Monday
June 3 Arrival and accommodation
at Mayorka hotel19 El Montasser St. El Agouza, CairoTel: 202-340097 or 3476729

When I woke up, I saw Brahrain in the morning. The roads are straight and cars are much less than that in Hong Kong. The land besides the roads is barren. I saw a mosque from the hotel window. It is one of the most important mosques in Brahrain. The sky was cloudless. It was the first day we spent in the Middle East, the heat directly from the sun was quite frightening to us.

We traveled to Cairo by an inland plane. Looking out of the plane, I saw the desert, the Red Sea and even the Pyramids of Khufu in Giza. When we landed, there were some air forces, the plane became very unsteady.

It was already late afternoon when we arrived Cairo. Our guide Mr. Ashraf was already waiting. He is a very kind and funny man. He turned out to be our "Egyptian Papa". Outside Cairo Airport is nothing but a sandy land with a shiny sun up above. Luckily, Cairo is much more than like that.

Arrived at Mayorka hotel, we got our luggage. I shared room with Stella as I was in Brahrain. Ada and Carrie shared another room. There was no plan for the rest of the day, so, the four of us took a walk around the hotel on our own. We walked for a short while and arrived the famous River Nile. There were many people sitting besides the River, very similar to what happens here in Tsim Sha Tsui besides the Victoria Harbour. I also saw a father and a son fishing together.

The traffic in Cairo is a system looked like a chaos on the surface. There aretraffic lamps but with lots of dust and do not provide much use. There are traffic caps who direct the traffics if they consider suitable. People cross the roads by subjective judgment. On a whole, the system runs by tacit agreement. Drivers communicate with horns and hand gestures.

We wanted to change US dollars for Egyptian pounds. A staff of the hotel named Tarek helped us and bought us to the bank. He is a very nice man. Even though his English is not very good, he tried his best all the time to talk with us. The whole street knows Tarek and he greeted everyone as he walked on by. We saw Egyptian people playing games similar to Mahjong but with less number of cards. Also, the game is only for 2 players. After Tarek talked to them, we all took pictures for this special local game. There was also a man smoking "Sheesha", the Egyptian local water pipe.

I took pictures for the girls there. At first, they were very shy and saying that they could not take pictures. After some times of persuading, they all agreed and happily allowed me to take pictures for them.

We also found a place for us to get onto the Internet and checked emails. That was very good news to us. Hong Kong people just cannot live without computers and Internet.

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