Pilgrimage 2.0-1 : From KL to Cairo

Way back in July 2018, mum and I decided to join a pilgrimage to the Holy Land scheduled for April/May 2019. Since then, I had constantly ignored the trip until the departure date arrived. Opps. Didn't start packing until a few days before. Sis and Little Monster sent us to the airport. The check-in at the Emirates counter was a breeze. The whole group gathered at 10 PM for the pre-pilgrimage briefing. Our flight out to Dubai was at 1:25 AM, so we had hours to kill.



It was my first time on Emirates and also my maiden flight on the A380. Leg room was decent on economy class and the entertainment console was good. Didn't feel much turbulence at all. No complaints about the food and service (no cute steward :(). The only bad thing was that mum's tray table kept falling down. Watched "Mortal Engines" which truly was an underwhelming affair.



Arrived in Dubai International Airport at about 5 AM. DBX's reputation as the biggest transit airport also means that it has a high concentration of cuties roaming its terminals. Check out Dubai Dick, a resident of Hong Kong I think, based on the accent I caught. Too bad I didn't have my super zoom camera out.





The design of the airport is similar to Suvarnabhumi. Wonder who copied who. Freshened up at the restroom. Walked around aimlessly, or just sat around for 3 hours before boarding our connecting flight to Cairo. One in-flight meal, one hunk (check out Aisle Aaron), and one movie ("Dead In A Week", the actor, Aneurin Barnard, reminded me of Elijah Wood) later, we arrived at the capital of Egypt. Crossing immigration was super fast, but upon exit, there was another officer who would check whether your passport was actually stamped.





We were herded into our chartered bus, where we met our local tour guide, Hani, who spoke pretty good Mandarin. Our journey to the West had earned us 6 hours of daylight, so our tour immediately began. Traveling downtown was a real eye-opener. From what I saw, Cairo can be described by the following words ~ sunny, dry, dusty, brown, and bare. Buildings often looked unfinished, or were literally abandoned halfway during construction. A lot of buildings look semi-demolished, or give the impression that they were built by stacking one building on top of another.



The first order of business was lunch at Bonne Soiree, a buffet restaurant that seems to be purpose-built for tourists. The spread was an interesting spread of rice, bread, salads, grilled chicken, lentil soup, meatballs, and some dessert. That first meal really set the tone for Middle Eastern cuisine. Nearly everywhere we went after that, it was nearly the same.



What better way to start a pilgrimage than to have mass? St. Joseph's Church is the oldest church in Cairo. The Franciscans from Italy built the church in 1909. Like many 'public' places in Cairo, they have armed guards and the access road was blocked off. We were welcomed by an Italian priest at the entrance of the beautiful church.







From downtown, we moved to an old part of town, known as Coptic Cairo. For security reasons, our bus was not allowed to enter the area, so we had to walk in. The old churches were located in an area that seemed lower than the surrounding areas. We took a flight of stairs down and continued walking along alleys surrounded by high stone walls. Dusty books lined the walls, and at certain intervals opened up into stone gateways.



Abu Serga or Saints Sergius and Bacchus Church, was said to be the place where the Holy Family stayed when they fled Nazareth to hide from Herod. Located in Old Cairo, it's one of the oldest Coptic churches around. Wooden panels and screens with intricate carvings and inlays, are used to create sections within the church. It also has a crypt that's ten meters deep, which contains several rooms. There's also a well that's said to have been used by the Holy Family. The whole church felt like a cave (well, it's also called the Cavern Church), and in my opinion smelled like a cave too! On an interesting note, the relationship between Saints Sergius and Bacchus was rumoured to have a romantic dimension... Hmmmm.





Another unique Coptic church that we visited was the Hanging Church. The origin of it's name comes from the fact that it's built atop the southern gatehouse of the Roman-built Babylon Fortress, and it's nave is suspended over a passageway. This gives the impression that the church is actually hanging. Certain parts of the floor are exposed to allow visitors to view how the church is actually 'suspended'. Unfortunately, no photography is allowed inside. There were many saintly relics in the church and I noticed that local visitors would kiss or touch most of them! Kinda like a kissing frenzy. On the way out, a local visitor asked which country I was from. He shrugged his shoulders when I told him, but he thanked me for visiting his country anyway.





Towards the end of the day, I was feeling drained. Dinner was a little early, at Fish Boat Abouzeid, a touristy boat-restaurant on the Nile River. Didn't like the food (nasty smelling sardines, and cow liver on the buffet line), but hated the pushy waiters more. They were trying to 'force' us to buy additional drinks, but at the same time didn't want to provide us with change for big notes.







The first hotel we checked into was Movenpick in Giza. Unfortunately, the check-in process was a little messy, and some of the bed arrangements were wrong. The hotel was also very spread out so they had to allocate staff to show us to our rooms. The staff seemed inexperienced at handling groups and we were bloody cranky after our long, tiring journey. The room was pretty big, but we had to share it with Egyptian mosquitos. So relieved to be able to wash off 24 hours of grime. Fell asleep before 10 PM and woke up before our morning call of 5:30 AM. I wanna sleep more!