Author archive
9 November 2004
I dozed for four hours inflight, making the overnight flight quite bearable. Soon enough, breakfast came and I landed in Auckland around 1130. It had been an awesome adventure for ourselves and for Kim’s parents. Travelling with the elderly, in intrepid destinations has its challenges but I think we deserve nearly full marks for making […]
8 November 2004
With family in Singapore Yesterday was spent with family, including my aunt. And I didn’t hear from Pat and Fiona, meaning that they must have got on their standby flight to Auckland. As for me, I fly out tonight. I had the day to kill. Mum and step-dad took me to East Coast beach for […]
6 November 2004
Pat and Fiona were meant to try to get back to Auckland on standby tonight but they changed their mind. They decided they would try to get on tomorrow night, whereas I’d try get on the night after that. So, we had time to just chill today. I went to Hougang Mall for shopping with […]
5 November 2004
Kim and I managed to wake up at 0900 despite the unfavourable time change. We spent the day shopping at a couple of IT malls in Singapore and managed to get ourselves a Palm Pilot each. Normally, tech products in Singapore are cheaper than in New Zealand but with the exchange rate at present, it […]
4 November 2004
Boarding the Malaysia Airlines B777 was very quick. There were only 65 passengers on board, leaving from Cairo for Kuala Lumpur at 0150. Despite that we left 15 mins late. Onboard, I recognised a number of the crew. I had seen them at the pyramids , and immediately thought “They must be Malaysia Airlines crew […]
3 November 2004
Egyptian Museum We took breakfast at the hotel’s Ibis Café courtesy of Pat and Fiona. We had a fantastic early-bird room rate which excluded breakfast and didn’t see the need to pay for a breakfast buffet. The selection was excellent but not quite as good as that at the Concorde in Sharm. We walked to […]
2 November 2004
Pyramids Pat and Fiona had a buffet breakfast included in their much-higher hotel room rate while we ate lightly in our room. That allowed us to have a sleep-in till about 0800. We left about 0900 for the Pyramids at Giza on the western edge of Cairo city. We found the official entrance (as opposed […]
1 November 2004
Above: Concorde El Salam resort in Sharm. Enjoying the resort I wanted to make the most of the resort before we move on to Cairo. I was in the water at 0715 but a leaky goggle cut my swim short. After a big buffet breakfast, we packed and returned to the outdoors to enjoy the […]
31 October 2004
We two nights stay at the awesome Concorde El Salam resort, which meant a full day of just enjoying the sea, marine life, pools and good food. It became apparent that our resort (and Sharm) was popular with Russian sun-seekers, which explain the two large Russian jets at the airport. G-strings seem more common here […]
30 October 2004
Above: Scenery en route. Driving down to Sharm el Sheikh We returned to the hotel to collect our stuff and get ready for our drive south. While we were destined for Sharm el Sheikh, we found a taxi to Dahab where we would change to a bus for Sharm. As we approached Dahab, we asked […]