Masato's Egypt Adventure

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Re: Masato's Egypt Adventure

Postby Masato » Thu Sep 19, 2019 1:04 am

Cairo Museum of Egyptology

Very cool, but considering its fame, it is a really quite a terrible building to hold such treasures. It has NO air conditioning, so everyone is sweating bullets. Also the washrooms were complete shite; 3 dirty stalls and no toilet paper. Honest. no fucking toilet paper to wipe your sweaty tourist ass. At a world-famous museum it was boggling to have such terrible conditions. Was happy to remember that they are constructing a new modern Museum to move everything to. Wonder what they will do with the building once everything is moved.

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THE ROSETTA STONE

The ACTUAL Rosetta Stone. So cool. Until this was found, no one could make heads or tails of ancient Egyptian writings. When this found suddenly they had a key (you can see heiroglyphs at the top, some old arabic (?) in the middle, and greek at the bottom), and suddenly Egyptology took a huge leap forward and everyone went crazy suddenly able to translate and read WTF it was all about.
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There was a story of a kid who (before they put glass up around most of the artifacts) snuck into this sarcophagus and waited until the museum closed. During the night he stuffed his pockets with gold and treasure, and the next morning he walked out with his pockets full no problem. However after leaving the museum, a policeman called the kid over to ask him something. The kid started running, and so of course was apprehended and they discovered all the gold he stole. Turns out that all the cop wanted from him was a lighter for his cigarette. If the kid had a light, or simply said 'sorry I don't have a light', he would have gotten away with the heist.
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this is the room where King Tutankhamen's gold and the famous mask were displayed. No photos allowed inside but you can see the mask here through the glass.
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Apparently King Tut was not even any significant Pharaoh, he was small time and the other tombs like Ramses II for example would have likely had 1000x more wealth than Tut. Tut was just famous because its the most recent discovery, a big hype in the 1920's and that famous mask etc
Also apparently there is untold amounts of far greater treasure today in the private mansions of S Americal Drug lords, unwilling to give or even sell them back to Egypt to put in their museums!

Obama: :D
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I told you the state of the museum was shite, lol... this is an example of the quality of the labels on most of the stuff. They even spelled HORUS wrong twice here (Hurun and Horun)
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They had other rooms where no photos were allowed. One was a room of REAL MUMMIES of Pharaohs. I looked right into the face of Ramses II, not 10 inches away through some glass. His face was still relatively preserved, not shrivelled beyond personality, you could see his features and characters quite clearly. A living god in his day, maybe the most badass of Pharaohs and I got to look him in the eye up close. That was really weird.

Bus ride back to the Hotel. Cairo is so broken, man. EVERYTHING is broken. I would say at LEAST 50% of the buildings are unfinished, vacant, or collapsing. The whole city is like this, I did not see a single block of streets anywhere that looked even remotely modern or westernized. Bizarre
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Postby Masato » Thu Sep 19, 2019 1:08 am

Got to spend some time in Old Cairo, waling around the alleys and shops. Blocks and blocks of labyrinth alleys and hidden stores selling crap that was probably made in china lol

Our guide encouraged us to bargain, some dude with us got 6 Tshirts for $1 USD

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Postby Masato » Thu Sep 19, 2019 1:14 am

That was the end of our official tour, but we still had 2 days to kill before our plane out.

We were pretty much out of money by then, so we spent 1 day at the hotel sleeping and resting, and the next day we took a taxi to an old Islamic neighborhood to walk around and explore on our own. Was nice to get away from the tour groups, no guide, no meeting time and place to get back on a bus. We just wandered and explored for about 4 hours as we pleased. Wonderful day

There were many old Mosques here we could go into, but Mrs Masato and my daughter had to wear a scarf over their heads and cover their legs to get in. I thought they looked lovely:
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some lower/underground levels of a Mosque we could get into:
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Love this photo, a doorway full of junk:
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Last night in Egypt, at the good ol' Oasis Hotel:
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Postby Masato » Thu Sep 19, 2019 1:16 am

Then we had a 21-hour layover in Frankfurt Germany.

We arrived late to a simple hotel. In the basement was a hardcore and authentic little Chinese food joint. We ate it up before bed, but right next to us was a large group of Chinese part of some team for a conference of some sort and were celebrating. The waitress kept bringing them food and drink constantly and they were getting quite drunk and boisterous it was a pleasure to sit near them and listen to their cheer :D
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Postby Masato » Thu Sep 19, 2019 1:23 am

Frankfurt Germany.

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This town was absolutely decimated by the Allies after WWII. We saw photos displayed it was literally levelled, nothing left.

The whole town has been rebuilt in the old style, its beautiful and fun for tourists but it all looks very new

Still, an absolute jewel of a little city. Perfectly clean, organized, modern, functional. A far cry from Egypt, I felt I had transported 500 years in the future from where I had just been the day before:

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I felt like I was in some Miyazaki movie, lol blimps hovering overhead, modern and old all in the same place:
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There are electric scooters EVERYWHERE, literally hundreds all over the place. You get an app on your phone linked to a credit card, and you pick them up and activate them and drop them off again almost anywhere you please. People riding them all over to get to work or for pleasure etc. I rode around with the kids for about 30 minutes, 3 scooters and in the end they billed me only 22Euros
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Postby Masato » Thu Sep 19, 2019 1:26 am

We flew back to Canada, had 1 day to sleep and get a million things done... then the very next day Mrs Masato and I shipped out to Victoria BC on the Island for my mom's funeral.

Even Frankfurt cannot compare to The Island, where I was born. My favorite place in the whole fuckin world, from what I've seen so far.

Here we went to spread my mom's ashes into the ocean at one of her favorite spots:
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Intimate friends and family:
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Mrs Masato contemplating life and death at the park where we put Mom's ashes:
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Postby Masato » Thu Sep 19, 2019 1:27 am

That's it!

Adventure comes to an end.

I am psyched to get back to work again, start training BJJ again (I trained today it was marvelous), and start earning the next adventure, whenever or wherever that may be.

Hope you enjoyed.

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Postby Edge Guerrero » Thu Sep 19, 2019 4:14 pm

- Looks awesome, Boss.

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- I rent this space for advertising

Don't be selfish, preserve this world for the next generations.

I'll never long for what might have been
Regret won't waste my life again
I won't look back I'll fight to remain

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Postby Canuckster » Thu Sep 19, 2019 4:59 pm

Masato wrote:That's it!

Adventure comes to an end.

I am psyched to get back to work again, start training BJJ again (I trained today it was marvelous), and start earning the next adventure, whenever or wherever that may be.

Hope you enjoyed.



Amazing adventure man,

Hit me up when you can
People say they all want the truth, but when they are confronted with a truth that disagrees with them, they balk at it as if it were an unwanted zombie apocalypse come to destroy civilization.

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Postby Luigi » Fri Sep 20, 2019 1:30 am

Wow its all coming back to me, you really saw a lot of awesome stuff Mas. I actually wrote an essay on that Karnak temple back in the day. Also the pharaoh who looks like melted Obama is Akhenaten, the weirdo who made his own weird version of monotheism and tried to force it on his subjects. Thankfully his generals took matters into their own hands and the changes were reversed for 1000 years or so after which the Christians brought it back to Egypt.
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