Some pictures of Egypt (because I can't really resist) [Part One: On the River Nile, July 18-22]

Now that I'm likely to be stranded in Hong Kong, I might as well post some of the pics from the trip to Egypt during the past month.

A pic of the villa in El Gouna on the Red Sea (using my polarized clip as filter), on the morning we took the convoy from Hurghada to Luxor, one of the largest city (if not the largest) of Upper Egypt.

The first day in Luxor was the hardest, said our guide Rasha. Indeed, we ran from Hatshepsut's Temple, and the Valley of the Kings (skipped Walley of the Queens, it was a free vote, but close unanimity) on the West Bank of the river Nile, to Karnak (see photo), and then Luxor Temple in the city of Luxor, on the East Bank. Fucking heat.

And after Luxor, we set sail for Aswan, in Southern Egypt, on our luxury liner, the M/S Monte Carlo. With nothing better to do, we started playing Monopoly, and also mahjong. Before lunch on the second day of the cruise, my cousin Alex pulled another one of those crazy wins, a 13-yiu this time (which earns maximum fan) (Edit: and as if it wasn't awesome enough already, he also won by himself (zi mo) and by picking up the card on recovering for a flower (kong fa)!). My bro and cousin will remember that later on that day, we met the HK tour group, with whom they played lots of mahjong and lots of Chinkish card games. Shared ship with 30-40 something HKers, and 40-50 Spaniards.

Tight security in Egypt, and that was even before the bombings of Sharm-el-Sheikh occured. Armed tourist police, often seen in white uniforms, and sometimes in civilian clothes (like here).

Some hieroglyphs from Edfu temple (?), somewhere on the side of the Nile between Luxor and Aswan, on the third day of the trip I think.

One clever publicity stunt on cruise boats are animal shapes made with towels that cabin attendants would pull twice every day when doing the guests' rooms. They used a t-shirt of mine that was lying around. Even more clever, was the gorilla thing made with bed covers, and dangling from the ceiling of my cousin's cabin...

After reaching Aswan, we stayed another day onboard the M/S Monte Carlo, before transferring to the M/S Eugenie. We visited the high dam in the morning. A few stray dogs were found on top of it. So.

(Must cede comp back to Nicholas, pics later, goodnight)