midnight pumpkin - it's all just a dream

An Update

It has gotten increasingly difficult to keep this blog up to date. I really do want to post pictures and let everyone now about the amazing things I'm seeing and doing, but it's just so difficult, not to mention expensive. At some point I'll fill in the blanks, but for now I'm going to try and provide a quick overview of where I've been:

Cairo, Egypt:
-the Great Pyramids of Giza
-the more ancient step pyramids of Saqqarra
-Islamic Cairo (another odd one as no part of Cairo is any more or less Islamic than any other, but like Singapore with its Chinatown, Cairo has an Islamic part)

Aswan, Egypt:
-Temple of Philae (my favorite and in my opinion the most stunning ancient Egyptian temple)
-the High Dam (I've seen five year olds engineer and build prettier dams than this, this is the ugliest dam I've ever seen, but the biggest in the world until the Three Gorges in China is finished)

Abu Simbel, Egypt:
-Temple of Abu Simbel (I was personally disappointed, as this was suppose to be the most photogenic pharaonic temple in all of Egypt)
-Temple of Hathor

Luxor, Egypt:
-Valley of the Kings (not what I expected, the area is just barren desert and the vandalized tombs have little left to see)
-Deir al Bahri - Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut (overly vandalize by her successor and there is little left to see up close)
-Valley of the Queens (better preserved than the Valley of the Kings)

Dahab in Sinai, Egypt:
-beautiful coastal city with excellent cave diving, but I needed a day to relax and do nothing

St Katherine's in Sinai, Egypt:
-Yes, I climbed Mt Sinai (2285 metres) with a thousand others to catch sunrise at the top, unlike everyone else who took the easy camel trail though, I went up the 3750 Steps of Repentance in the dead of night, who needs a stairmaster
-the area is some of the most beautiful and most barren mountain desert I have ever seen

Petra, Jordan:
-an ancient stunningly beautiful city carved into cliff side walls, remember the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where they found the holy grail, that's Petra
-great desert hiking

Akko, Israel:
-an ancient stonewalled coastal city with tremendous historical significance, the best preserved in Israel, but unfortunately it's not the most stunning I've ever seen (for stunning go to Dubrovnik, Croatia)

Haifa, Israel:
-Baha'i Gardens (the center of a major super interesting religion I was quite ignorant of)

posted by Jim Chea @ 2:23 AM