The next morning we awoke to see lots of fox prints about 20cm from my head. Hannah of course figured we barely escaped death itself.
“How’s your fly ankle Hannah?” at which stage she forgot about her near fox death experience and ran to the antiseptic cream.
So on the Desert Safari we saw Black Desert, White Desert, Crystal Mountain and mushroom rocks.
We got back to Barhariya Oasis at 11:00am, 1hr before our bus was scheduled to come so we sat around and at 11:20 asked ot go to the station. The man at us like we were crazy. “You want to wait in the sun for nothing?”
“I don’t know, I just want to get the bus.”
“Well wait.” He commanded.
So we waited a while and left a while later. On the way in the car, Moleface kept asking for backsheesh / money. See as far as I could see all he had done was try to molest Hannah constantly who was my ‘fiancé’, dropped my camera in the sand and put sand all through the lens, slept the whole tour complaining about being thirsty and ripped us off by making us pay more. So I told him all this in simple English and said no. He got quite angry at this so when he was out of the car we decided to give the driver some for them to share. So to repay our kindness they drive around for 5 minutes then turn back to us and say “You have missed the bus but don’t worry we will get you one tomorrow and you can stay another night at our hostel, “ then under his breathe he continued, “Or you could take the bus at midnight, but you really don’t want to do that.”
Blood instantly started pulsating violently through my veins towards my cranium. In my fury I could barely speak. Technically I didn’t call him a liar or accuse him of anything but I think he got the general picture that I was extremely pissed off and thought he was a liar.
“Take me to the tourist police”
“No you can trust me, I tell the truth.”
Instant lie because all Egyptians by simple nature are liars courtesy of the lying gene they are all born with.
“Take me anyway”
“No it’s alright I will just take you home.”
Pretty soon I was convinced I would turn green and start breaking things, but as luck would have it the hulk inside didn’t emerge.
Anyway seeing as I had seen people tell people what to tell us before, I let them take us home because I could walk into town and ask someone in peace. Before I could leave though the owner came and sat us down.
“I am sorry the bus came at 10:30 today.”
“Oh right are you sure about that?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“So what you are telling me is this. It’s the same bus we came here on which leave Cairo at 7:30am.”
“Yes”
“And we arrived at 11:45am when we took it.”
“Yes”
By now I had the witness all primed and ready to burn.
“So your telling me today the magic speed bus did a 4 hours trip in less than 3 hours?”
“Yes”
“So seeing as we did the 500km journey in 4 hours that would mean he would have to travel 25% faster than we did so at an average speed of 125km/hr the magic bus travelled at an average of 160km/hr give or take.”
Checkmate.
“Yes of course” I felt the rage.
“Oh bloody hell mate…..” how could someone be so stupid, “Now you are taking the absolute piss with me and I don’t like it people lie to my face.”
“So you will be staying another night then?” He asked hopefully.
At this stage Hannah started getting angry and me getting angry so I just looked at him with a scowl and walking into town.
About 20m from my destination the hotel driver pilled up and offered me a ride. Good timing seeing as it had taken me 40minutes in the hot Sahara sun to get there.
I refused the generous offer.
I was pleased to find out that the bus had come at 12:00 noon and the night one was leaving at 11 at night not 12.
I saw mole face after confirming this with 3 people so I went up to him and said, “Hey man, why lie, do you enjoy taking a day out of someone’s holiday, a holiday with limited time, for your own selfish greediness”, Yes in 4 months you can only do so much you see, “lying for your own person gain is pathetic. In fact you are a lying pathetic little loser.” I was angry because we only had 7 days left in Egypt and I had carefully plotted what we would see and we only had just enough time at each of the places so now I was going to have to scratch one of the things I wanted to see. How do you chose between places like Valley of the Kings, Abu Simbel, Source of the Nile, Aswan Temples and a cruise up the Nile in a Felucca? It wasn’t like I had wanted to see all these things since I was about 11 and wasn’t going back there again, well actually it was. So having some greedy little slimy Egyptian mole face trying to force us into staying at his hostel was not my idea of fun. So to stop doing anything foolish I walked away.
To anger the manager I took off my shirt when I walked in. I was glad when I saw how angry this made him, but it was making Hannah angry but I was so angry I didn’t care and I wanted everyone else as angry as me, which she did when she found out their little scam.
So to annoy them we bought some beers and drank them on their path. Seeing as it was Ramadan and they cannot even touch beer bottles we left them on the path right in the way of everything and tried to imagine how they would tackle that little problem without damning their souls to hell. I hoped Mole Face got the job.
The owner then tried to tell us the bus left at midnight and he would take us there at 11:50 but since I knew it came at 11:00 I told him to take us to the station for 10:30. Hannah and I had been going nuts. There is only so much you can do in a desert. I had already read 2 books that afternoon. I stole 2 more of his books as well as a kind of severance pay.
The driver pretended he was doing us this massive favour but the tiger had already been released.
“So you catch bus at midnight?” he asked.
“Sorry no English”
“Excuse me.”
“N-o E-n-g-l-i-s-h.” I looked at him despairingly. I would talk to him if only I could.
“Yes you do”
“Today is Friday!” I said proudly.
He got the picture.
We waited around for our bus which came at 11:00.
I was in such a rush to leave I forgot my Havaiana thongs which are impossible to get anywhere so I added that to one of the reasons I didn’t like Mole Face. The price was £26 but he charged us £40 which made me angrier. Hannah and I were squeezed in the back seat with fat smelly disgusting Arab men who sweated and greased all over us. I added that to the list of reason I didn’t like Mole Face. The back was so boiling hot and sand was swirling around and getting into everything and the man next to me was trying to use my shoulder as a mattress. I added that to the list of reasons I didn’t like Mole Face. When he tried to use my lap as a pillow I even blamed Mole Face. When I forced the man off my bag he got up reluctantly and to show his annoyance he push real hard on the bag and broke Hannah’s sunglasses. Not sure if that was a positive or negative. Those tiger sunnies were very, how do you put it, unique, or as my Dad would say ‘their different’. I put it on the reasons I didn’t like Mole Face anyway. The fact the man next to Hannah was doing much the same thing to her but with sleazy intentions didn’t help the dislike Mole Face tally.

The next day we started out on our desert trip.
There were a few flies out there in the desert so I said to Hannah, “You know how I have flies on my lip” In reference to this beautiful scab on my lip which came from I don’t know what.
“Yes”
“Well do you know how they get in?”
“No”
“Open wounds like that one on your ankle.”
“Sure”, she said sceptically
“Serious!”
“As if” she said her confidence wavering.
“Well if you want flies in your ankle and for maggots to crawl out one day fine by me, I was only trying to help.” I said a little wounded.
Hannah then started furiously shoo-ing the flies away from her ankle and then put on a Band-Aid to keep them totally off which only succeeded in making her ankle not scab over but go gooey.
“See how it is not scabbing over” I said a little later.
“Yes”
“The flies probably got in already and they keep it from forming a scab.”
“Really?”
“Yep, fly ankle.”
“Well your got maggot lip.”
“Nope see mine is scabbed over, its because I got the flies out when I washed it and put antiseptic cream on it.”
Hannah then ran to her bag and started putting on liberal amounts of antiseptic cream. Probably didn’t help when I would call to her every 20 minutes, “Hey maggot ankle, you that desert over there.”
At which stage she would put on more antiseptic cream.
The Desert was cool and we saw some sand and rocks. Also this mountain made of crystals like thunder eggs but bigger, a few meters wide. I found a crystal which was especially cool and handed around to show everyone.
Donkey boy came up to me 10 minutes later with the same crystal, “See this crystal, so beautiful, I am going to take it home.”
“Ummm, actually, ermm umm”, then I though of how excited he was over just a donkey, “Yes, so beautiful” I replied.
So instead I poked around the dirt looking for things. I found a rock similar in shape to Australia which Hannah confiscated, “Mika this would be so good for Max my nephew. He would absolutely love it!” then she continued behind big blue weasel eyes, “Can I have it? Please Mika?” which left me absolutely no choice but to give it to her. Bloody weasel queen.
I found a nice smooth rock which I gave to Hannah because I didn’t want it but she loves collecting things to amuse her hands like can lids, plastic bottle top insides etc.
After much digging and poking I triumphantly pulled from the ground what I had been searching for all this time.
“Yes, it’s a fossilized coffee bean” I proudly help up my extraordinary find. The Nipons Ohhh’d and Ahhhh’d, Donkey boy momentarily stopped his riveting story to mole face about how he walked in the desert with a camel once and then stopped and turned back and commented on how it was ‘so beautiful’ Hannah god bless her soul grabbed it out of my hand told me I was silly and broke it in half to prove it wasn’t a rock. Absolutely crushing I tell you. Crushing.
Lately Hannah had been getting bored about having no other female company for a few weeks and her attempts at gossiping with me had been met with grunts, Uh huh’s, Mmm’s and a nose in the book, so the 2 Nipon girls were a god send.
“So do you have a boyfriend?” Hannah asked them.
“Yes” One replied.
“So are you married?”
“No, but we live together.” At which stage Hannah started getting excited.
“Ohhhh! How controversial” she cried with joy.
“Yes, my father is not very happy”
This juicey bit of information seemed to captivate Hannah and the conversation for a while. Once that topic had been finally completely bled dry they asked if Hannah and I were married. The guides were listening in and foolishly the night before we had told mole face (named hence because he really pissed me off later on and in reference to the 50cent piece mole on his face) we weren’t so they had tried their best seduction techniques such as grabbing them and trying to sex dance them, or lick their lips in what they no doubt think is a seductive way, to try and get in bed with Hannah so we said we were engaged.
When the Nipon’s asked, “When are you getting married?”
I replied, “6 months”
Hannah gasped in shock and stated matter of factly, “No we are NOT. That is WAY too soon.”
Subtly I tried to telepathically tell her that we were in a pretend engagement and so it didn’t really matter and besides didn’t she remember razor blades? Lately I had been thinking I was quite the telepath but really I must have been deluding myself because she didn’t get the message, even the ones I was giving her with my foot in her shins. That only seemed to make her irritated.
That night we camped under the stars and played this game similar to slaps which was fun.

Next morning was better and we woke up nice and happy after 26 hours of sleep, which was real handy because I was now wide awake and couldn’t sleep on the bus without air conditioning through the Sahara desert in midday at the end of summer.
It probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway because the driver was a huge fan of the Egyptian cat screeching and had the “music” cranked up.
Egyptians, especially in Ramadan, have an endearing habit of loving the sounds of the animal kingdom. First a big fat Egyptian gets his recording tape player (to ensure as much treble as possible and absolutely no bass) then he gazes around at his ‘instruments’, several boxes of various animals (cats, parrots, dogs, hyena’s, nazguls), twiddles his fingers, scratches the blackboard with his nails for a sound check and inevitably grabs a cat by the paws and proceeds to bite said cat on the toe.
Obviously the cat squeals but this process is much more complicated than just a simple cat toe biting exercise. To get some variety and some sort of beat, he pokes the cat in the eye with a carefully hand crafted stick in time to the music in his head, which is not necessarily to any sort of natural rhythm.
Being the master he is, he is not content with just this and looks to his hyena and selects his special hyena poking stick (because hyenas are obviously dangerous and you cant just go and pick one up and bite it on the ear.) and carefully places it between the hyena’s nostrils and to get it angry throws the cat in as well.
The parrot is next and gets its feathers plucked with a pair of feather picking pliers.
The sounds so carefully recorded on the tape recorder are then sold by the sweaty fat Egyptian man and sells out around the Middle East as a great hit. He can then upgrade his animals and so the loss of cat is of not much consequence and besides there are millions of the little things crawling around the streets and they are easy to find. The new donkeys and mosquito’s he can purchase now will also be a great addition for his no doubt huge follow up tape.
Needless to say the noise produced to a western ear is the most hideously wrong thing you can imagine. Like when you are sick and you can’t imagine being well again and when you are well and have lots of energy you cant imagine anyone wanting to sit around and be sick. Or like when you are in the middle of the Sahara desert in a superheating bus you cant imagine being in a winter in Siberia. Anyway this was the same and with cats being in season this year, the main noise polluter was the cats.
After one hour of this torturous noise your mind starts to wander, cats eh? I’ve seen cats before, bright blue cats with furry hair and green is good, water dripping on my forehead Chinese water torture. Chinese have dragons and bamboo with funny bears, you think I am crazy, I’ll give you crazy! Blah gobble gook, giggle, dribbly, whoops! I can be real crazy, arghh, the flies are attacking. Cats in a cradle with a silver label and it all starts to make sense.
Three hours later it turns messy and you start to hiss, psst, spit, meow scratch randomly and in a rare moment of clarity you realise you have deliverance in the form of a iPod and some god given earphones. Quickly the noise turns to Muse and the cats start pounding on the earphones. Muse wins barely with the cats coming in occasionally for a reminder that they don’t give up so easily and sanity slowly begins to return.
Hannah had music on as well but the cats were obviously getting to her because she was positively glaring. So to be nice and cheer her up I would nudge her and point at various interesting piles of sand, or a nice inanimate rock or a piece of stone mixed with a sand dune. The madness had got to her though and she was un-helpable because she didn’t seem to be cheered by my helpful nudging and pointing. I mean that sand hill wasn’t exactly like the last 66,000 passed in the last 3 hours.
Eventually the noise stopped after about 5hr and 59minutes into our 6hr trip and we gratefully got off the hell bus.
Little kids tried to get us to go with them but I didn’t trust them and their little fingers. Fingers for getting into places didn’t belong, like my wallet, so I told the 6 year old to shove off and walked my way to my hostel. As chance had it, it ended up being his hostel as well.
“Get in the car we driver you there.” The 6 year olds chauffer said.
The boy and the car looked a little shifty so I refused.
“Its free.” He said trying to tempt me into taking his clearly dodgy offer.
“Nothing is free for an Egyptian.” I replied instead.
So I walked a bit longer in the Saharian heat and saw that Hannah was clearly struggling so I conceded defeat and gave myself up to the little 6 year olds scam of a free lift. Surprisingly the little 6 year old boy was on the level and it was free. I guessed he was too young to be a thief, liar, cheat just yet.
That afternoon we took an off road trip around the Oasis which was quite fun, so we decided on doing a desert safari with them as well the next day and night.
“Its 600 for the car, divided by how many people go.”
“So 4 people, so 150 each”
“Yep”
The two others being a Chinese lady, her Bedouin husband and child. Yes a very weird mix that’s for sure.
That night we paid and then next morning we found there was another 3 people but no he wasn’t going to give us the extra 100 back. I got real furious but it did nothing. I had let my guard down a second by trusting him, a foolish thing you should do to any Egyptian, and had paid him the night before.
It was about then that I decided to walk around backwards so they couldn’t sneak up on me, those lying sneaking cheating bastards, even the little fingered boys.
Yes he was right once but that was the thing they did to make you trust them. I knew soon he would play more tricks on me to rob me of my money. The women as well were becoming suspicious, the fact that I had seen not a single one is Egypt was all too suspicious, they must have been somewhere sneaking around suspiciously, up to no good. They probably didn’t show themselves because they were hiding something really bad. It’s the ones you cant see that you have to watch out for. That is besides the ones that you do see.
I mean even the kids all looked suspicious. All that kicking around in the dirt, they must have been up to something. No-one can be that interested in dirt. Yes, very suspicious were the children.
That wasn’t including the babies. They were always looking around with big eyes being silent, no doubt planning and scheming, watching and waiting to strike. Those big beady eyes must have been up to something. I was on to them all though and from now on I would be ready.
Hannah kept telling me to walk forwards but by then even she was looking suspicious so I was keeping one eye on her as well, just to be on the safe side.
Later that night at dinner I was feeling a little sick in the stomach which didn’t help matters, and then the Bedouin started talking to me.
“I am from Petra.”
“Oh we have been there, its beautiful.”
“Yes, so beautiful, so was my donkey.”
“Mmm”
“So beautiful, Do you know I speak 3 languages.”
“That’s nice”
“My donkey was good.”
“Mmm”
“I went to China with my wife and I learnt Chinese so quickly.”
“Mmm” it seemed the appropriate response.
“I had a donkey I bought for 220JD and I took it home and it bit my nephews face, so I went back and said You didn’t tell me it was an angry donkey. Give me my money back! and he did.”
“That’s nice.”
Hannah whispered to me, “This guy is so random”
I whispered back, “He sure loves his donkeys.”
Donkey man continued, “I was 6 and had a donkey and it was so beautiful.”
Once again calling for the appropriate response, “Mmm”
“I am good with camels as well.”
Time to mix it up a bit, “Uh huh”
“I sold my donkey and bought a motorcycle and it broke down and I had no donkey.” At which stage he started cracking up with laughter, “and everyone said why did you sell your donkey!? So for a long time I had to walk because I had no donkey.”
I laughed nervously.
“So I bought another donkey, so beautiful.”
“Uh huh.” I had started on this new response and decided to stick with it.
“Do you have camels in Australia?”
“About 600 million wild ones, they have to shoot them because they are like a plague in places.”
At this stage he looked a little confused, “Too many camels did you say?”
“Yes”
“Why don’t you use them?”
“We have cars and motorcycles and planes and helicopters.”
“Camels are much better, like my donkey, so beautiful.”
“Uh huh, I guess we don’t have much use for them.”
It sent him into deep thought for a while which kept him silent which was good for my now headache.
Five minutes later he started again, “I was in Petra as a kid and some Scottish people were staying in my cave and I came home and she had my blanket and she said she needed it and I was cold so I went to another cave with bare feet and said to everyone I have no blanket and they said OK and so I went back and I got my blanket and everyone said you got your blanket back and I said, Yes”
“Wow” I said but more to the fact that he had told me this story.
I then had the extreme pleasure of listening to how he walked up some steps and walked 3 days once and rode some donkeys and camels and cooked some bread and gave some to a tourist for some cigarettes. Also lots more tales with even less point like, “I was going to walk to the Red Sea once, but didn’t.”
At about this stage I started reading my book and left him to poor Hannah who learnt he started smoking at 7 (seriously) and didn’t like it but kept smoking anyway.
Suddenly I was hit with a thought about 6 hours later, “So what is your name?”

By this time I was glad to be rid of Cairo and was hoping the desert regions would bring up something not yet seen in Egypt, nice decent, honest people. It started of brilliantly, up at 6am packing and generally being furious. I mean why did Hannah have to pack her bag so badly, it was a disgrace. Why did she need to have to broken masks hanging on the outside and not throw them out because they “looked cool”? And being able to get the clips in the top closed does not render the bag closed if the lid is still spilling out smaller bags and clothes and towels etc. Why the hell was I carrying all the brick Lonely Planets, and seriously who brings a tripod and not use it and how did I end up carrying that as well? No-one I tell you, in fact the reason we were supposedly friends was becoming slowly lost to me, what was she even bringing to this group? I tried to think of a reason I liked Hannah but even the fact that she was carrying some of my stuff was annoying me, what if I needed? What was I supposed to do then? Make her unpack that monstrosity she carries on her back? Why did she have my ring so they relented on the staring, slurping and leering a tiny bit, served her right for not wearing one of those Darth Vader suits.
So as can be deduced the morning was spent in silence and a lot of angry glaring because I was assuming she was thinking much the same things about me, albeit unfairly. The taxi driver was lucky to even get his cab fare at all let alone get a chance to attempt to rip me off, ask me for more money, take me the wrong way, molest Hannah, run out of fuel, or even a risk a conversation.
Once on the bus we got about 30 minutes in and then the bus broke down, after 1 hour of waiting our anger soon turned to talking and talking turned to laughter at the 650 Egyptians walking around the engine yelling out to other passengers to come and have a go at fixing the creaking, diesel bellowing, rust filled 50 year old engine. A few of them got animated at times and poked around with random sticks hoping that Allah would grant them a miracle and the stick would fix this mysterious engine failure. They didn’t seem to realise engines needed maintenance. So funnily enough something that would normally make us furious turned our fury into friendliness.
“Were you too scared to talk this morning as well in case you said something you regretted?”
“Heheh, yep”
Another hour later I realised I forgot my iPod and had left it back at dodgy brothers Inn. Instantly I was furious again, I mean I can lose anything I posses but the iPod because everything can be replaced but my photo’s couldn’t be. I mean even Hannah could be replaced if the push came to shove. (Just kidding Hannah).
Anyway I jumped off the bus and took a taxi back to the hostel. Lucky it was still in the room because the owner hadn’t got off his fat butt to clean it.
We had to stay another night which irked me quite a fair bit but I was just happy to have my baby back.
Hannah was feeling sick so we just hung around the whole day and did nothing. Well not nothing, starting to go crazy with boredom and anxiety isn’t nothing, I guess.