A few hours later we hear a knocking at the door.

“Mika open the door!”

“No it be monkey burglars, maybe you should do it, I don’t think they forgave me for the rocks on the head.”

She looked at me strange and like anyone would do she shouted at me, “Open the door!”

“Ok, ok.”

Standing at the door was one of the workers who said in bad English, “Breakfast 3:15.”

I looked at my watch which clearly read 2:00am, “Umm why thanks for the heads up.”

“Yes” he replied, thinking I don’t know what.

Back in the safety of my bed, “Hannah does your watch say 2:00am?”

“Yes”

“You know how we bought these quality watches and were always wondering which one of ours was not keeping time correctly, well do you think maybe they both just stopped working or something.”

“Yours might not be working right but mine was the one keeping time right.” She stated. End of discussion.

“Do you think the clocks changed like daylight savings?” I asked.

“They only changed 3 weeks ago…”

“Well this is Egypt.”

“Mika do you think if we miss out bus they will give us our money back?”

“Well this is Egypt.”

“Yeah true, no chance.”

So I sat back and pondered it for a minute before falling asleep again. Next minute another knock.

“Mika open the door.”

“Monkey burglars?”

“MIKA!”

At the door was broken English boy again, looking a little stressed out, “B r e a k f a s t” he said slowly and loudly in case I couldn’t understand English, “3:00 a m”

I looked at my watch which told me it was 3am.

“Ok, thankyou for the second wake up call.”

“Yes.” He replied.

I turned around to go to bed again. A big mistake because he started to get read agitated. “Breakfast, breakfast.” He repeated.

“Ok man I heard you, we don’t have to leave until 4am we have plenty of time.

This only seemed to make the poor boy more confused, “No breakfast 3am! No 4am!”

He was really determined to get us our breakfast. So I did what anyone would do in my position and closed the door on him and went back to bed. Hannah got up thinking they maybe he had found some cornflakes and vegemite and toast for us and was as excited about it as we would have been if it was those very things.

I slept for another 30 minutes and wandered in to be greeted by our splendid breakfast of a stale roll and processed cheese slice. The use by date helpfully scratched out. I really don’t know why he had to give us a few practice wake up calls before the real deal. Especially for this breakfast which I wished I hadn’t of eaten as soon as I finished it.

At 4am our mini bus without air conditioning arrived to pick us up and we all just squeezed in for our convoy to Abu Simbul. About 20 buses all full of tourists had to have a police escort because it is on the border to Sudan and its angry Muslim terrorists all itching to get some white boy massacre. In 1997 on this very bus route some of them had crossed the border and slaughtered a whole big bunch of tourists so the Egyptian authorities had put in the convoy for our protection.

The convoy more resembled a gumball rally to me with the buses all competing to get there first, first as in before the escorts, everyone. One bus took off, tires squealing only to be overtaken on the outside by another who had got the jump on everyone by overtaking, using the curbs liberally. This caused the other bus to try and ram it off the road completely but in doing so created more space for another bus to pass him on the inside. We soon joined in on the chase and even though we were in a mini bus doing 160km/h didn’t even come close to finishing first. It beats me why there are so many bus crashes and tourists killed in Egypt, really.

After we had paid for our tickets by carefully using the line in place, ie using gile, whit, charm, distraction, female charm, diversions and blatent pushing in we joined the other 600million tourist to see the 2 temples right next to each other.

I decided to get a carefully constructed masterpiece picture so set the camera down with timer rolling. I didn’t really trust Hannah to get it just right. Also then she would get all the credit for such a good picture. So I quickly ran out and walked to the spot marked with an X on the ground and looked back and casually strolled towards the camera with my natural face on and exaggerated movements, so you would be able to see how cool I walked. Just as it was about to take a picture someone walked in front of it. I repeated said process, another person walked in front of it again.

“Mika just let me take the picture.”

“No!” She just wanted the fame and fortune, I swear.

Anyway after 8 attempts I gave up. So I cant show you the perfect picture.

There was a No Camera sign as you entered into the temple so I had my camera in my hand turned on but I forgot to turn my screen off and the guard noticed.

“No Camera!” he barked a little angrily.

“Yes ok” I said and I walked off with it still on.

“I said no CAMERA”

“Ok” so I had to turn it off.

As soon as he returned to the entrance I turned it back on and tried to get some pictures but the camera was being difficult and would work.

“The guard came back and saw the camera in my hand so I turned it off without him seeing.

“No camera!”

“Its not on mate.”

“Yes it is on.”

“Nope”

“Show me.” So I showed him and grabbed it from my hands because I didn’t expect him to take it. I walked to the doorway of the little room and blocked his exit.

“If you think you are taking my camera you have another thing coming.”

He ignored me and tried to walk out.

“The camera thanks.” I said politely with my hands out.

He tried again to walk out so I pushed him back in and held out my hand. He was smaller than me, most Arabs are thankfully, so I could do that. Anyway he saw I was about to release the tiger on him so he gave it back, reluctantly.

“The cheek Hannah, trying to steal my camera.”

“Well you did try and take a picture.”

“Heheh, true, but he didn’t know that, for sure anyway.”

As usual we saw everything in about 30minutes so had another 30 minutes to kill so we walked past the Souqs.

“Hello, welcome, where you from?”

“Japan.”

“Welcome to Egypt, come look, very cheap.” As he trust up some scarves into our noses, grabbed Hannah and dragged her forcefully into his store.

Next store, “Hello, welcome, where you from?”

“Imafrimaplicvaranere” (Pikey for ‘I’m from a place far from here.’)

“Welcome very cheap.” I sneezed from the dusty scarves which had been carefully placed up my nose.

“Vrerynoyniissf” (‘You very annoying, go away.’)

“Speak English?”

“Ovorseianatdaainkmoin?” (‘of course I can what do you think I am speaking?”

“Yes” the standard reply for when they don’t know what is happening. It left them scratching their heads long enough for us to escape their clutches and into the waiting hands of the next Souq owner.

“Hello, welcome, where you from?”

By the end I think we had said we were from every country in the world.

“Hello, welcome, where you from?”

“Espanol.”

“Hola, mucho gusta a Egypt. Muy Barato.” he said. (‘Welcome to Egypt. Very cheap.’)

“Si” I replied confidently. (‘Yes’)

“?De donde eres?” (‘where are you from?’)

“Si”

“?Cuentes anos donde eres?” (‘How old are you.’)

“Si” I was getting the hang of this. I was confident I had them all fooled.

“Hello, welcome, where you from? Very cheap.”

“Oh that’s absolutely beautiful.” I cried in response to the plain white Tshirt he was holding up, “Hannah it’s gorgeous isn’t it? Do you have it in radioactive pink?” I was heartbroken when he didn’t. I couldn’t see why he couldn’t have that colour, I mean just because everything in Egypt comes in the standard white or black…

“Hello, welcome, where you from?”

Hannah started to get really excited about his tshirt which happened to be the same as the last 400 sellers.

“Oh I couldn’t touch it.” She gushed.

“Yes, yes touch, very nice.”

“No, I couldn’t” wherein he tried to thrust it in her face. She backed away and tentatively put a finger forward and then at the last minute pulled back.

“If I touch it I will fall in love and then have to buy it.”

He tried harder to get her to touch it, getting quite excited.

“Oh I couldn’t touch it positively I couldn’t.” she said, running away squealing.

On the way home on the bus we snaked the best two seats on the bus which made us popular with the previous occupiers who got on last and got the two worst seats in the isle. Suckers.

So by the end of the morning we had got through and only had about 3 lies dealing with money. Not a bad start, for an Egyptian day.

Time was running short so she had to miss out on seeing Luxor because we had more to see, so the next day we set off for Aswan and its famous Souq’s (shops). After 11 straight days of Smegals disease Hannah was finally able to perform like the monkey I had come to expect of her to a small degree. She even croaked out a minor comedic run but without Hannah there to encourage her it soon petered out.

Before the souqs I managed to give Hannah a consolation prize for missing out on the Valley of the Kings and got to explore the Valley of the Nobles, well actually that was in Luxor as well but this was like a mini version of it, just trying to make it sound grand so Hannah doesn’t realise what she missed out on. However it did have lots of cool tunnels and no-one else around which is always important.

Hannah wasn’t as curious as me and I soon lost her whilst climbing down one of the many tunnels. In this particular tunnel the torch I was using was giving off a splendid glow to the amount of 1 millionth of a candle watt. With this blinding light I had the pleasure of using my imagination somewhat more than necessary and all those little bat tweets and every now and then I would feel what I was sure a vampire or some other man eating beast fly past me. I wasn’t scared at all but maybe the vampire lord was down the end and without my monkey butlers to back me up I prudently returned to the safety of the sun.

When I finally found Hannah again, “You should check out this tunnel, I couldn’t even get to the end of them!”

“Why not?”

“Bats” I said.

“Bats?” She laughed, “Your afraid of bats.” Hysterics.

“Am not! Just cautious.”

“Well lets go, I am not afraid, Mika” The Mika at the end sounds a bit too much like a challenge.

“You know bats bite.” I stated.

“Really?”

“Yes, and they carry diseases like rabies.” Bingo! Hannah is convinced her death will come from rabies.

She just shrugged, she had gone far too far to back out now by mocking my alleged fear of bats.

I decided to add some more, “You know they suck your blood as well, vampire bats, saw it on TV.”

She laughed nervously. We were near the bat part then, the part I had turned back from, the part with all the bats shrieking and flying past. I lit a cigarette lighter. 1000’s of little eyes glistered. Hannah tensed.

“So you’re not afraid, eh?” I mocked, “alright go down there then.” I pointed to the waist high tunnel with hundreds of bats hanging from the roof. I made (pretend) moves to do it myself. It did the trick and she jumped down, shining the torch.

“It’s a dead end.” She said quickly and even more quickly jumped back out. “nothing to see really.”

“Are you sure? Maybe you should crawl to the end and make sure there isn’t a small crack you may have missed?” I inquired.

“Mika! It’s the end, OK!” a little testily.

“Well if you’re afraid of bats you should just say.”

“I’m not.” She said as she made moves to the safety of the outside bat free world. I brought up the rear, just, maybe 2cm in it.

When we got back our friendly nodding hotel manager offered to organise a few things for us if only we pay him some small fee.

“Abu Simbel, all expenses paid, you pay nothing…” I figured, actually Hannah figured for me, that being suspicious and expecting the Egyptians to be decent people was just getting me angry and making me not enjoy myself so I stopped caring. “… all for only 45 Egyptian Pounds.”

“Is it a big bus?”

“Of course.”

“Are you lying?” at which stage Hannah gave me a none to subtle crack in the ribs.

“No, no I promise you big bus and air-conditioned.” Translated into English, ‘Yes I am you rich white capitalist who steals my money’

“And we don’t pay entry fee?” Just wanting to clear some things up.

“Yes, all included.” Riiiiight…

Anyway I was dubious at best but decided to roll with it.

“Do you want to do a Felucca ride back to Luxor?”

Hannah started hyperventilating so I figured it was a YES!!.

“How much?”

“95 Egyptian pounds, all inclusive. You see 2 temples on the way which is all included.”

“95! Is that a promise? Egyptian promise?” I said lightly, CRACK, my ribs were starting to get sore.

“Yes, you pay no more.”

“OK we are in.”

“Ok, you leave for Abu Simbel at 3:30 in the morning and then….”

I cut in, “3:30 in the morning? Are you crazy.”

“... yes, and you get back at 1pm and then go straight to Felucca, sleep the night on it and the next day you see the 2 temples and then a bus to Luxor.”

“OK”

That night we strolled around the souqs buying things and had a good ole time bargaining. I like to think we drive a hard bargain. At least, so far, I haven’t met anyone who paid less for things we have bought. It might be because we may not have met anyone who had bought any of the things we have bought. Little minor details like that however I find can really bring a half man, half boy (as well I am sure monkeys and midgets) down so I focus on the positives not the negatives.

In the souqs I found some monkey statues, I had to buy them.

“How much for the monkeys?” I said finally after asking about a few other things first.

“140 E-gip-shun (Egyptian) pounds.”

I whistled in amazement, because that is the way the game is played. “Expensive!”

“Yes, well its hard stone and hard to carve.” Wherein he proceeded to show me just how hard it was with Inubis’s beak.

“Yeah, it is hard but I will give you 50 E-gip-shun pounds for it.” Hannah started giggling at the E-gip-shun part. I am quite the funny man sometimes.

“No, no you will make me broke.” I thought that was the point personally. “120”

Anyway after finding out the ‘real’ Egyptian price, the one for locals, as 100 and then lowering it to 90 Hannah kindly decided I would up my bid.

“Sik-ex-ty (60) E-gip-shun pounds.” Hannah started going into hysterics when he whistled appreciatively and repeated what she said exactly. I thought it was quite funny as well. So after 20 minutes of negotiating I finally got it for 65 which is about UK£2

or AUS$5. He never realised I would have paid 10 times that. Their monkeys!

Because of our early rise the next day we went to bed early.