First Taste of Koshary (E4/25)

After a short exploration and shopping trip of Cairo , is time we go and taste another local food that we keep hearing from our taxi driver and all the travel advisories web site. We decided to go to this restaurant that was highly recommended and not too far from our hostel.

This restaurant occupy several level in this building. We were direct to level 5 and yet we are not on the highest level of the restaurant. 

Koshary is known as Egypt national dish and a widely popular street food too. This restaurant have turn street food to full scale dining experience with the modern kitchen and highest possible food hygiene in bringing Koshary to the locals as well as international tourist like us. 

Koshary is a mixing pasta, rice and brown lentils topped with a tomato sauce, lemon juice and garnished with chickpeas and crispy fried onions.

The beauty of this dish is that you can choose the amount of lemon juice and tomato sauce added  to suite individual taste preferrence.

How can we not having Koshary when travel to Egypt.

Make Koshary one of your things to do the next time you visit Egypt.

My First Night in Cairo, Egypt (E3/25)

After checking in to our hostel, the sun is already setting across the Nile River. 

The traffic is heavy on the street of Cairo.

First thing to do is get ourselves a swarma meal. There are quite a few swarma restaurant here in Cairo and we just simply get one from the first one we came across.

Follow the crowd, we reach one of the oldest mosque in Cairo, Al- Azhar that with the history of more than thousand years.

The minaret is believed to have been built much earlier and have been rebuilt several time after it was found leaning dangerously.  

The beautiful chandelier near the entrance of the mosque.

After visiting the mosque, we walk to the famous Khan al Khalili bazaar. You can find anything from fruits to furniture or electrical appliances. This is also home to many Egyptian artisans produce the finest traditional crafts and souvenirs.

You are really spoilt for choice with so many options to chose from.

Jewerly and spice is rather common and can be found at many corner of the bazaar.

We never have a fresh dates before, here they are easily available and the price are cheap too.
 

My First Day in Egypt (E2/25)

As soon as we landed in airport, we book a private hire car to get to our hostel for the night. Heard so much about the headache and unpleasant experience using taxi service in Cairo online. This is just the last thing we want to experience for our trip. 

The traffic so far is smooth on our way out of airport.

We are so used to having greenery around airport forgotten that we are in the area surrounded by desert. This explain the missing of garden or greenery around airport?

Our finger and phone get into turbo mode working very hard almost immediately snapping photo all the way. Is good that this car come with sun roof, those who sit near the door can shoot through window while those in the middle can shoot through the top. 

We run into the massive traffic of Cairo once we are out of airport highway.

Since it is the evening peak, our journey to hostel took a slightly longer time. We actually don't mind as this give us even more time to observe the day to day life of Cairo.

The driver double up as our guide and point to us the railway station. Looking at the heavy traffic infront of the station, we really need to plan our journey carefully in order not be late for our train the next day.

This is my first panoromic view of Cairo taken from my hostel window. The scene looks so familiar as I have seen this place  many time and even racing down these road in the video games Asphart 9. Yet it is now totally unfamiliar with so many places to explore in the coming days.

As soon as we are done with the check-in to the hostel, the host seem very kind and ask us if we wanted to visit the "new" museum. He can arrange transport to bring us there and return. Again, we been hearing so much online to be very mindful the very "innovative" selling when in Egypt be it as simple as buying a bottle of drinking water to getting service such as transport/ticket. We are certainly interested as we been talking about visiting the new soon to be opened Grand Egyption Museum (GEM). When we ask the host if he is arranging us to visit this new Grand Egyption Museum (GEM), he keep saying will bring us to the NEW museum and avoid to acknoledge GEM. Our check on the official GEM website showing that it is not open yet. By the way, we were quoted USD150 for the transportation and it is super super expansive in any standard. Our journey from airport is just few dollars. Our instint tell us that when in doubt, don't do it. We are glad we did.😊

We have been warned when browsing through the travel advisories and I am sure this is just the first scenario of many more to come...
 

My Maiden Trip to Middle East

After years of dreaming and thinking about visiting ancient manmade structure that was built few thousands years ago and is still standing, this is finally happening! I am visiting Egypt! After a friend of my casually asking me few months back if I am interested, without any hesitation, I say "YES!!!"

After months of waiting, I am ready with my luggage packed and had spent hours coming through website, youtube, and lots of social media to grab as many history and info I could get to prepare for this trip.

As usual, I have my travel buddy travel along this long anticipated trip. This was taken close to midnight during boarding in Changi Airport.

After 2 hours into the flight, I am served with my first Arabic meal. I can't believe I finish all the food as it was so delicious. Haha.... What I didn't thought of during that time is that I will be eating these similar meal for the next few weeks. That is another story which I will cover later...😁

Approximate after 12 hours of flying, finally got a first glimpse of middle east coumtries. Supprisinglky I didn't sleep the whole flight probably too exited what is to come the entire time.

Well, not yet. I am not arriving at Egypt yet. There is no direct flight between Singapore and Egypt, I chosen the flight with transit in Bahrain. My next leg of flight is another 11 hours away. The airport was empty when we arrive around midnight.

We walk around the airport and decided to check in to the Transit hotel to freshen up.

I may have landed in Bahrain, but we decided not to leave the airport as not much that we could do during that wee hours. So, this is my only experience of Bahrain, all through my hotel window. A huge obelisk. I should get to see more obelisks in Egypt, I suppose?

After leaving the comfort of my home for more than 24 hours, I finally landed in Egypt. So many first for me for this trip. First time to Egypt, first country out of Asean after COVID, ... most importantly, Egypt is one of my bucket list. Now I can happily cosider it checked.

I still can't believe I made it to Egypt, can't wait to have a deeper understanding of this country. One of the 7 ancient wonders that still exist. So many movies, stories that I heard or watched before, nothing compare to coming here face to face with the pyramids, the mummy and all of them been around thousands of years before my arrival here. . . (to  be continued in next post)

Migratory Birds Are Back

After the morning thunderstorm started to ease, I go for my usual cycling routine which will pass through  north eastern shore where migratory birds will first landed here for refuel before moving to other parts of Singapore for roosting. Although is still drizzling, I grab my compact camera alone and I am glad I did.

The migratory birds are really back and have landed at their usual first pit stop.

So far only Lesser Sand Plover are seen. I am sure those larger birds will start to arrive soon.

This individual still have her breeding plumage on.

The local resident are happily sharing the same spot with their long distance friends. White throated kingfisher target small fishes while the plovers is looking for worm. So they no need to compete for food here.

This Collared kingfisher is here and just have his lunch. Migratory season or not, there will always be something out there to watch and shoot. :)

Northern Shore of Singapore

As with previous year, there are a few days in the month of June when the tide is really low. Area that usually cover by sea water will be exposed during low tide. That make it easy to have a glimpse on the life underwater without putting on scuba diving gears.

Most Biscuit sea star will have 5 arms. This one is special, having only 4 arms.

Is always a pleasure to have seen this big sea star in the mainland Singapore. They are found commonly on off-shore island but not so on the main island of Singapore.

A Plain sand star is about to burrow into the sands.

A good comparison of size between the big brother Chocholate Chips Sea Star (aka Knobbly Sea Star) with the smaller Buiscuit sea star.

A Noble volute with its distinctive zig-zag patterns on the shell and the black & orange spots foot.

Saw this Murex snail that is bigger than my palm!

There are several Babylonia snail that is still out in the open, they will usually burried themselves in the sand after sun rise.

Another Babylonis snal that is orange in colour.

Saw this small Horseshoe crab moult. Do you know that horseshoe crab's blood is blue in colour? The copper in their blood that gave them the blue colour unlike us, red colour came from iron.

A rather uncommon posture of  Thunder crab, play dead when it got spotted. 

This Brittle stars taking shelter under the Sea Anemone. Only one arm is visible.

Another creature that live among Sea Anemone is this Anemone Shrimp.

Another very beautiful animal that camaflag very well and not easy to be spotted easily. This Porcelain crab is having the same colour and patterns with their host - a Sea Pen. 

Big pile of Squid egg.

A rather docile Bansded File Snake.

Another sun rise another great trip in the month of June.