Cairoglyphics

After a long, uneventful flight to Cairo via Singapore, we made our very first groundfall on the African continent just before midnight. Upon deplaning, we were struck both by the sour smell of sweat and the heat, which hovered above 80 degrees despite the late hour. Tired and jetlagged, we were both quite glad that we had pre-arranged pickup and arrival visa assistance with our hotel. After being led through Customs and then whisked through the dusty back streets of Cairo via a Mercedes sedan, we were delivered to our five-star-in-price-only hotel some thirty minutes later.

We managed a few hours of fitful sleep before (in what was becoming a recurring theme on our trip) being awoken by a nearby mosque’s morning call to worship. We were subsequently reawakened a few hours later by loud Arabic talk radio coming through the hotel’s thin walls (courtesy of the next room’s former occupant). Forcing ourselves to fight through jetlag, we rose and made our way to the hotel’s club lounge for breakfast, where Kaberi was introduced to strawberry juice, a heavenly puree of sweet fruit that would become her sole drink for the foreseeable future.

After breakfast, we began planning our full two weeks in Egypt over the Internet. Armed with Kaberi’s friend Miki’s Rough Guide to Egypt, chock full of handwritten suggestions on what not to miss and what to skip, and a Concierge.com dream Egyptian itinerary, we quickly formulated a decent plan. Satisfied for the time being, save for a frustrating inability to book flights or cruises in Egypt via the Internet, we left our itinerary with the hotel’s concierge and asked for a price quote from the in-house travel agency. With a few productive hours behind us, we started our explorations of Cairo.

The first stop on our agenda was the Egyptian Antiquities Museum and our early start to the day deposited us at the front gates before the museum opened. After buying our tickets and ensconcing ourselves at the front of the line, we prepared to follow Concierge.com’s advice to bypass the hordes of tour groups assembled in the lobby for orientations and make a beeline for ­­rooms 3, 56 and 14. We had used the same trick at the Louvre a few years ago, and it had allowed us to admire the Mona Lisa undisturbed for a good ten minutes.

This time, our best efforts were thwarted by the museum’s poor numbering scheme and our own unfamiliarity with Egyptian antiquity. After wandering the rooms aimlessly, looking queryingly at the seemingly-endless clutter of unmarked statues and busts, we realized that we needed a guide to appreciate our visit. After exiting the building to haggle with one of the many guides unceremoniously assembled near the ticket booths, we settled upon a choice.

As it turned out, our guide was a well-intentioned man who had one hour’s worth of information at his disposal to fill a three-hour visit. His repetitive explanations of the symbolism of Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Egypt, depicted by the papyrus and lotus, or red crown and white crown, turned into a ceaseless mantra that transformed us from intellectually-curious adults into fidgety middle-schoolers desperate for class to end.

The highlight of our visit was very clearly the King Tutenkamen (Tut) exhibition halls. Having seen the condensed, traveling King Tut exhibit in the U.S., we were astonished by the vastness of the contents comprising the burial tomb. We were also struck by King Tut’s relative inconsequence as an Egyptian ruler (he reigned only 14 years before dying very young and did not lead any military campaigns). If not for the discovery of his relatively-pristine burial chamber, he would be nothing more than a footnote in modern times. We could only imagine the scale and grandeur of the tombs of more important kings whose larger treasures did not evade the hands of graverobbers or other misfortunes.

The 3,000-year old artisanry reflected in King Tut’s treasure was a sight to behold. The painstaking detail and symbolism in many of the pieces was truly remarkable. For example, King Tut’s walking cane and footstool were adorned with black and white figures depicting Nubian and Syrian figures, thus symbolizing the king’s power to hold the traditional enemies of Egypt under his grasp and under his feet. The impeccable and delicate craftsmanship was repeated throughout the exhibition’s wooden boats (to transport the soul in the afterlife), jewels, gold pieces, coffin and sarcophagus.

After perusing the King Tut exhibits, and due to our misconception about the current currency exchange rate, we paid an outrageous admission price ($35 for two) to stroll through the rather-forgettable Royal Mummies Room. Our last stop before leaving was to see the Fayoum Portraits, a collection of Greek-influenced Egyptian watercolor paintings of nobility.

Afterward, we returned to the hotel on foot, thankful to have gotten something out of our visit. After arranging for a daylong guided tour of the Giza pyramids, the Sphinx and Memphis for the following day, we spent the afternoon giving in to jetlag.

When evening arrived, we took an impossibly-circuitous taxi ride to a restaurant in Cairo’s Muslim quarter overlooking the Citadel. We took in the sunset view and watched the area mosques illuminate as we dined on kabobs, babaganoush and hummus at Studio Misr. And in what would prove to be a short-lived state of affairs, we congratulated ourselves for successfully playing it by ear on our first full day in Egypt.

Bali Redux

With a bare minimum of days left in the warm confines of Bali, the three of us rented a private villa for two nights on the southern tip of Bali, near the five star resorts of Nusa Dua. While the villa’s décor left something to be desired, its service level did not, and we thoroughly enjoyed having a private staff at our beck and call. We especially appreciated seeing our clothes magically laundered, pressed with the scent of baby powder and left neatly folded on the bedside by day’s end.

We used the time in Bali much in the same way as before, allocating the hours between shopping excursions, massages and indulgent meals. On our last night at the villa, we dined at the highly-touted Spice restaurant housed in the minimalist chic Conrad hotel nearby. By the time we began our seven-course chef’s tasting menu on a terrace overlooking lush, manicured walkways and lounge pools, Kaberi had already decided where she and Vik would spend their final night in Bali. The 5-minute ride home turned into a 30-minute misadventure where poorly-chosen landmarks and questionable navigation conspired to disorient us before Kaberi finally found the way back.

The next morning, after squeezing in three ludicrously-inexpensive sessions with the villa’s private masseuse, we bid Jason farewell after ten tropical days together. Jason didn’t leave empty-handed on his return to Chicago, however, as Kaberi enlisted him to be her personal courier for everything from local purchases to journals and location-obsolete guidebooks.

An hour or so later, we collected our things and hitched a quick ride to the Conrad for the final night in Bali. Much to our surprise and delight, the Conrad’s nonsmoking king-bed rooms were sold out and we were upgraded to a beachfront suite with two private terraces. After luxuriating in our palatial environs, we used the remainder of the day to actively lounge by the pool, grab sunset cocktails at the Legian Hotel and have a waterfront Italian dinner in Seminyak.

The precious few hours before the next day’s early afternoon flight to Cairo elapsed at lightning speed, leaving us time only to share a morning champagne toast on the balcony before packing our things and checking out. On the cab ride to the airport, we both agreed that Bali would be one tough act to follow.

Drive-Through Buddhism

When we awoke the next morning, Kaberi committed herself to getting us off on the right foot by leading us to a Rough Guide-recommended breakfast spot, the Ministry Of Coffee. Her efforts proved worthwhile as we collectively enjoyed hearty servings of banana chocolate pancakes, egg croissants, espresso and vanilla lattes. Rejuvenated with a satisfying meal, we continued on to Yogyakarta’s Sultan’s Palace to catch a traditional shadow puppet rendition of the Ramayana strongly recommended by Kaberi’s father, who had spent a number of years in Indonesia on business.

Kaberi had wisely chosen to sample a Saturday morning practice-cum-performance of walat gaoneg at the Sultan’s Palace because her ability to successfully convince her travel companions to sit through a daylong puppet show would have been tenuous, at best. After an amusing taxi ride to the palace (during which we discovered that our Indonesian cabbie shared Vik’s love of the cheesy 1970’s cop show, CHiPs), we were able to walk the palace grounds and observe the puppet show at our leisure before Jason and Kaberi were mobbed by a crowd of excitedly-giggling young Indonesian girls wanting to have their picture taken with the two Midwesterners. Standing off to the side, Vik hadn’t seen such a surreal example of faux celebrity worship since his 30 minutes playing Pluto at EuroDisney in a prior life.

We opted for a hurried McDonald’s lunch before driving north to the Buddhist temple ruins of Borobudur in a dilapidated taxi leaking gasoline and literally coming apart at the seams. Upon arriving at the site an hour later, our terse cabbie indicated that he would see us back at the dropoff site at a time of our choosing. Checking our watches, we realized we had three hours to spend in Borobudur’s majesty before needing to return to Yogyakarta to collect our bags before catching an evening flight back to Bali.

Unlike our peaceful visit to Prambanan one day prior, Borobudur was teeming with Indonesian visitors – especially excitable schoolchildren – on a pleasant Saturday afternoon. Keeping our wits about us while dodging the occasional stray youth running by, we approached Borobudur via a flat pathway that led directly to the temple steps. Originally a Hindu temple site, Borobudur was laid on a stone foundation that was sinking into the soft earth below. This led to a UNESCO intervention where the temple was dismantled piece by piece in order to allow for the reinforcement of the foundation with concrete.

As we scaled the reconstructed temple, we had the privilege of walking alongside 504 1,200-year-old Buddha statues and 2,672 elaborate friezes. The temple was composed of six ascending levels, each representing stages in the Buddhist path to enlightenment. When we finally emerged at the top, representing nirvana, we were met by stunning 360-degree views of the countryside. Borobudur’s setting was as impressive as its architecture, with sweeping vistas of volcanic peaks intermingled with lush foliage and flatlands scattered with small towns. After taking account of our surroundings, we dodged the camera-mugging and walked through the 72 bell-shaped honey-comb statue coverings representing nirvana-attaining disciples.

After accommodating a smattering of photo request from young admirers, we headed back to the original drop-off point, only to find that our taxi was nowhere to be seen in the expanse of a massive and largely-desolate parking lot. With only a couple of hours remaining before our flight was set to depart and 100 kilometers separating us from Yogyakarta, we began to get nervous. After waiting an additional 20 minutes, Vik started exploring our other logistical options – ferrying us via horse-drawn cart to the nearest bus station or hiring an available private car and driver who would invariably sense our mounting desperation and demand from us a round trip fare.

In the midst of frightfully one-sided negotiations with an opportunistic car owner (translated by a helpful bystander), our cabbie returned, unapologetic and apparently unavoidably detained by a pressing oil-related issue. Adding insult to injury, he had neglected to refill his gas tank during the process, leaving his three passengers to apprehensively watch the fuel dial until we found the nearest gas station, some fifteen minutes away. Sixty minutes thereafter, back in Yogyakarta, we were quite enthusiastic to find a new taxi to take us to the airport.

As luck would have it, our flight to Bali was delayed, leaving us time to indulge in not-exactly-gourmet curbside meals at the KFC and Dunkin’ Donuts in Yogyakarta’s diminutive airport. Troubled that her cardinal travel rule of not patronizing U.S. chains while abroad had been broken twice in one day, Kaberi ordered a durian-flavored donut. It proved to be the appropriate capstone to the day – all three of us took a bite and cringed. An hour or so later, we were in the air enroute to Bali. To our surprise, we had managed to check in for and board the flight without a single person asking to see any form of ID. Our VIP status in eastern Java notwithstanding, we could not wait to make landfall back in Bali.

Yogya Make My Brown Eyes Blue

The following morning, we were roused bright and early at 4:00 am by a nearby imam’s eardrum-shattering call to morning prayer. After numerous efforts at stuffing the corners of a pillow into his ears proved ineffective at muffling the intrusive, wee hour Arabic wails, Vik stormed off muttering with laptop in hand to seek refuge in a spot offering some relative peace and quiet. By his own account, Vik made the best possible use of his time by watching the Lost season finale on the Slingbox (he still wonders why Charlie couldn’t just close the hatch door behind him). In the meantime, Kaberi and Jason each tried to fall back asleep but soon had to concede defeat to the persistent, immutable sonic forces at hand.

Shortly thereafter, we returned to the airport to catch a short but bumpy flight to Yogyakarta, a city in eastern Java and the most appropriate conduit for traveling to the ancient temple ruins located nearby. Upon touching down, we hailed a taxi to drop off our bags at our hotel – an oddly-expanded French colonial mansion in the center of a rather unremarkable town – before setting off again to visit the Hindu temple ruins at nearby Prambanan.

We were conveyed to the temple site within a half an hour and found ourselves in the unusual position of essentially having a UNESCO World Heritage site entirely to ourselves, save for a lone shepherdess allowing her flock of sheep to roam free through some ruins. By entering the site almost exactly on the one year anniversary of a powerful earthquake that weakened the main temples’ foundations, we were rendered unable to enter into any of the most prominent Prambanan sanctums.

The three of us contented ourselves with a thorough stroll across the entire complex expanse, comprising 224 temples and representing the largest Hindu temple compound in southeast Asia. The Prambanan temples were constructed nearly 1,000 years ago, making them older than their more famous cousins at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We were especially impressed to learn that Prambanan's dynastic creators specifically constructed the Hindu temples without demolishing any nearby Buddhist sites as a gesture of religious tolerance. After wandering Prambanan, we made a subsequent visit to nearby Buddhist ruins featuring intricate stonework.

Having toured the temple ruins in the height of the afternoon sun, we whisked ourselves back to the hotel for a leisurely – and ultimately frigid – dip in the pool and a late lunch in the shady courtyard. The duration of our lingering, however, was sharply curtailed by the overwhelmingly-loud, throbbing guitar screeches emanating from a few yards away. To our considerable surprise and dismay, our hotel was hosting what we could only assume was an Indonesian rock showcase punctuated with live jam sessions. Shaking our heads in disbelief, we appreciated the irony of being inconvenienced by loud, unrelenting wailing twice in the same day.

After a few hours of downtime, we regrouped for dinner. As it turned out, the remainder of our evening unfolded in a seemingly-unending comedy of errors. With a restaurant recommendation billed as "the best place in town" by our hotel’s youthful combination front desk staffer/receptionist/concierge in hand, we drove halfway across town in search of the place. Once there, after what felt like an eternity, our cabbie declared that the venue was closed for renovation. Exasperated, hungry and increasingly impatient, we drove to the nearest landmark on our vague map, the erstwhile Radisson hotel. Inside, the friendly night desk manager directed us to the nearest eatery.

Trudging around in single file on dusty, unlit and poorly-marked streets, one or more of us began to question the wisdom of getting advice from a hotel that could not even successfully maintain the Radisson banner. At the very moment when it appeared that we were hopelessly lost, Kaberi found the restaurant to which we were directed. As we set foot inside, we realized that we had entered a low-end Indonesian university food court. While Kaberi was game for sticking around, Jason and Vik opted to bring us back to our hotel where we knew a satay buffet awaited us.

Ultimately, the decision to return to the hotel for dinner was the crowning folly of the evening. Midway through picking through the very mediocre offerings, we discovered that the satay chef appeared to be averse to keeping the meat on the grill for longer than two minutes. After each of us found soft, wet, salmanella-inducing flesh in the middle of our satays, we collectively lost our appetites and decided to cut our losses for the evening. We hoped that better luck would grace us tomorrow.