It’s 9pm as I lay wide awake staring up at my hot pink mosquito net.  It is the only thing separating me from the sounds and bugs of the Thailand rainforest.  Reflecting back on my last 12 hours which have brought me to this point is just one more moment of the trip where I must wonder “what the hell was I thinking?!”  I don’t camp.  I hate being dirty.  My father has worked for a company that invented the innerspring mattress since I was 8, so I’ve had a king sized bed almost that long.   Yet I find myself here, crunching up my rain jacket and tomorrow’s “clean” shirt to suffice as a pillow and begging sleep to come so I can dream that the sharp point under my sleeping bag is not in fact a broken piece of bamboo but just part of a deep, deep tissue massage…

It sounded like an adventure when we booked it…and yes, a really good story to report back.  But when I loaded up my elephant at 9am and was reminded that we wouldn’t return to air conditioning or running water for 25 hours, the reality hit hard and I considered turning around…if only I could get my elephant to follow any of my commands! [Ed. note: “Ben” to turn, come on now, we went to class and everything!]

We marched along through the tall, sweet grass and across the small river, my husband’s elephant stopping to eat every 50 feet without fail.  No matter how many times he shouted “Bai” (forward), that hungry, hungry elephant had a mind of its own and a belly of its own that required 200 kilograms of food a day to suffice!  So we set our pace by his elephant and eventually rolled up to our camp…just after 10 am.   Now, I’m not the expert here, but if our only plan was to ride the elephants out to camp and then camp the night, could we not have made that 1 hour ride say at 4 pm and enjoyed the AC and running water for a few additional hours first??  Apparently not…  So what grand plans did they have for us to kill the time?  Nothing.  Yup.   We napped.  And read our books on the Kindles I tucked into the backpack last minute thankfully. And then it was lunchtime…sitting on the ground, eating something described as lamb intestines…raw.   Okay, so we actually didn’t eat that, because while I try most anything in hopes of not offending the locals, I draw the line at possible raging food poisoning when I don’t have running water and I’m an hour elephant ride away from a car to the nearest doctor…Luckily, there was whiskey.   Yes, instead of food, our lunch consisted of shots of Thai “moonshine” straight out of a cup carved from some bamboo.  When in Rome, right??

The afternoon had an adventure–hiking to the waterfall and collecting firewood and bamboo to cook dinner.   This we were used to.   We have hiked to many waterfalls back home, how different could it be here?  Apparently on little food and lots of whiskey it is a bit different.  My husband fell in the water.   Shin deep, drowning his boot.   Exactly the situation any hiker wants with an unknown downhill trek ahead.   Okay, so we sat awhile, he wrung things out and knew there was a dry pair of flip flops back at camp. [Ed. note: yup. Not my finest hour.] So we headed back up the waterfall rocks….and I slipped.   Confession time: I’m super clumsy…like run into walls as I walk past in the office clumsy.   So the fact that I have lasted almost 7 weeks without many bumps and bruises is a blessing.  Today I tested that luck.  I took a big step up and my right leg stayed put…but my left leg slid…down, down, down the rock and my body started to follow.   So my husband did what he could to save me and my bones from that crash, he grabbed my mahout pants…and then I dangled like the Coppertone baby on the edge of a waterfall until another guide stopped laughed and came down to help us restore ourselves to the path. [Ed. note: I needed to stop her from falling…]

Thankfully, dinner was next…and they brought 2 bottles of whiskey this time.   So that brings us to now.   The sun went down at 6:30pm.  Dinner was done and the bugs were out.   We retreated to our nets for protection but our bodes aren’t used to the early to bed, early to rise lifestyle–especially when you add a little whiskey, then we think it’s party time!  So all I can do is lay here awake, listening to the sounds of the bugs and the elephants and trying in vain to make this bamboo mat feel like a pillow top mattress…I want to swear I’ll never camp again, but I know that my bad decision making skills have booked at least one more night on this trip so I have to at least hope that trek will at least include a shower somewhere…

(This is a GoPro of the trek from our camp…I didn’t really write much about it, but imagine the camel ride except we’re riding bareback this time…)

Along with riding the elephants and feeding them bamboo, part of the elephant care is bathing the elephants.  Sounds simple enough, where’s the hose?  Not quite.   The elephants love the water, so when they see the lake, they just go for it…and the walk right into it no matter how loud you shout stop. [Ed. note: maybe if you shouted “how”, the command for stop…]  So that is how we ended up riding an elephant fully clothed into a dirty Thai lake…twice.

The mahouts are used to this, they know how to stand up on the elephant’s back and balance so only their feet get wet.   But they get great entertainment on commanding the elephant to basically lie down underwater so the silly tourists get dunked.  Over and over again.  And if you aren’t cooperating by helping to scrub the elephant’s skin, it will get grumpy and pull it’s trunk up to try to shoot water your way.

The second bath time, my mahout got off the elephant before we were near the water and suddenly it was Wan Dee and me, alone in the lake.   He wasn’t listening to my commands (but he hadn’t yet, so why start now…), and my husband, who was safely guarded by his mahout on back of his elephant, was making things worse by shouting out the command to lay down in an attempt to dunk me. [Ed. note: If you can’t get an elephant to dunk your wife in a lake in the middle of the Thailand jungle, when can you dunk you wife?] And then the elephant got grumpy because no one was washing its back–what the mahout normally does when he is standing there.   So I had to turn myself around on the elephant and scrub.   And just as quickly as we went into the water, Wan Dee decided to be done with bath time and started trotting out of the water…with me still backwards and unable to reach the ears to hold onto.

I don’t think this was the type of mud bath most spas wanted you to pay hundreds for…

For some ridiculous reason, we signed up for 3 day Mahout training school at the Thai Elephant Conservatory.   A mahout is basically the elephant master who trains and cares for them and for the next 3 days we were each going to be assigned our own elephant to learn to ride and command and care for along with them…including camping.   The first sign of this being a bad decision should have been the wardrobe.   They provided us with a uniform to wear…a one size fits all denim pants and button down that ties around with a knotted to belt to fit both me and the 10 year old girl riding beside me.   Haven’t these folks heard the expression “dress for the job you want”?  I wanted to be the fabulous circus performers diving off platforms to land on the backs of the elephants….where’s my sparkly tutu??

I digress.  Suited up and ready to go, I met my elephant…Pan Wan Dee.   She (He? I never asked…) had a little sassy attitude.   Mainly, she didn’t like to let me get up before she stood.   So while she was supposed to be sitting on the ground while I climbed up her leg and swung my leg around to sit on her neck, instead she stood up and I was dangling on, holding one ear and yelling to my (non-English speaking) mahout to help.   Every time, he’d run around and shove me up and over while laughing his butt off too much to command the elephant to do anything helpful in the moment.  And so the next time we tried to mount the elephant over the trunk…only she still stood up as I was halfway up and BACKWARDS on the elephant this time.  This is setting up to be a long 3 days…

The entrance of Tiger Temple was glaringly hard to miss.   While I expected this tiger encounter to be somewhat of a tourist attraction, all my research led me to believe this sanctuary run by Buddhist monks was a holy place where orphaned tiger cubs had been given homes…but instead it appeared we were driving into a cartoon version of an amusement park—literally through the mouth of a giant tiger…

The Boy was glaring at me by now to figure out why I made him trek so far from Bangkok in the dark and still wake up at 6am for some cheesy photo-op, but I promised him it would get better…it had to…

And oh how it did…

We spent the morning with tigers.   We gave offerings of food to the monks, then we went and bottle fed tigers their milk.   And while I used to think my darling niece was a messy eater, I now have a pair of pants I need to burn immediately because the combination of spilled milk and tiger cub slobber will never, ever come out (Sahara desert residue I could live with, but this is a bit much…)  And once the tiger was fed, he entered into the “milk drunk” stage and basically didn’t care what was up…including letting us use him as a little pillow as we cuddled!  (I stopped numbering the bad life decisions somewhere around the Kremlin, so let’s just keep our fingers crossed that when we finish the 2nd half of this trip we come home with all body parts still attached…) [Ed. note: I still have plans on catching a kangaroo.]

The tiger encounter didn’t stop at breakfast…next they needed to go for a walk.   The volunteer determined we needed to be given their largest tiger cub on a leash to walk since the babies would look much too tiny next to my tall husband…and then they gave me the leash and said “hold on”…  Thankfully, the tiger liked me and behaved well, he walked slow and straight and didn’t turn around much to stare me down.   When I handed the leash over to the boy for his turn, it was another story.   The tiger either didn’t like him or sensed he was the reckless one and decided to test the limits.   It turned around a bunch, causing my husband to have to keep turning too to stay behind the head and out of striking range.   It tried to climb a tree for a bit…and then it went for a run.   And what could He do but run also!  Off the Boy went, being pulled along behind a massive tiger cub, holding on tight and hoping to stop before it got to the adult tiger enclosure full of “friends”… [Ed. note: my tiger was the only one that thought a playful run was needed. And it was a tiger.]

The amount of interaction we were allowed with so many tigers was surprising…and the fact that I willfully participated in every crazy part of it has left me reflecting on my sanity.   Next up was bath time…yes, we got to hand wash the tigers…and then when they were clean we got to hand feed them chickens—and I do mean we held a cooked chicken by a wing and got to stuff it into the tigers mouth until it was done.  Except for the boy, who had the great pleasure of feeding the last 5 inches of chicken to his tiger when a very large, very loud adult tiger chose that moment to roar…and there was no shame at all when he dropped the leftover chicken and moved back fast!

So we’ve now bottle fed, hand fed, walked, and bathed the tigers…what else do they need? Playtime of course!   Into the large “cage” we went. [Ed. note: cage brings to mind something small. This was more like a decent sized suburban yard with trees and whatnot, but fenced in, and full of energetic tigers.]  Yes, I’m serious.   The staff led us across the open tiger pen and lined us up along the wall, then handed each of us a long stick with plastic bottles and bags tied to the end.  Surrounding us were no less than 10-15 tigers, all between 175 and 250 pounds…and nothing else.   We were told to make noise and move the toys on the sticks until a tiger comes over to us, then pull the stick up to make them jump.  These sticks, in case you were wondering, were about 8 feet long…but the tigers liked to come around the inside of the toys, so usually the tigers were only 4 feet or less away and jumping up at the things we were holding.   Over and over again…for at least 20 minutes.   [Ed. note: They’re like those feathers on sticks you get to play with a house cat…play keep away, entertain the cat, whatnot. Only tiger-sized.]  I feel like they should have sold t-shirts at this point: “I survived being locked in the tiger cage…”  I would wear that with pride and I don’t even like t-shirts! 

The finale of our bad decision Thursday came when we headed down to the waterfall.   Somehow I ended up first in our single file line here, so when we walked into the tiger field, they led me around 3 tigers who were easily 300 pounds each and told me to sit down on the ground behind the fourth.   And then they put my right hand on my lap and pushed the tiger’s head into it to lie down.   Yes, I was suddenly cradling a 300 pound kitty cat who kept trying to lift his snout and look at who had a hold of him…My husband plopped down behind me, we snapped this year’s Christmas card photo, and then I got the heck out of dodge!  

We were done actually handling the tigers, but these big guys still needed to play…so they locked us inside a waist height metal baby gate and corralled the 4 cats into the water directly in front of us.  As we were mesmerized by the swimming and climbing the rocks, in strolled the craziest man I have ever encountered, shirtless and smoking a cigarette.   Yes, this Thai man was about to go swimming with 4 tigers.  And not only was he swimming with them, he was taunting them with sticks and toys.   He was yelling, poking them, swimming behind rocks and banging on chimes….and the entire time the other staff member who was between the water and our little metal shield was sitting on the sand playing Candy Crush…and if a cat happened to come near, he stood up, waved his left hand at it to shoo it away, and kept playing his game with the right hand…

I wonder how what their staff turnover rate is…seems like they would filter through them quickly when they are that reckless!

My husband loves to drive…I think he envisions himself in “Fast and Furious” some days as he weaves in and out of the 2 lanes of traffic on the way to work.  When this trip starting shaping up, I realized we were going 6 weeks without driving a car…and the entire month in Europe without even getting into a car.   I questioned him several times on if he could handle this…and while I think he got the shakes of withdrawal a time or two, a glimpse of something else old and crumbly shook him right out of it again.  But when we got to Thailand on the halfway mark of our trip, he was ready to get behind the wheel again…so ready in fact that he tucked himself into the lefthand side of the truck we rented and sat there for a moment before he realized that was not in fact where the steering wheel lived in this country… [Ed. note: seriously guys. It had been a very long day.]

Our plan for the next 24 hours wasn’t our best logistically, but we ended up with less days in Thailand than we originally wanted due to the flight fairies and we added in that (totally worth it) stop over in Cambodia, so we had to be adventurous. This adventure started with renting a car at the Bangkok airport and driving 3 hours west of the city to a tiny town called Sai Yok…in the pitch black of night.

Any drive in a foreign country can be challenging.   Add in the wrong side of the road, street signs in a language with an entirely unrecognizable alphabet so there was no option of figuring those out, and a flight delay which led to Avis giving your car away, and you find yourself leaving a city during the pitch black rush hour and going the wrong direction on a toll road…twice.  We are really good at this travel thing by now, aren’t we?  

We finally turn ourselves back around and start heading out into Thai suburbia…and the creepy miniature animals.   Every grassy median from 20 miles outside Bangkok to almost the border had clusters of elephants or giraffes or sheep or horses staring at you.  It was the oddest thing I’ve ever encountered and since some of the only other street lights were from the 7-11s lining the route, these glowing welcoming committees made it feel like we were driving into some B list horror movie…[Ed. note: Ever driven while tired? Imagine that feeling, only the things you are sure aren’t real really are there in the median. And super creepy.]

Thankfully, just before 11pm we got to our hotel…which was also pitch black. Apparently they decided to close early.  So we were now 3 hours from Bangkok with a rented truck as our possible sleeping option and the need to be awake again at 6am for our adventure we drove so far to experience.   The last bit of serenity from those Cambodian temples had trickled out of my body and I was ready to say screw it all and go find a Four Seasons…but then the sleepy Thai girl answered my call to the handwritten cell phone number posted on the door and 5 minutes later she rode up in her pajamas on the back of a motorbike to hand us a room key,  I explained to hear how early we were leaving and tried to give my credit card to pay, but she wouldn’t take it and just told me to leave the key in the room in the morning.   I was too tired to argue, so I think we spent a night squatting in a very nice river hotel…

Ankor Wat is the #1 site in the world currently by almost all travel guides.  Which means it is overrun by tour buses and mobs of people following a guide with a colorful umbrella. We decided to forgo that route and just found a tuk tuk.   This was my first tuk tuk experience and man am I in love.   They put a trailer hitch on the back of a motorcycle, hook on an open air, covered wagon, and take you anywhere you want for half a day for the fixed price of $8.  And while you stumble among the secret gardens of the temples, the tuk tuk driver just strings up his hammock between the benches and takes a nap.  What a life. [Ed. note: magical country it is]

Okay, rewind…last we left you, we were freezing in Moscow before hightailing it to Thailand…so how in the world am I now in Cambodia?  For that, I blame (or thank rather) our friends in Hong Kong.   When we were plotting our adventure and had only the major flights lined up, we connected with our most adventurous friends (we met in Antarctica, enough said…) to see if they wanted to meet up at any point on their half of the globe. They told us under no uncertain terms that we had to go to Cambodia, and so we booked a flight right away because these are the kind of people you listen to on once in a lifetime trip suggestions!  Unfortunately, with our flights in and out of Thailand locked in place and still wanting to see a lot of the country, we could devote exactly 23 hours to the lovely Siem Reap.   Not a lot of time, but enough for a crash course and a promise to be back.

To make life simple, I pre-booked us in a hotel with included airport pick up, dinner, breakfast, and a sunrise tuk tuk tour of Ankor Wat.  With this being my first time in Asia, I didn’t realize that those tuk tuks were a general way of life and not just a tourist draw, but when the driver from the hotel stood holding my name on a sign, I followed him to what I expected to be a lovely air conditioned SUV to rest in my (still ripped) jeans and long sleeve shirt… but instead of the joy of AC, we had the wonders of open air and the hope that a motorbike could tug along our overstuffed backpacks to some unknown hotel location between the airport and the temples…

When we arrived quickly and surprisingly not melting with the heat yet, we decided to drop our stuff and go find the temples at sunset to make the most of our 23 hour detour. The same tuk tuk driver (who became our personal tour guide this trip) was on board to take us back out and he loaded our more appropriated attired selves back into the trailer to find the ancient ruins. [Ed. note: temples close at sunset, so I wasn’t about to waste a couple hours sleeping when we could go catch sunset at Angkor Wat!] This place was slammed.  I thought I understood tour buses and crowds around the Colosseum, the Louvre, Buckingham Palace…but Europe had nothing on this.  Every inch of sidewalk was crowded and we were pushed and pulled as people filed in and out of the tiny, old doorways.   Thank goodness my husband is so tall, it is honestly the only reason we haven’t been lost yet on this trip–he knows that I can always find him in a crowd so he just stays put if I get separated!

Ankor Wat is stunning.  At sunrise it was a hundred times better, but even in the sticky, crowded evening it caused us to pause and wonder how and what and why.   There are walls and walls carved with intricate details and rooms upon rooms that have withstood the test of times.   This structure looked almost like burned wood, but it was just some intricate aging on stone in the rainforest.  We did a quick look and knew we were coming back tomorrow to explore more, so we started to find our way out…and then my husband made a terrible error in judgement…he let me look at the shops.   I have 2 sisters and grew up super girly…shopping is part of my DNA basically.   And shopping in Cambodia where 4,000 riel is $1 makes things seem expensive but really be a bargain… So I browsed and I touched and I pondered…and then I remembered how heavy that damn backpack was already and said “maybe tomorrow” as a way to put those overly pushy vendors at bay…forgetting I would in fact be back at this temple tomorrow!

Five am came quickly and we picked up our breakfast boxes and loaded up into our favorite tuk tuk for another attempt at the greatest destination on Earth.  The sun rose slowly which should have allowed ample time to capture that perfect shot of the temples reflecting over the pond…except for the flashes.   Why do people insist on shooting everything with a flash on?  It doesn’t improve pictures, it doesn’t help the natural light, it only messes up the light for everyone around who knows how to set a camera and get a shot!  (Rant over….for now…)  After the light came into the sky, the temple cleared.   It was crazy–tour buses of people had flooded the lawn 20 minutes before and now we were almost alone inside the walls wandering the halls.  As we worked our way inside, my husband kept looking up…yes, he had found something he wanted to climb.   In the middle of the temple was a tower…which did not open until 7:40 am according to the amusement park style signs and “average wait time” entrance signs to go up.  Well it was only 5:45 now, so that simply would not do.   After a few glances around to check the (lack of a) crowd, the guard offered to allow us up right now but we’d pay extra…40,000 extra in fact.  $10?  Sold.   Lead the way.   And so we jumped a fence, climbed the steep stairs, and took a private tour of the Buddhist holy grounds around the entire top of Angkor Wat….and about halfway around we realized that he probably didn’t work for the temples and the guy he gave our money to probably was getting half as look out and not to hold the donation as we suspected…Oops? [Ed. note: you could tell that place gets slammed all day long. Gates to corral people around the top, steep stairs, waiting signs, a legit extra cost to go in…and we bribed our way in for a private sunrise tour.]

With Ankor Wat mastered (including a stop back to the shops to look at a cute dress that I decided was too short) and still most of the day left before our flight, we roused our tuk tuk driver from his hammock and requested a few more stops.   Siem Reap is littered with amazing temples and the tour buses only seem to care about the main event.   Sad for those people, but oh so lucky for us.   We spent the rest of the morning wandering around even more stunning (but smaller) temple ruins–including both of our favorite which was literally overgrown by trees (they filmed Tomb Raider here…) [Ed. note: I loved the forest temple. Temple ruins, overrun by the rain forest. Badass beyond belief.] Most of the day it was us and a handful of monks climbing the crumbled stones and bowing to the Buddha statues.  I could have easily spent a week here and before we left the 2nd temple we were already planning when to return to see the rest because we knew that we could only touch on the magnificent beauty of this area.  What an excellent detour to take!

So it was still before noon…and I was still thinking about shopping.   So our beloved tuk tuk driver took me back to Ankor Wat for a 3rd time (is it becoming like Vatican City??) and man did those vendors swarm.   Everyone of them whom I promised to come back to tomorrow remembered us (I blame my tall husband…) and started pulling my arms into their shops!  It was like a tug of war littered by scarves and post cards.   Luckily, the owner of the short dress shop found her way into the hoard and led me back to the stall where I played dress up that morning.   After much thought all day, I decided it would make a nice tunic and ended up with my first souvenir of the trip!   Next, I’m going to try to buy some Asian jeans…

My mother is a worrier.  Big time.  And I guess when your youngest child has made it a habit of flying halfway around the world every 6 months or so, it’s slightly justified.  So before we left on this trip, we had to hand over the usual list of all our fight details (so she can “watch the planes crash on Flight Tracker” as my father likes to say…)  Except we fudged it a little bit.  Or rather, my husband did.  And she caught on too upon quick glance…but I think I showed her a new picture of my adorable baby niece as a distraction tactic and we moved on…  So here is, first and foremost, my public apology to my Mom: you’re right, it does not take 36 hours to fly from Cairo to Bangkok…even with the time difference.  We had a secret layover…in Mother Russia. [Ed. Note: Sorry. Between Putin being Putin, and you being you, I thought you’d stress a bit too much beforehand. Luckily, we’re safely out. Plus…what a fun surprise!]

This little detour is 100% Delta’s doing.   Way back almost a year ago when we were trying to book these flights, the super nice ticketing agent came back on the line after a long hold and was super worried and apologetic…apparently people getting a basically free trip around the world can be complete jerks if it isn’t all non-stop and the perfect schedule.   But we were flexible…so when she suggested a 12 hour layover in Moscow, we were game! Plenty of time to clear customs, see the Kremlin, and find the original Moscow Mule for an afternoon cocktail stop!  My husband first decided to keep this stop private until we knew if we’d actually be allowed into the country.   Russia and the USA aren’t on the friendliest of terms at the moment, so we didn’t want to up sell anything that might amount to simply taking a long nap in the Aeroflot Lounge…

And then we tried to get the visa…holy hell the Russian visa is no joke.   First of all, it is 15 pages-each!  We had to disclose every job, address, and country visited for the last 10 years.   We went to 6 countries in 2014 alone…this was going to take awhile.  Luckily (for me), the planning breakdown of this entire trip went as follows: Husband is in charge of all visas and vaccines to get us into every country, plus the route of the Australian road trip; Wife is in charge of everything else.   So finally I caught a break!  [Ed. note: It took a long time. Pulled out old passports for trip logs, plus all the other paperwork. China’s visa application was also difficult and long and needed 15 pages, but Russia’s was the most worrisome.]  But then the fees added up…the regular visa fee, the fee to use the (required) 3rd party to submit the paperwork to the Embassy on our behalf, the overnight shipping fees because those passports needed to be back ASAP to get the next visa (it was an orchestrated timeline this summer that caused lots and lots of anxiety), plus the fee to some random tour company online to have a visa invitation letter written in Russian and e-mailed to us…only to find out when it came that they had us staying in Moscow for 2 days and told us to make up a hotel on the application.  Yup, we were officially told to lie on our Russian visa application…and so we did. [Ed. note: whatever it takes to be able to go see the Kremlin! This was another reason just to skip mentioning this to the in-laws…]

Somehow, they let us in.  Our luggage was checked straight through to Thailand so we had the clothes on our back, the very heavy carry-on backpacks, and the information that a nice local woman named Maria would meet us in the arrival hall at 8am…  Oh, did I fail to mention our flight left Cairo at 1:30am and arrived in Moscow at 7am? Yea, we were doing an all day walking tour of Moscow on 4 hours of seated airplane sleep…what could go wrong?

Famous last words.  My pants split.  Straight down the middle.  I don’t know how it happened, but I can assume that sometime during the restless sleep where I was trying to bend my legs up and onto the (empty) armrest in front of me, I overstressed the seams of my very favorite (and only packed) pair of jeans.  And so in we go to Mother Russia. We’re exhausted, we’re starving, we cannot figure out the Russian word for milk so that I can order a proper cup of tea to attempt to revive myself…oh, and it’s 2 degrees out (Celsius, but man does it make the point better than 36…)   Yes, we left the Sahara Desert of Cairo where it was 90 [Fahrenheit this time] and were heading to Cambodia where it should be closer to 98…but we decided to stop for a few hours and venture out into the near freezing world of Moscow for a stroll…with no jacket, a thin sweater each, and a gaping hole in the seat of my pants!  (I bought a cap, Mom, I won’t get sick, stop worrying…)

The tour was actually very cool.  I didn’t know much about Russia that I hadn’t learned from “Anastasia”, so my information needed a bit of updating.   We toured the metro, where Stalin built every single stop to be a different, extravagant work of art.   Truthfully, there are chandeliers, mosaics, carved sculptures, it is stunningly beautiful.  We also had the pleasure of a guide who grew up in Moscow during the Cold War and could pepper each story her personal experiences in “Communist Boy Scouts” and tell us Stalin jokes!

Then we got to the Kremlin.   It is not, as I expected, that beautiful and colorful building that looks like sculpted candies.   That’s a church…named St. Basil’s…after a homeless beggar who died and was buried underneath.  The Kremlin is the massive fortress next door in the Red Square which houses Lenin’s palace, the armory, 4 more churches, a garden, and basically everything except for Putin.   I can understand why every image of Moscow shows St. Basil’s instead…the Kremlin’s wall and Lenin’s mausoleum isn’t nearly as picturesque and Russia is working on an image problem… [Ed. note: Russia’s image is perfect…in Russia.]

We did our guided tour like good boys and girls and then our guide was done…and our flight wasn’t for another 5 hours.   We could go back to the airport and hang out OR she would give us a subway map with directions and we could stay and tour the Kremlin museums…which had 10 Faberge eggs.  I really like shiny things, and über rare, priceless Russian treasures sounded much better than whatever unknown lay before us in the Aeroflot lounge…so we chose option B…and then she left us…alone…in Russia.  We lasted about 20 minutes and one covert photo of those eggs before we hightailed it back to the relative safety of the airport behind customs.  We’re adventurous but we’re not reckless and we felt like we were living on borrowed time with this little stop…especially since we weren’t sure if the customs officers would question our “2 day visa” when we went back through 8 hours later!

The husband is chiming in today with a little commercial…which perhaps should be cleaned up a bit before it gets true airtime and funding from the Egyptian Tourism Ministry, but his heart is in the right place and I agree, come to Egypt if you can make it happen, it’s mind blowing to see this place…

Go to Egypt, now.

Don’t go to the Sinai Peninsula, ISIS is over there trying to destabilize the government by attacking the military right now. There’s not much over there to see, so you won’t miss much. And the Suez Canal, while tempting, is just a canal. It borders the Sinai, so that’s right out as well. Don’t go to dangerous places.

But go to Egypt, as soon as you can. It is a stunningly amazing place, and it needs visitors. Tourism is down a LOT since 2011. It’s down over 70%. For the Middle East’s most stable country, its most populous country, and by far its oldest country, that is bad news bears. Over 300 river boats run on the Nile normally – right now less than 10% are running, and even those are running, like our ship, with 18 guests on board. Unemployment is up to almost 30%. But the country is stunning, and safe. No, really.

Yes, I know about the Mexican tour bus attack in the desert. Don’t take a safari to a militant hot spot with an unscheduled picnic stop somewhere dangerous – stick to the normal stuff and you’ll be fine. But honestly, the Egyptian government has bolstered security at every site (and seemingly everywhere in between with random checkpoints) it’s hard /not/ to feel safe. The attack at Karnak was foiled at the parking lot entrance checkpoint this summer. And even that was the first target of a tourist site in /years/. It’s safe. It’s not Juarez-Mexico-in-2008 dangerous everywhere, with cartels kidnapping and beheading busloads of students and police and military. You wouldn’t go to Juarez then, but you’d still go to Cancun, you know?

Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way. Go to Egypt.  You’ve got a country that desperately needs your tourism dollars. You have people who are beyond friendly and hospitable. You have guides who have Masters in Egyptology explaining hieroglyphic scenes and characters and history to you.  And no one is here to see the wonders of a 7,000 year old civilization. Sites are near empty. Temples. We had the Bent and Red Pyramids to ourselves. We were in the Great Pyramid – alone. We walked around an entire pyramid on the plateau by ourselves, no one else was there to enjoy them. And it really is safe. Not once have I felt truly unsafe (ATV riding through Dead Camel Lane notwithstanding). The scenery is breathtaking – the Nile is a juxtaposition of blue water and green fields up against a harsh orange landscape of sand and rock.

And no one is here. This sounds like a PSA – but go to Egypt. Tourism is down, the sites are empty, safety is everyone’s goal, and it is amazing. Hmph.

 Anyways – here are some quick hits:

• One day in Cairo is more than enough. Giza pyramids early morning, by 10:30 head south to the Bent and Red and Step Pyramids. It’s 1-2pm now – head to the Museum, see King Tut’s treasures and you’re home by 5:30. Leave Cairo for Luxor.
• Take a Nile Cruise. Spend an extra day or two in Luxor. I didn’t know what to expect with temples and whatnot, but I regret not having more days for more time at Karnak, maybe the Valley of the Nobles, the Valley of the Queens, etc.
• Hey, the Nile hasn’t had a crocodile since the dam was built in the 60’s. Who knew.
• Lake Nasser has a bunch of crocodiles since the dam created it in the 60’s. Who knew.
• They let you, from Luxor on down, just walk up to basically anything. You /could/ touch it if you wanted. Don’t. I’m talking hieroglyphic carvings (carved in or carved out!) and paintings and obelisks and statues and pillars etc. They are crazy old and amazing.
• No one is here right now, so I spent 3-5 minutes standing in front of King Tut’s funeral mask – 11kg of solid gold – with no one around me or bothering me or pushing or anything. Just me and King Tut having a staring match. Crazy.
• I totally could’ve climbed up the entire “small” pyramid of Giza’s big three. No one was around. I didn’t. But I could have.
• The Nile is awesome.

OK, photo time.

And now, an updated map set!

The Boy was somewhat unenchanted by the capital city…and so was I, but I’m going to let him take this one to explain what exactly caused it to lose the luster…

So, our initial foray into Egypt was via Cairo – which is where we first experienced the thought that Cairo is disappointing via our ATV ride.  The Pyramids of Giza are absolutely crazy and stunning, but when you go to places like the Bent Pyramid, just south of Cairo, you start to realize Cairo is…unique.

We were constantly warned by our guide about Cairo traffic, which is your standard “lanes don’t exist, watch out for donkey carts and pedestrians and VW buses with their doors open” type of clogged traffic. What we weren’t warned about was the trash. Everywhere. Piles of trash along the side of the roads, the middle of the roads, mixed in with the dirt and everyday life of the city. Trash falling into the canals that crisscross the area from the Nile, trash on fire, trash smoldering, donkeys looking in the trash for food while they wait next to their carts – trash. We initially thought this was an Egypt thing – hey, every country is different, we’re going a lot of places, maybe Egypt is just dirty – but we were wrong.

Upon landing in Luxor, one of the first questions our guide asked was “what did you think of Cairo?” followed quickly by a “I hate it, too dirty.” Luxor, Aswan, Abu Simbel, everywhere else is quite clean (some trash…can’t avoid it in a city). Cairo is dirty, and it suffers for it.

When you wake up in your spectacular pyramid view room, you expect a clear shot of the mammoth stone structures. Instead, you see them…in a haze. Yes…Cairo is filled with “Nile fog” as our guide claimed. Smog. So not only are the streets dirty, in a state of disrepair, congested, and saddled with garbage, but the city lacks a clear line of sight from one area to another due to the haze.  Go up in Cairo Tower, the only thing taller than the Great Pyramid here? Too bad you can’t see the lit up pyramids through the smog, even at night.

Climb to the Citadel, the crusades-era castle on the hill in East Cairo? Barely on a “clear day” can you make out the Ancient Wonder of the World that calls Cairo home.

Oh, you can’t see them either? Let me do some heavy contrast and enhancements for you, to illustrate they are there.

Suffice to say, we were quite disappointed by Cairo. Even the food lacks a certain charm here compared to elsewhere down the Nile. Next time, spend a day in the area max, hit all the Pyramids, and then take a flight to Luxor and enjoy the beauty that is Egypt.  Because Cairo isn’t it.

We saw A LOT in Egypt…so much so that I’m in a little bit of overload for facts and dates and pharaohs and gods…and honestly if you want to know all the cool stories you can Google them…or just come to Egypt yourself!   But, in order to not gloss over an entire week of really cool things, I figured I’d pop a few photos in here while I tell you about the strangest thing I learned here…

I’m not sure about everyone else, but I find it really annoying to go to something cool and old (like the Colosseum or Notre Dame) and see that walls scratched up with “Kevin loves Tess 2012” or whatever.  If you absolutely have to graffiti, why not save it for the bathroom stall? (It was good enough for Jenny…)  So here I was entering grandpa mode (aka “get off my lawn…”) to fuss that people who had drawn on the temple walls that were two to five thousand years old and had maintained the original paint color in some areas despite all odds and Nile River floods…and our guide enlightened us.  Apparently, graffiti is as old as these tombs and temples almost!

There are ancient Egyptians who wrote on the walls of the Step Pyramid, the first pyramid ever built, basically saying, “wow, this is so cool and old!”…because when this site was visited in the 20-something dynasty of Egypt, the Step Pyramid was already around 2,000 years old!   Also, when the Christians came into Egypt, they tried to paint over some of the temple scenes with saints to show that they old gods were no longer worshipped…

So I guess I can’t really blame people too much for the human nature that seems to be ingrained in us since the start of time…but if you absolutely must leave your mark like this, please at least as well done as a work of the old masters and don’t just phone it in with “John wuz here…”