Egypt - really, really old news

About 8 months late, I realized that I did not finish writing about the rest of my study trip to Egypt in January.

Cairo is a crazy big city that is impossible to get around. Most of my memories of Cairo are of being stuck in traffic in a cramped, hot bus in a suit. We had some cool meetings though in addition to the one with Orascom that I have already written about - a few government ministers, a non-profit, some energy companies, and a tech startup. But the cultural sites were what really stood out in Egypt.

The pyramids, though their size was impressive, were a bit of a disappointment. We saw them once during the day and once at a hoky light and laser show at night.

Luxor, a few hundred miles south of Cairo along the Nile, was really amazing though. We took a sunrise hot air balloon ride over the valley, and had amazing views of all of the temples, tombs, and ruins. I also found the Nile really interesting. While I guess I learned this in high school, the entire country of Egypt is desert, except for a stretch about 1-2 miles wide on either side of the Nile, which stretches all the way from its delta in the north of the country to southern Egypt. While this makes sense, it was still shocking to see firsthand how green the area around the Nile is, and how it instantly drops off to extreme desert just a few minutes walk away from the river.

During my travels through 33 countries over the past two years, I have seen a lot of really old stuff. But the sights in Egypt are staggeringly old. Many of the ruins that we saw were 4,000 to 4,500 years old! All of the ancient ruins that I saw in South America, India, China, Thailand, Japan, the Middle East, and Europe - none of them were more than 2,500 years old. And the Egyptian ruins including King Tut's tomb, Hatshepshut's tomb, the pyramids, and the many statues of pharoahs and sphinxes were as impressive as any of them. It puts the rest of the historical sights I have seen around the world in a different perspective, and also really challenges the American worldview where remembering things from 40 years ago seems like ancient history.

So while Cairo is not high on my list of places that I would go back to, I would love to spend more time exploring more of Luxor and Aswan, and explore the rest of the areas along along the Nile south of Cairo. Here are a number of Egyptian photo highlights.

Street market - Cairo

Boy carrying flatbread

Camels and pyramids

More Great Pyramids, Giza

Old building facade, Cairo

Hot air ballooning in desert over Luxor
Mosque in Egyptian desert Hot Air ballooning, fields by the Nile quickly become desert
Sphinxes, Luxor

Massive ancient columns
Hatshepset's tomb
Google satellite map showing the green by the Nile and the surrounding desert

Sapa - northwestern Vietnam

After spending a few days in Hanoi, we took a surprisingly pleasant overnight train to Sapa, near the Chinese border in the mountains in Northwestern Vietnam.

While Sapa was an ok little town in its own right, we spent most of our time hiking around and exploring the surrounding areas. The countryside around Sapa is the gorgeous lush green valleys and terraced rice paddies that you see in photo books. Little children played in the river with their water buffalos and local women sold the vegetables that their husbands farmed in town.

The area around Sapa is also home to a number of "minority tribes", with the Black Hmong and the Dzay being the two we spent the most time around. While the tribes have in many ways converted from their traditional way of life to surviving via tourism, they have retained their langauge, dress, and a lot of their social customs. We spent one day hiking on our own down into the valley from Sapa town to Cat Cat village, a Hmong village about 3 km from Sapa. It was a really cool hike, down a long winding path towards the town which was built by the river that runs through the Sapa valley.

Our second day in Sapa we joined a small group and hired a Hmong tour guide to show us around her town and lead us on a day trip through the rice paddies and bamboo forests. Ironically, my second weekend after quitting work in 2006, I spent three days and two nights hiking through northern Thailand and staying in Hmong villages. Now, in my second to last weekend of b-school travel, this hiking adventure made the Hmongs a surprising bookend to my past two years of travels.

Our Hmong guide - Cha - was a really smart 20 year old girl who spoke Hmong, Vietnamese, and pretty good English too. And, since Lizzle speaks Vietnamese, we got some extra insight into Cha's life. She met her husband at the "Love Market" in Sapa town at age 15. He is also Hmong, but from a neighboring village. They were married after two months, she moved in with his family, and they had a daughter when she was 16. Now, at age 20, she works guiding tourists while her husband farms part-time and finishes school. I am not sure how much of this was a sob story designed to elicit tourist dollars (I actually think it's not, but you never know) but she complained to us that her husband drinks and gambles away all their money. She wants to leave him, but she is so old now (almost all Hmongs marry in their early teens) that nobody else will marry him. And since he paid a dowry to marry her, she would have to pay a fee of 5 million dong (~US$300), 40 pigs, and 80 liters of alcohol to his family if she wanted to divorce him. She was also eager for her daughter to start school. Almost all Hmong boys go to schoool but many Hmong girls do not. And most Hmong girls who do go to school are not taught to read or write, they are just taught to speak Hmong and Vietnamese.

While her story was really sad, it was an interesting backdrop on the villages and countryside that we walked through which were stunningly beautiful. We hiked for a few hours in the morning, had lunch in a Hmong town (sandwiches, not Hmong food unfortunately), and then hiked for a few hours in the pouring rain in the afternoon. The trails became super muddy and by the end of the hike I had slid down countless slick patches and was absolutely covered in mud. Still though, I was not complaining - it was a really cool adventure.

Hmong women by old French church in Sapa town

Girl drying some corn on the side of the dirt road

water wheel by river in cat cat

children bathing and playing with water buffaloes

Green valley and terraced rice paddies
Dzay women resting by the side of the road
flowers
Me and our Hmong guide Cha by waterfall

Hoi An - welcome to Vietnam

After an amazing six weeks in Europe, it was time for one last trip of business school - a long trip back to Southeast Asia. In fact, I would guess nobody in the world has ever flown from Tarifa Spain to Hoi An Vietnam before. It's not easy to do - I had to drive two hours to Malaga Spain, fly to London, change airports, then connect in Singapore and Hanoi, arrive in Da Nang, then drive an hour to Hoi An. Phew. But, still I was really excited to see Vietnam - the last Asian country high on my list of places to visit.

Hoi An was a great start to seeing the country. It is a small town located in the central portion of Vietnam, a couple miles from the coast and a few miles south of the 17th parallel, so technically part of South Vietnam from the perspective of the American War (I guess not surprisingly, but still unusual to hear, the Vietnam War is known here as the American War. And the Vietnamese justifiably have a lot of pride about how they were able to expel first the French colonists in the 1950s then the Americans in the 1970s).

Hoi An is now primarily a tourist destination, for Westerners, Vietnamese, and Chinese alike. It has a really nice, very walkable old town (cars are forbidden though bikes and motorcycles, known here as xe om, are everywhere). Our first day we rented bicycles (Asian biking again!) and rode from our hotel on the riverfront a few miles outside town into the downtown. I luckily did not hit anyone. We explored the various temples, the sprawling market, the numerous tailors and art galleries that have exploded to suck in tourist dollars, and walked throughout the old town, trying to adjust to the heat, humidity, aromas, and chaos that were a stark contrast from Europe. The town was really pleasant though, and, despite the madness when compared to Spain, was definitely one of the calmest places I have been in SE Asia.

Hoi An was a trading center for thousands of years, and there are a number of Chinese style buildings and temples. Here are a few photos of temples in the old town.




We also enjoyed the markets which sold everything from dried fish to fruits and vegetables to clothes and furniture.


We also spent part of our long weekend enjoying the beaches around Hoi An. The 30km long white sand beach that stretches from Hoi An to Da Nang was a famous relaxation spot for American soldiers. The northern stretch of the beach is also known from a tv show as "China Beach". We were only 1km from the southern portion of the beach, so we took full advantage of the 80+ degree ocean water, beautiful clean beaches, and gorgeous palm tree and island views. Yet another amazing beach.

Our last day in Hoi An, we hired a car and drove to My Son, a really interesting and beautiful set of Hindu ruins about an hour into the countryside that were built by the Champas culture from around the 3rd century to the 14th century. This is the same culture most famous for its largest ruins, Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The collection of temples, buildings, and ruins partially overrun by jungle was quite stunning and fascinating. We really enjoyed the drive from Hoi An, through some very small towns and countryside, then hiking (briefly) through the jungle to get to the ruins.

Impressions of Spain

The rest of the two weeks that I spent in Spain was amazing. It is such an interesting, relaxed, and enjoyable place to travel. The atmosphere is so fun and relaxing, and having pinchos (Basque for tapas) and a some wine at a tapas bar is always a great way to end a day. We drove all the way from the Northeast corner of San Sebastian to the southeastern tip of Tarifa and I enjoyed every minute of it. Definitely one of my favorite countries I have ever visited, and even though I have already been twice, it's at the top of my list of places to visit again.

My online photo album and captions will describe the trip in more detail but a few stream-of-consciousness highlights were:

Barcelona-amazing vibe and awesome Gaudi architecture all around...staying at Sancho's family's house in the countryside around Bilbao was really interesting - the tiny village does not see 25 American tourists very often!...The Guggenheim Bilbao was crazy and cool...Saw Guernica in Madrid again. Still super impactful...San Sebastian was a beautiful and really fun town on the Northeastern coast. Amazing food...Grenada was highlighted by the Alhambra which was not quite as cool as I had hoped but still very much worth seeing. Terrible audio guides though...Gibraltar was a weird escape...Tarifa was an amazingly fun and chill beach town

All in all, a great trip and a great finish to Europe. Next up, a long trip to Vietnam!