Felucca
After the train ride south to Aswan, we caught some more ancient Pharonic sites (I will write about them soon enough, perhaps). We started travelling north again, back up the Nile. From Aswan, we took a cruise on the Nile on a felucca, a very simple small yacht. There was a variable crew of two or three, and around eight of us punters.

I felt the last part of London leave me as we gently tacked north up the Nile, against the breeze but with the current. For three days, we gently rocked from side to side, looking absently downstream until we turned and upstream came into view. The Nile is an amazing deep blue and gentle, only disturbed by enormous and revolting floating hotels plowing straight ahead, while we nimbly skipped out of their path. On each bank of the Nile there was a thin strip of lush green, full of palms and grass, which quickly gave way to barren bone-coloured mountains and plains of the desert. The sky above this was pale too; dust from the desert stayed high like smog. The sunsets we saw on the felucca were white, not yellow. Somehow the desert dust bleached the sun from its canary brightness to a dull sheen. It looked like the moon was rising, not a sunset.

The on-sell
I went into a pharmacy in Egypt to buy some sunscreen and ear drops, and after dealing with my rather hum-drum request, the guy pointed at the counter and said "Do you want anything else?" I looked down, and saw a small advertisement for Viagra.

"Come on," I laughed. "That's just for old men!"
"Okay," he said, and went to the back of the shop to get a carry bag.
The cogs of my brain turned while he was away.
"What, is no prescription necessary?"
"No, no, not in Egypt," he replied, quietly amused.
"How much?" I asked, strictly out of anthropological curiosity.
"Well. Egyptian equivalent, only 35 egyptian pounds" he said, tapping the number out an a calculator for reinforcement. "American brands, maybe 45 pounds. Viagra is 55."
That meant the genuine article was about 5 british pounds. Which is only slightly more than a day pass on the tube.
"If you buy a big amount, I can give you discount."
"Do you get many sales?"
"Yes. A russian man yesterday bought 20 tablets. I sold to him earlier this year as well. You are young, yes, but maybe you have a friend? A father? An uncle?" The man had sold these things before.

I have to admit that by now, my curiousity was, erm, piqued. What red-blooded man, even if it doesn't have a problem in that departement, isn't at least passingly interested in the effects? And my own, strictly hypothetical, curiosity aside, these things would have a certain market value in London. Get a nice discount from this guy and then offload them for what, 5 or 10 quid a pop? Just hang out in pubs in the daytime and offer them to the old guys that look like they could use a hand. Like a community service. I'd be a pharmaceutical Robin Hood. And that's not even thinking about the burgeoning metrosexual market -- one you've had a manicure, you'll try anything surely.

So, any takers? Your discretion is guaranteed -- all credit card orders will be charged from "harder.com"

Now you know
At the 4th International Penguin Conference in Chile in September 2000, it was finally agreed by penguin researchers that they would refer to a group of penguins on the land as a "waddle", and a group in the water as a "raft".

Meeting Egyptians is easy
At the end of my first day in Cairo, we found a tea house in a small tree-lined street. We stumbled across our desire for some tea and a sheesha pipe, and our host was happy to oblige. Seeing the late afternoon sun turn the leaves on the tree translucent, sitting around with old mates I hadn't seen in two years, I got my first feeling feeling of perfect satisfaction on this trip: Well, if this isn't nice, what is?

By the third tea I felt the need to share this satisfaction with our gracious host, so I looked up my first word in Arabic in my phrase book -- thank you. When he came to stoke up our sheesha, and I inadvertantly ordered another (oh well) sheesha, I broke it out: "Shukran", I said, beaming ear to ear. He was quite surprised by my obviously novel grasp of his language. He chuckled to himself and said that I was welcome, I assume. He went to serve the next table, and, still slightly bamboozled by the experience of me brekaing out some Arabic, he spoke to the guy and pointed back at us, spouting off a bit of Arabic. We agreed that he said "Those crazy foreigners over there just said Thank You to me!" The other patron seemed to agree that it was quite noteworthy.

Just later, two kids walked by trying to sell telephones to people, can I repeat, trying to sell telephones to passersby on the street. They came up to us and started advertising their wares to us in what, even to my untrained ears, was clearly kid-speak gobbledegook. They blabbered at us for a while, we smiled, they smiled, they offered their telephones to us one more time just in case we did want to buy one, then they were off.

Train to Aswan
After stumbling around, enjoying ourselves despite Cairo, we got on the overnight train south along the nile to Aswan. Despite our budding awareness of how 'without personality' Egypt is, we had high hopes for an opulent experience on the train. The price alone -- US$50 per person -- is a shirt-load of money in Egypt. My sources tell me that you can organise military coups for only a little more. As well, the posters advertising the service gave us misty-eyed visions of mahogany panelled cabins and deep red curtains, our beds being turned down at night while we ate roasted pheasant next to Hercule Poirot, then a discreet knock on a secret panel revealing a small yet servicable harem. You know, how it used to be in the olden days.

Instead, we had a squeaky couchette with seriously over-microwaved food. I got the short straw and shared with Cam, who had at that time been vomiting for several hours and was eyeing the distance between his pillow and the sink. I decided to make the most of it and gamely ordered an Egyptian red wine with a very nice label. It was pretty brutal, perhaps it'd been mixed with paint thinner, but just like the train it got the job done.

Cairo
A polite thing to say about Cairo is that it "lacks personality." Your faithful correspondant, always one to jump at the chance to call a spade a bloody shovel, has some other choice words, including "ugly" and "relentlessly ugly" and "completely without any aspect that could not be described as 'ugly'".

There are certain things worth reporting, however. Saw an advertisement for Cairo's bid to host the 2010 World Cup: "Trust us... and we'll deliver the best World Cup in history!" to various photos of sphynx, pyramids and famous footballers.

Now, the first rule of travel is never trust anyone, especially not yourself. But the second rule of travel must be, never trust an Egyptian who says "trust me" and then tries to sell you something like a boat ride or a tour or a million-dollar world class sporting event. You can haggle on the price all you like but whatever you buy will fall apart the second you walk out of view.

Crammed in the back of a Hyundai, my hotel's tour guide holds forth."To drive in Cairo, you need two things. First, a strong heart," he says as two trucks ahead of us, one in the lane each side of us, begin gently moving towards each other. "Second, to close your eyes," he concludes, pressing the acclerator.

Walking to a restaurant one night, Cam, Fuss and I are helplessly consulting another fine Lonely Planet map when an Egyptian man walks over to offer us help. After pointing us in the right direction, he starts talking to us. Where are we staying? Where are we going? Where are we from? When we answer "Australia", that gets him very excited.
"Morrymedran!" he cries.
"What?"
"Morrymedran!"
"I'm sorry?" I say, completely at a loss about what he is talking about. Melbourne? Marybinong?
"Morrymedran!"
A cog turns in Cam's head and he reluctantly proposes "Molly Meldrum??"
"Yes! Morrymedrran! He is a friend of mine! He stayed with my family for a week in the 70s!"
Now, you hear a lot of tall tales from locals when you travel. But this had to be true. Molly must've stayed with this guy for a week in the seventies. No-one would lie about that..