Fair go Pharaohs, its not funny tell King Tut I want my mummy!!

And so my tour began. I was literally walking out the airport and jumped on the Travel talk bus and started talking to the two girls who were sitting behind me on the plane and found out one of them lives in my street in Fulham! Our first group dinner was a dinner cruise on the Nile which we all labelled 'the booze cruise' but boy were we wrong! There was an Arab singer whose ability matched that of a bad karaoke singer, a fat belly dancer, some bad bad booze and some spinny man with long greasy hair that called me up on stage and popped me under his blanket and told me to lie down- I told him I was very scared!!

We have seen sights that are thousands of years old and thousands of years older than Jesus. It is amazing to think that Cleopatra is closer to my age than she is to the time the pyramids were built. The pyramids are breathtaking These remnants remain from an era that was so surreal, full mythology, incest and certainly fertility- with one king Rasmusus having over a hundred children. There is one illegitimate queen- Hatshepsut who married her brother to continue the royal blood and then spent her life posing as a man to lead her country for 22 years as women were not recognised as leaders. I suppose not much has changed. Much like the Turks or the Greeks, the Egyptians believe they invented everything. I think they probably did so 4000 years ago and have done absolutely nothing since the AD’s as the place is backward, service is shocking, houses are incomplete and restoration is not a word that has been invented in Egypt yet. In fact most of the works that have been completed since the AD’s have been because of foreign help and support, including moving Abu Simbel due to the new dam in the 1970s and restoration of Canuck.  

Although the men here are obnoxious and perve constantly, I am claiming it when they smile with their round bellies and yellow teeth and tell me I am beautiful. Last week at Tosh’s birthday I got a glimpse of how annoying it is to be recognised as a star, when my mates little brother was stopped for photos constantly. I could hardly believe it when grown women on the table adjacent requested at least four photos with him. Having been the recipient of late of such attention, I can only begin to imagine how annoying it is. I’m trying to enjoy my holiday, and every second person wants a photo with me. They call me Shakira which I personally find bizarre, with my fatty pumbah arse at the moment I feel more like Chloe Kardash, and ironically have the same stats as Chloe. I don’t particularly mind stopping for photos with kids, but draw the line when their creepy dads want photos. In a few of my photos I gave the peace sign, then ten minutes later I had what seemed like hundreds of kids chasing after the bus with their peace signs, one child was begging me to get off for another photo. Ridiculous!

My new Saffa friend Carrie and I rode Camels at the Giza pyramids. I had a ball, but felt rather

sorry for them when they kneel down to pick you up- cant be comfortable for the Camels especially with the extra weight of the chick in front of me, poor fella. I requested the most glorious camel and this podgy Egyptian man with a wide yellow smile and miscellaneously placed teeth said ‘I get good camel for you’ and introduced me to my camel Michael Douglas. I’m so glad I rode a camel- it was so much fun and I was surprisingly good at it, as I am catholic I swear it had nothing to do with the phallic wooden knob I had to grip on to! I’m hoping to ride a donkey next. The other night I saw a man riding a donkey down the highway with a cart full of grass. I thought how much my wife would find him perfect if only he had blue eyes!

I haven’t been on a tour since my teens, so I’m struggling with the concept of tours, and schedules. I know Pa used to make Granny do them all the time so you got to see everything but sometimes I’d rather see less and have time to take it all in and relax. Saturday we took the local road to Aswan and had our own police guide on board for safety, the local road is two hours quicker than the tourist road so we were grateful when our legendary leader Sam said we could take it but had to hide from the police during the road block and close our curtains, we got busted just as we were coming in to Aswan, but made it so that was a massive result. Friday I got stuck sitting next to the Omanian- Moses, he always tries to sit next to me, and I think he loves me. He tells me I am too beautiful to be single (story of my life) and told me to go to Oman and he would open a restaurant for me to teach them all to cook in. I told him I would cook Pork Belly and he assures me I would get kicked out of the country, guess I’m uninvited then? He is a quite good looking sultan with a missing tooth, bad fashion sense and greasy hair. I get anxious not to brush up against him as I’m sure he will go to Islam hell – so me a.k.a. Miss Preymantus who usually has my legs sprawled out and over everything was sitting as restricted trying not to touch shoulders which is hard to do for a five and a half hour drive with bus seats built for ancient Egyptian sized people. Wednesday morning I hid in a back seat when I saw him approach. I wasn’t having a bar of it when he told me to move over and gestured for him to sit elsewhere so I had my own seat and as I’ve been quite sick lately and didn’t fancy sharing. I slept quite well which was great. It was like having my mum on tour cos whenever I coughed he told me to have tea and something warm for my chest and he pointed at my footwear and told me that I should’ve worn more appropriate footwear. I told him trainers didn’t go with the look I was trying to achieve, and how bad his crocs were. One day I was particularly frustrated so told him he would look way hotter with less gel in his hair, I even did a poll on the bus to prove my point and the next day he had no gel haha.

I learnt some Arabic also. Clearly not something I will ever repeat around the locals as I found out that ‘neknee’ means ‘fuck me’ and considering the Egyptians are a literal race (with yellow teeth) I am most careful not to accidently learn it and repeat it as I do the French with Attaché moi. On Monday we sailed on a Felucca and got beached on a sandbank. I said ‘how do you say ‘Fuck’ in Arabic, and we all knew ‘nek’. It was also then that I gained another Arab admirer, the captain of the boat. As we hit land and I retreated to the bank, he grabbed my hand and said ‘come back later’ with his toothy grin. I ran to wash my hands and ordered another drink that took an hour and a half to get. That night when I escorted Carrie to get money out of the machine out the front of the hotel the boat boyfriend was out the front, saying ‘hello Australia felucca’. Lord. Have. Mercy!

We spent nearly the whole next day on the bus back to Cairo. We stopped once at a servo and as I got off to buy some nuts and a loo break I was greeted by five men at the cash machine and had to bag my own goods, I cracked it and told them that surely with five Arabs, one could bag my goods. Nope lets just watch and stare... story of my life.

The food I am not only sick of, but I’m sick from. It’s all food I would eat as a happy hour or hungover- like dips and bread and rice with barbequed meat kebabs, but its nowhere near as tasty when you can’t buy any grog to down it with. There’s also many of my least favourite buffets, which I hate, as I hate mixing cuisines and never get my monies worth, plus they always, always make me sick, as I always try to, but don’t have the same success as my wife when it comes to eating.

New Years Eve was hilarious. They put on a buffet (my fav) at the hotel, had some awful local singers, some lycra clad rotund women singing, overpriced alcohol and wedding chairs. Thankfully the worlds greatest tour guide Sam, organised a litre of vodka to be smuggled in, so we went back to our room, played the drinking pyramid game and got fully loaded before we returned for the release of the balloons on the dance floor and some dancing. I called it a night just after midnight and one proposal later. I had just put my head to pillow when Carrie was banging down my door to let her in as she was locked out of her room. It turns out Melissa isn’t as scared about going to Islamic hell haha and we are all invited to Oman for her wedding next year (just joking on that part)!. I had to wake up at 5am on New Year’s Day for my flight back home to London which wasn’t much fun for anyone. As I walked out of the hotel I half expected to crash in to the Omanian on his way to 5:30am prayers to get his sins from the previous night erased, but sadly I didn't. The bus trip and airport stay was a couple of hours close to the worst of my life, I went to the toilet at least 15 times, and was most glad they didn't charge a pound at the airport for loo visits. That’s it from me and my bowels – hope your 2015 is amaze and there is plenty of travel on the cards.