I left Auckland on the 15th at midday on my way to Egypt. It all started with a 12 hour flight into Seoul, Korea. Flight was uneventful. I then had a 19 hour stop over. Seoul was cold, only 5C which was quite a change from NZ summer and the temp i was predicting in Egypt. Fortunatley I had a hotel room for the night. It was a 4 four star which was very nice and all meals were put on as well. It's probably the most up market place i'll stay during my whole travels. The hotel was only 3 mintues from the airport. Out my 10th story window I had a lovely view of the airport. It was really foggy the whole time and was too far from Seoul to see much, but it was only a stopover and i had no real desire to look aorund Seoul anyway.
Next leg was a 12.5 hour flight into Cairo. Again the flight was boring. Got into Cairo at 9:30pm and was knackered, i didn't sleep at all on the plane. From there the plan was to get across cairo to the bus station. I got a taxi and got an intersting lesson in driving. I don't think there are many road rules. A road with 2 lanes can easily fit three, maybe four cars across it, driving at 80kph through a 50 zone. Even though it was late at night head lights are not always necessary, side lights will do. People just start walking out in front of cars and try to dodge traffic. The horn is used heaps and tail gating is just normal. Anyway managed to get to the bus station in plenty of time. I got my ticket for the bus leaving at midnight for the 9 hour trip to Dahab.
Even though we were all westerners on the bus the driver played some arabic movie quite loud, which sucked as we were all trying to sleep. During the trip we had to produce our passports about 5 times and they kept on stopping to check our tickets, as if some one may be ale to sneak on whilst we were traveling.
Finally got into Dahab at 9:30 next morning (the 17th). I was so tired by this stage. Got a taxi to the place i was diving with and sorted out stuff with them, then went to my accomodation and slept the rest of the day.
Phase 1 of the trip successfully completed!!
