DAY 29 – VALLEY OF THE KINGS AND QUEENS, HAPSETSUT TEMPLE, TEMPLE OF KARNAK
Did a tour of the Valley of the Kings and queens and walked through the tombs of a few long dead Egyptian rulers. The best tomb by far was that of Queen Neferatari’s, which was vibrantly coloured and amazingly well preserved. After the valleys we went to another temple called Hapsetsut where around 60 tourists were massacred by Muslim extremists in 1997.
Back in Luxor we visited the temple of Karnack, which is possibly the most amazing temple in all of Egypt.
James and I came across a new scam in Aswan an Luxor. I call it the change scam. This is how it works. A waiter or shop keeper waits for you to pay, pockets a large note and replaces it with a much lower denomination similar looking note. He then shows you the small denomination note and gives you a blank look as if to say ‘this isn’t enough. Where is the rest?” At this stage the quality of English spoken by the scammer drops dramatically (as it does in a lot of scams). I suspect this scam is actually quite successful as the money in Egypt is in terrible condition, the colours change and it all starts to look the same after a while. Also when presented with physical evidence of your ‘mistake’ then I think it is instinctive to doubt yourself. The first time this happened we both saw what was paid and the kids who tried it on folded quite quickly. The second time (the next day) I paid alone and the waiter were lasted for ages. We saw him put his hand in his pocket and after some discussion we made him empty the pocket and there was still no twenty. This went on for ages and I was almost ready to fold when the waiter folded first and said “I have twenty, I have twenty” relieved and pissed off at the same time I said “Where!” and wouldn’t you know it the twenty was produced from the ‘empty’ pocket. My advice is if you are in Egypt and there is some dispute over change then back yourself. Obviously you run the risk of ripping off a poor Egyptian – but – ask yourself, when was the last time you EVER had a dispute over change in a western country? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred someone will be trying to pull the wool over your eyes and rip you off.
