Day 3 - Aswan
Trip Start
Oct 10, 2006
1
4
7
Trip End
Oct 26, 2006
Aswan, Egypt
Sunday, October 15, 2006
In the first call seat compartment, there were 6 seats with 3 seats arranged in a line facing another 3 seats in the opposite. Each of the seats was closely attached to the compartment's wall and the seat cannot be adjusted or leaned any further. You can imagine how uncomfortable the seat was for such long distance. Before our train departed, a group of family with 4 kids entered to our compartment, they moved in few boxes like canned food & their luggage into our compartment which crowded our compartment.
A man spoke to us in English on something like changing the seat. We saw this man was friend of those passengers in our compartment as he helped the family to move in their luggage into our compartment. We thought this man want to sit with his friend in the same compartment and he wanted to change his seat with us. We accepted his offer and followed him to his compartment, we saw there were 3 empty seats in the compartment while another guy occupied the remaining 3 seats opposite us. This seem to be a good deal to us as this compartment was more comfortable compare with our previous one. After thanking him, the man flipped his thumb with his index finger signing for a tip from us. He wanted tips for changing the compartment with us. Apparently he was not friend of the family in our previous compartment and he is a staff in the train. Seem to be he took the opportunity to earn some extra income for helping passenger to change the compartment with larger space. We didn't like this idea and we refused to pay him. This man insisted and we told him we want to move back to the previous compartment if he insisted for the tip. We guess he had already received some tips from previous family and we can't move us back, so he had to leave us to stay in this compartment even we didn't give him any tip.
The train took 15 hours to reach Aswan instead of 12 hours. Our body was sore with the seat. We were so happy to see the train finally stopped at the Aswan station. Right after we walked down from the train compartment, we saw a guy hold a card with my name written whom brought us to our hostel in Aswan.
High Dam
After checking in to our hostel in Aswan, our driver picked us up to High Dam. This is the dam that supports the water usage in Southern Egypt which supplement to the old Aswan Dam. The water level increased after building the dam. There were numbers of important temple and monument had been impacted. UNESCO helped to rescue some monuments by moving them few miles away from their original location.
Temple of Philae
After High Dam, we went to Temple of Philae. This temple was one of monument rescued by UNESCO by moving stone by stone 20m from the original location. Before building of High Dam, this temple was swamped by the water of Aswan Dam for six months every year. The Philae temple was moved to another island above the water level after High Dam built. As the template was in the island, we need to take a boat to the temple. While our group was waiting to the boat, we saw the boatman quarrel with 2 ladies (Walk-in passengers). The boatman insisted these 2 ladies to charter the whole boat but it was too costly for these 2 ladies to charter for entire boat and they want to join us. We didn't have any problem to let these 2 ladies to share our boat and these 2 ladies are willing to pay for their share. However the boatman refused to allow them to share the boat with us. A lady from our group tried to convince the boatman to allow that 2 ladies to join our boat but they reluctant. After insisting and pulled 2 ladies up into our boat, the boat man get mad and started to scold our group. The intelligent lady persuaded the boatman to practice a good deed during Ramadan. The trick worked and our boatman finally allow that 2 ladies to join in our boat.
This was our first Egyptian temple, we were so impress with the temple. Our tour guide explained to us on different type of columns such as flower, papyrus and head of Hathor within the temple. Each column is crafted with hieroglyphic character and Egyptian pharoah & deities. Amongst those gods, we can only recognized Horus, Isis, Hathor & Amun.
According to our guide, Philae temple was the cult of Isis. He then shared with us a story of how the name of this temple given as Philae. According to him, one piece of Osiris body was found in this island by Isis after Osiris was murdered and his body dismembered by his brother Seth into 13 pieces. These 13 pieces scattered into different areas in Egypt. Isis collected each part of Osiris body from different areas and reassembled it to restore his life.
It was very fun exploring the temple, each of the wall's carving represented a story. The Kiosk of Trojan should not be missed. This was the most well known structure in Philae Temple. It was a Pavilion with 14 columns and very picturesque for photo snapping. We spent around an hour in the temple before heading back to our hotel.
