Hello! It's been awhile and I apologize. A lot of things have been going on in my life at the moment and I admit, I'm having a swell time. I'm finally back in Malaysia as suggested by my previous 2 posts. I was only in Malaysia for a day before going off to Egypt with the family to see my sister, Sabrina. She's studying in Alexandria now in hopes to become a legit doctor. Yeah...baby sister is a big girl now or as she puts it, "Me big girl now". A lot to take in as the big sis but I'm proud of her. Her blog should be up in my My Reads section so check her out.
This is a REALLY REALLY long post and it is basically one of those pictorial posts so Imma let the pictures do the talking.
PS: Things have been real busy for me because I've got myself a summer job! I'm currently working as an English teacher for Lembaga Zakat Selangor! For my non-Malaysian readers, this is an organization in Malaysia that helps Malaysians in need. (A post on this will be up soon when I'm done with the job).
**Beware of my ugly face. There's too many of them and I couldnt care less to um, edit or separate them from the nicer ones. I dont really care but I just dont want to...surprise you.
This is my conclusion after my Egypt trip. I freaking hate Egypt Air. Not because of its service but what the hell is wrong with the plane? It has no freaking VENTILATION!! I was a freaking roasted pig(?) throughout that 18 hour flight! 18 hours because I've combined the hours of going and coming back.
Our first view of Egyptian soil at 7AM after a 9-hour flight
Cairo is so empty in the morning. Did you know there is roughly 20 mil people in Cairo alone? Malaysia has 30 mil people. Yeah. Imagine how crowded it is on a normal day.
This is one of the buildings that suffered from the Egyptian Revolution (ER) late last year? The first round.
Us at the now empty Tahrir Square. Funny how right after we left Egypt, the current ER happened. Although throughout the trip I do see a lot of those election posters with their political candidates. They look like old greasy men to me so I always make fun of them. And no, I don't mean anything bad by this. :P
I find the architecture of this building below so....interesting. It reminded me of the big bank at the end of In Time. This building is actually a place where all the ministers work. Well that's what the tour guide said.
So we made our way to Alexandria and lets just say we were sooooooooo tired. I mean 9 hour flight + no sleep + 3 hour drive to Alexandria all in what felt like one day. Look at my face yourself. That was how tired I was. This is us at one of those RnR place.
I was so jakun about their tolls here. Since we were heading towards Alexandria, the greek features start to come out. Fancy fancy.
ALEXANDRIA!
I'm not going to say that don't let the pictures fool you but um, no offence but Egypt is not that clean?
Cleopatra's lighthouse or guard or something. Yeah, I'm a bad travel blogger.
We got really lost looking for our hotel and finally we found it. And yes, the hotel came along with Yang Sabrina and Fatihah.
Dumped our bags and it's time to EAT! Our first Egyptian meal at our first Egyptian restaurant.
The best word to describe Egyptian food is EXTREME. It can either be extremely salty or extremely bland or extremely sweet. Yeah you get the picture. By the end of my stay in Egypt, let's just say I'm not the first person to line up to eat a kebab.
One of the things that amazes me about Egypt is the irony. Everywhere you see in Egypt are in shambles and people here live poorly but my goodness, the locals dress up. They LOVE to party and dress up to the point it's kinda *cough*tacky*cough*. It's like the exact of opposite of New Zealand. Everything is BEAUTIFUL in NZ but um...the people there have some nasty B.O. Not generalizing but yeahhh....
DAY 2
At breakfast
Alex's Central Station
Outside of Ina's flat. It was like a huge shock for us because we just can't believe our daughter/sister is living in this kind of condition. Call us smotherers or "memanjakan" but it's human nature man....you just can't bare looking at one of your own living so...harsh.
Ina's front door
Aya could not believe Ina's situation. The flat is dingy and the landlord is pure evil and the list goes on...
FLATMATES
Then we stopped by at Ina's fave local joint. Abou Rabie's pizza and burgers are super cheap by Msian standards. Pronounced = ABU RABIK
At Sultana, a famous gelato place
After all of that, that night we decided to tour the city. See the Egyptian night life.
This lovely girl is Hadeer, our friend who showed us around. Shoutout to Jie Ning, she's your age!
Just so you know, we adopted Fatihah as our sister throughout our stay here. She even sleeps at the hotel with us! 7th member baby!
Day 3
Visiting Ina's Uni
Found a Gen-2 on Uni grounds. Gen-2 is a Malaysian car btw.
In front of the Faculty of Medicine
The Children
Shopping in Ibrahimiah
We had a funny experience in getting to Ibrahimiah. It took us so long to find the correct street because we were just simply lost. At this point, Ina and Fatihah's Arabic is not competent enough to help us around so we found ourselves in a tramco ( a van taxi). So 7 Malaysians got on a tramco filled with locals and we um, didn't know the name of the street. Driver asked where we want to go and we said, "Ibrahimiah." You see, by saying that is like saying I want to go to New York. But where in NY? Thing is, we don't know.
So everyone was trying to help us but we just don't understand a thing. At a point, my mum started speaking to this man in Malay and I was her signal language expert. Meaning I was literally playing charades with the locals. It was too funny and ridiculous.
Day 4
On the way to the Alexandria Museum
Tasting Arab Coffee. I DON'T LIKE IT! BITTEREST SHIZ EVAR!
Egyptian reality. Our constant surroundings.
Lunch with Ina's flatmates
Bestfriends
My Glassons flip flops reduced to this. I threw it away.
My dad with a friend he made. He owns this pizza shop with a friend. We bought countless pizzas from his shop.
Last day in Alex. Saying goodbye is hard.
Finally...THE PYRAMIDS
Just look at mum. Seriously, look at her. Shah Alam aunty versi Indiana Jones.
On the way to the airport, we stopped by to look at Saidina Ali's mosque...I think. FAIL i know.
I end this post with a pic of this Arab businessman who was very sleepy to catch his late-night flight. Imagine...I was in the same clothes as I was at the Pyramids and I flew all the way back to Malaysia in them. SO yeah....I smelled funky.
Whoops, last pic. Museum tickets anyone?
