...definitely equally worth trekking to), and a dip in the Red Sea for some snorkeling. The area has plenty of beautiful coral reefs, Bedouin camel treks into the desert, and tie-dyed shirts for sale everywhere...what's not to like?

Once we return from Sinai we'll spend another two days in Cairo dodging death (we have nearly been rundown about 47 times at last count), and complaining about being ripped off all day. Wonderful stuff. As for my eating? After eight months of fairly continuous self discipline, well, I'm pleased to announce- I have fallen of the wagon. In fact, I've catapulted myself so far off the friggen wagon I can't even see the damn wagon with binoculars. I'm not walking half as much as I thought I would because walking anywhere here is basically suicide. Between dodging cars and puddles of donkey poop and pee, let's just say walking is suicide.

Well, we're off to eat some kushari (a dish I've had SIX times since we've landed...I told you all I was manic) for lunch before an afternoon siesta. Hope you all had a wonderful New Years (ours was just magical...we stood on the steps of our hotel breathing in the aforementioned donkey pee and exhaust)!