Egypt (Cairo) - November 2014

After returning from the Pyramids, we decided to spoil ourselves a little bit by visiting one of the most restaurants / bars - Sequoia. The restaurant is in Zamalek on the island in the middle of Nile (a neighborhood that is probably equivalent to Chelsea in London). We sat on the bank of Nile and watched the boats coming and going, and occasionally saw the fireworks. I really enjoyed my special drink - milk and date smoothie.


Our second day in Egypt, we went to visit the Citadel, the Copic area, and the Egyptian Museum.

According to the lonely planet, the Citadel is the most busy tourist attraction in Cairo but they are not sure why. Well, we definitely think the writer is not in a good mood that. We were all quite impressed by the Citadel.

The Citadel was built in the 12th century. It looks huge from the outside, but once you are inside, the places where you could visit are much more limited. We first visited the main mosque. I think in general I have a big fascination with mosques, I found the simply design and the geometric patterns really soothing. Inside this mosque, you have a courtyard with beautiful white marble floor, inside of the mosque, the decoration of the walls is made from many different precious and semi-precious stone inlaid. Very beautiful.

We then visited the second mosque, which has a style of Cordoba, with red and white stones layered to form the arches. Over here, my dear Alex got stung by a bee (Florian insists that it is a wasp) on his foot. We think it is because his foot smells like flowers. Florian also gave us a lecture of on bees based on his personal experience.

From the terrace of the Citadel you can see a dusty, polluted birdview of Cairo. In the rest of the Citadel, there is a military museum and a police museum, which we skipped entirely.

From the Citadel, we then went to the Coptic area. Coptic Orthodox Christianity is one of the oldest Christianity founded around 3AD. The area was heavily protected by soldiers, we think probably it is an easy target of the terrorists.

We first went to the Cavern church  (St Sergius church). It is a very small unimpressive Church, but according to history, this is where the Holy Family (Jesus, Mary and Joseph) lived when they came to Egypt. We saw a lot of people coming in to be blessed by the nuns.

We then visited the Hanging Church, which got its name because it was built on top of a Babylonian fortress (this area was once called Babylon!). It is a christian church but the decoration is entirely Islamic. Very beautifully decorated walls.

We stopped quickly for lunch, and then went to the world famous Egyptian museum. Unfortunately camera is not allowed in the museum, so we couldn't take any pictures. The museum has over 100,000 objectives. We hired a guide which followed us for 2 hours to explain everything, but it still feels like we haven't seen 1/10 of its collection.

Some of the really impressive objects are from the tomb of Tutankhamun (he was buried in the valley of the Kings). Although he only ruled for 9 years, his burial site was filled with treasures, solid gold coffin (nicely decorated), gold mask for the mummy, jewelries, blah blah blah. Basically lots and lots of gold.

We also saw the royal mummy collection, which I have to say is not really worth the extra fee if you can visit the British Museum Egyptian collection.

Some of the other objects that really interest me are the top of the pyramids (2), Ramses II's underwear, tomb with beautifully painted inside (still very visible), sculpture of the writer, two huge statues of (?), the jars to store human organs, etc. The list goes on and on.

In any way, as our guide said, it is UNBELIEVABLE!

Egypt (Giza, Darshur, Saqqara, Memphis) - November 2014

We arrived in Cairo at midnight. Got our visa, went through the custom, and the driver is already waiting outside to take us to the hostel. First impression of Cairo – this looks like China, or rather my hometown back in the 90s. Dusty, chaotic, mysterious.

At 1am, we made it to our hostel, and met up with our friend Florian. Since 2011, our last backpacking trip to Middle East, we have really missed the backpacking culture. It is too easy these days to travel by private tours, stay in 5 star hotels and overpay for every service you get. So for this trip, we decided to go back to our roots – that means backpacking style.

The hostel is in on the 7^th floor of an 1874 building. It’s got a nice terrace, root top area, but no towels in the room. We had to borrow pillow cases from the front desk instead.

After some late night snack and catching up with our friend, and some friendly fellow backpackers, we went to sleep.

The next morning, we woke up early to go to the Giza pyramids. The pyramids is about 20 kilometers outside of Cairo. Our driver took us directly to one of those camel ride tours places. After some haggling (which involves the tour operator pretending to be mad at us), we agreed on a price, and set for our pyramid tour.

The first challenge is to get on to the camel. It is quite funny when you get on the camel and wait for it to stand up. These beasts are huge. When it suddenly stands up, you go from ground level to be on top of the world. And when the camel moves, you cannot help but move your hips with it. It feels like you are dancing with your hips.

We walked along some sand dune and got a very nice panoramic view of the three pyramids (Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure). Together with the smaller pyramids for the Queens. The view is trulye impressive. We also manage to get there in a good time, there is almost no other tourists expect us. The guide made us do some funny poses (they are all very good at that).

We walked down the dune and visited each of the pyramids. The Pyramid of Khafre still has part of its original casting cap. It also appears to be the tallest because it stands on a higher plateau.  We made an attempt to climb, but it is much more difficult than I had imagined. The stones are massive at the bottom, some of them are 2/3 of my height. We tried and went up several levels and stopped. Near the Pyramid of Khufu, there are five pits with boats inside. 2 of them are in the Egyptian museum, one on display near the pyramids and two not yet excavated.

We then walked down to visit Sphinx. We saw the small template surrounding it, and then got closer. Unluckily, you cannot walk directly in front of the Sphinx. So we are not able to capture a good view of it with the pyramids. In any case, it appears to be quite well preserved. You can still see the stones layered out one by one along its body and its long tail.

We finished the pyramids tour, and then visited a few more ancient sites nearby.

In the Darshur, we saw the Red pyramids and the Bent pyramids. The Red pyramid is the first pyramid built and it belongs to the father of Khufu, and it is possible to get inside. The entrance of the pyramid is in the middle of its north side (all pyramid entrances open that way). You have to climb quite high to get there. Once you are there, you need to bend down and go through a 60 meters long tunnel going down to the very bottom of the pyramids. It is quite challenging to go through the tunnel, especially since you have to bend your knees the entire way. Once inside, you will see two linked chambers; those are the hollow part of the pyramids where the coffins and sacrifices were stored. I had initially thought pyramids are just a bunch big stones piled together to make a pyramid shape. But once inside of it, I truly appreciated the engineering / architectural beauty of this. You can clearly see in those chambers that each stone is cut and arranged very precisely to give you the shape of the chamber, and each chamber stretch so tall. In the last chamber, there is a stairs you can walk up which leads to a third chamber. The bottom of that chamber is at the ceiling level of the previous two chambers. I’m quite curious how it is designed and why it has been done that way.

After climbing back and exiting the red pyramids, you can really feel the two legs are shaking very hard. From there, we made a quick tour to the bent pyramids. It has an interesting shape as it is not straight up but the angel of the top portion flattens out a little bit. We cannot get too close to the pyramids so we took some pictures and left.

We then moved to Saqqara and stopped by the step pyramids, which is the oldest pyramids-like structure. We didn’t get too close since the ticket price is too high. We then went to Memphis to see the open air museum. In the museum you will see a massive piece of status of Ramses II (apparently the biggest). It seems the entire statue was carved out from one piece of stone. To get a good view, you have to go to the second floor of the building.

The open air museum is quite small. We walked around and saw an older version of the Sphinx, and many other statues of Ramses.

We stopped a restaurant and had a lunch, very good food by the way, and afterwards we went back to the sand dunes near Giza to see the sunset near the pyramids.

We took a horse cart this time, and moved on to the top of the sand dune. It is a pity because it is cloudy that day, and the sun is already half set. We are not able to see much, but the view of the three pyramids in the far side, and red sky on the other is still very nice. Not so far away there is a big riding school nearby, many people are riding horses. It feels like a big ski resort, but you move around on horses instead of snowboards. I can appreciate why people would ride horses in the sand dune. The feeling must remind you of your nomadic ancestry.

We were tired after the sunset tour and passed out in the car.

Czech (Prague) - June, 2013

Normally at the end of May / beginning of June each year, there is a bank holiday, and Alex and I always take the opportunity to take a short trip within Europe to celebrate my birthday. In 2013, we spent a long weekend in Prague.

I had really high expectation for Prague. I heard it is a fairy-tale like, magic city. Alex had visited it before in the winter, so we decided summer could be a good time see the city again.

We started from the Old Town square. It is a really lively area with loads of young people and tourists. From there, we visited the Old Town Hall, and watched the Town Hall Clock. Every time the clock strike the hour, the figure of Death opens the clock windows, and the 12 Apostles moves out slowly one by one. There are also figures of Vanity and Greed on the clock that reminds people don't waste time,

The city tower is in the center of the square. As you climb on top through a case of rotating iron stairs (it made me very dizzy), you will see a beautiful view of the entire city.

The square leads to several roads with beautiful architects and boutique shops along both sides. We passed by the opera house, also found a very cool Cubist cafe and had a cake there. Apparently Cubist architect was very popular in Bohemia and Austria, but never caught on in the rest of Europe. The style is based on lots of repeated geometric shapes. Very strange. :)

From there, we also visited the Jewish quarter and the old Jewish Cemetery. Because of the lack of space in the Jewish quarter, people were buried on top of each other, up to 12 layers deep. In the rather small cemetery, there are over 12,000 gravestones. The view was very impressive.

The next day, we went and visited the Prague castle. The castle is on the other side of the Vltava river sitting on a little hill. There is a long wall surrounding the area, and inside of the compound, there are many palaces, towers, churches, gardens, etc. It is unfortunate that the Royal Palace was not open that day. So we just walked around, and enjoyed our view from the top.

From the Palace, we went back to the city and walked along the Vltava river. We visited the beautiful Charles Bridge in the Old Town. The bridge was decorated by many beautiful status of Saints. At the end of the bridge, there are also two magnificent Bridge Towers. The bridge connects the Little Quarter and the Old Town. We visited the Little Quarter. It is filled with lots of boutique shops with very cool souvenirs. We also passed by a market with lots of street food. We had some sausages and grabbed a drink and sat on the road, listening to the street performers and watching people passing by. It was very nice and relaxing.

The last day of our visit, we visited a very nice restaurant on the river side and celebrated our trip.

Dubai - April, 2014

Ok, I'm cheating here a little bit, because we actually went to Dubai for business not for pleasure. My company invited both Alex and I to attend an offsite in Dubai this April, so we did a very short trip for 4-5 days only.

We arrived in Dubai on a Saturday morning, and checked in to the Sofitel in the Palm (thank you my dear company!) Before the offsite started, we had 1.5 days to go around the city.

Even though it was still in April, the weather was already really hot, and instead of walking, we opted to take the cab everywhere we went.

Our first stop was to the largest mall in the world. Well, initially I was not that interested in going to the mall, but it turned out to be a really pleasant experience (partially because it was too hot outside we didn't any options to go outside). The mall was like a mini city in itself. It has a full scale dinosaur skeleton, an aquarium, an ice rink, and a crazy indoor amazement park! Very close to the mall, you can also find Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest building in the world.

After the heat died out a little bit, we adventured outside of the mall to go to the old Dubai. We took a boat and spent 1.5 hours floating on the river and look at the city from the water. On the river, everything seems to move much slower, and all of a sudden, there is a nostalgia feeling about Dubai. We watched people walking in and out of the mosques or the bazaars near the river bank, and it seemed time hadn't passed for hundreds of years. With the call to prayer, Alex slowly fell into the sleep.

We made an initial attempt to go on top of Burj Khalifa in our first visit to the mall but all the regular tickets were sold out. We returned a few days later with my colleagues and paid $100 each for the express ticket and finally made on top of the building (if you are thinking about going, book in advance!). To be honest I was slightly disappointed by the view. First of all, even though the building itself is over 800 meters tall, we were only allowed to go to the observatory desk at 450 meters. Secondly, Dubai is quite dusty, so looking from the top, you cannot see that far very clearly. I tried very hard to look for the Palm, but was not successful. Well, I guess now we can proudly announce that we have been to the tallest building in the world (on wait, in 2 years a new building from Shanghai will claim the title!)

Alex left shortly after the weekend, and I stayed for a few more days. And thanks to my company, I visited a few more interesting spots. We had dinner in a desert resort which is pretty awesome. We saw lots of wild animals (I was really surprised that they could survive in the desert). And the final day of the trip we had dinner near the Dubai mall, overseeing the world's largest music fountain. Apparently they spent $200M+ building the fountain and it can shoot up to 150 meters.

All in all, we had a unforgettable experience in Dubai. I don't think we will return in the short term, but who knows. :)

Armenia (Sevan, Noravank, Tatev) - May, 2014

In the last segment of our day trip, we left Debed Canyon and drove along Lake Sevan to visit south part of Armenia.

The view around Lake Sevan is very pretty. The combination of the lake and mountains in the background with snow caps reminded us a lot of Switzerland. There are not many cars on the road. Once in a while, we would pass flocks of sheep. And occasionally some young local guys selling freshly collected mushrooms alongside of the road.

We arrived in a cute little monastery called Sevanavank. It is built on a little hill in the Sevan peninsula. The monastery is again very simple, but its setting against the lake made it very special.

We continued our trip and towards Noravank in the afternoon. As we approach Noravank, the road became narrower, and we started to see massive mountains rising on both sides of the road. Different from the Debed Canyon, these mountains don't have flat plateaus on top. The narrow path and the cliffs reminded me the way to get into Petra, only in this setting there are a lot more trees.

Noravank is an impressive looking monastery built on one side of the huge mountain. The monastery is well preserved (or recently renovated). In the main building, there are very narrow stone steps that allow you to climb inside of the church. The steps are big and difficult to climb, and you really have to use both your arms and legs. Stepping back a little bit, you can see the entire monastery against the colourful mountain on the other side of the road. The mountain has a very pretty pink and rose colour, and the entire view is especially beautiful during the sunset.

We stayed in Noravank for as long as we could to enjoy the view until the sun started to set. We then returned and stayed in Yeghegnadzor which is a town nearby. There is nothing notable about the town itself. We had some problems finding food after dark. The hotel we stayed in stopped serving food in the afternoon, and there are no restaurants in the town. We had to drive back to the highway in the pouring rain to find a fast food chain that serves grilled meat. That was quite an interesting experience.

On our final day of the road trip we went to Tatev. Tatev is in the far south of Armenia, close to Iran. The road got worse and worse as we drove nearby, with fewer and fewer cars. Tatev is build in the Vorotan Canyon. There is a cable that takes people down into the Canyon close to the monastery, but we didn't realize it at the time, and drove down into the canyon with our car. The road to get there was not easy. There was no paved road in the last 20 mins of the drive.

Slightly different from other monasteries, Tatev is built like a fortress with a long outside wall. Once inside of the monastery, you can also see the dormitory where the monks used to sleep. The dormitory had 3 built walls, and the 4th side faced the cliff without any protection. The setting makes me think of the prison cell where Tyrion Lannister was trapped in Catelyn's castle (you know what I mean if you watch Game of Thrones).

We had lunch in a nearby restaurant and admired Tatev in its impressive setting in the canyon. After a satisfying lunch (we had home made beef stew), we headed back to Yerevan.

On the way home, we got quite close to Turkey and saw the Mount Ararat from far away. The flat landscape allowed us to take a good at the famous mountain, and we stopped several times on the high way to take pictures of it.

That was the end of our Armenia road trip. Lovely country, lovely people!

Armenia (Sanahin, Haghpat) - May, 2014

After a short stay in Yerevan, we rented a car and began our road trip to explore the country. Driving in Armenia is quite safe mainly because there is not so much traffic outside of the capital. In most places the roads are in good condition, but English road signs became rare to find in remote areas. We relied mostly on our GPS to get around.

Our first destination is in the north in an area called the Debed Canyon. We stopped by a local eatery and tried their sour milk (Alex loved it) and freshly made bread for lunch. We then drove through large areas of forests, passed by a Soviet era mine, and experienced sudden change in weather (including a brief ice storm). 

Within Debed Canyon, there are two UNESCO sites, the Haghpat monastery and Sanahin monastery. They are fairly close to each other, and you can actually hike from one monastery to another. As we approach the two monasteries from our road which is at the bottom of the canyon, huge cliffs rise from both sides of the road with flat plateaus on top of them. Our car climbed a pretty steep road and finally arrived at the Sanahin monastery. 

Sanahin is a very pretty little church. It is very quiet, and we are the only visitors of that day. The style of the architecture is very simple so is the decoration. I especially liked the inside of the monastery with its very high ceiling and many arches. If you look up, there is a small opening at the end of the ceiling to give lights into the room. 

After Sanahin, we drove a bit more and visited Haghpat, its sister monastery. Haghapat is constructed with a very similar style, but it looks slightly more preserved. As the monastery is built on a high ground, we stayed around to enjoy the view of the villages nearby. There is a stray dog who eagerly played with all the visitors. 

We found a simple hotel near Haghpat and stayed for the night. From the hotel, we can see Sanahin from far away on the other side of the cliff. The hotel manager made us a full feast for dinner and we rested well. 

Armenia (Yerevan, Echmiadzin, Geghard and Garni) - May, 2014

It's been a long time since my last blog. Now Alex has got a PS4, I decided to take the opportunity to update our blog while he is busy killing zombies.

We did a number of great trips over the past a few years. I hope to get them organized and published slowly. My first update will be on our recent trip to Armenia.

Armenia is not your typical tourist destination. We got invited there earlier this year for a wedding, and we took the opportunity and did a one week road trip travelling across the country.

We began and ended our trip in Yerevan. Yerevan is a quiet and chill capital city. There are not many tourists around, and people are all very friendly. We stayed near the Republic Square. It is surrounded by a mixture of European style and Soviet style buildings. The city is not very big, and you can easily walk around on feet. While in Yerevan, we visited the Opera House and the Cascade. Alex went to the Cognac factory and brought back some souvenir for his family.

We took a day trip to visit Echmiadzin. Echmiadzin was described by lonely planet as the "Vatican" of Armenia. Judging from its look, Echmiadzin is far less impressive compared to any major church we have visited, but it does have an incredible history. The original church was built between 301-303 when Christianity was first adopted by the Armenian nation. The inside of the church is very simple. The walls are barely covered with any decoration, and the church is so small that there are no chairs to sit down. It maintains a minimalistic style which is very common throughout Armenia. Coincidentally We also found out a few days later that our friends came to this Church to host their wedding ceremony.

We also joined our friends for another day trip to visit Geghard monastery and Garni temple. Geghard monastery was one of the most ancient cave churches. It was founded in the 4th century and was carved out from rocks. Inside of one of the caves, there is also a natural spring that runs from underground. The church reminded me a lot of Petra. I'm always fascinated by the effort men willing to spend to reshape the nature.

After Geghard, we had lunch in a nearby restaurant, and all of sudden it started raining. The tour bus continued to pass by the Garni Temple but because of the rain we didn't stop by to visit it. Now I think about it, it is really a pity. I have heard great things about Garni.