Egypt to Kuwait
Armed Police behind these are a common sight in Cairo. They are to protect from bomb blasts primarily.Terrorist attacks are fairly regular in Egypt – around once a year.
Flew to Kuwait on Tuesday. Had a couple of hours in the Egypt Air lounge so thought I would kill the time by playing an old computer game, I hadn’t played for a few months – Desert Hawk.
It’s a typical shoot up game. You have a helicopter and blow up buildings, tanks, planes and other choppers with around a dozen different weapons. Anyway I’d never taken much notice of what I was blowing up before – you basically destroy everything.
After quarter of an hour or so playing the game, I had a nagging feeling something was not good. So I looked more closely at the buildings that show between stages. Hmmn they have those skinny tall towers on them. What I now know to be minarets. Oh so that means all those buildings are mosques. Hmmmn. Maybe playing this game in the middle of Cairo Airport is not such a good idea after all!
Flight to Kuwait was pretty ugly – packed full, and the guy next to me fell asleep in a way he was leaning into my seat. It was a very long three hours on board.
Purchased my Visa after getting some local currency. I love how you can just stick your credit card in an ATM in almost any country, and get out cash. I did miscalculate though. I just assumed the Kuwaiti currency was equal to or less than the NZ dollar, so figured 200 Kuwait dinars would be enough to cover any incidentals for a couple of days. Turns out you get five NZ dollars to every Kuwaiti dinar so that is way too much. I’ll exchange some back when I leave. I did actually note all he currency values down before I left, but didn’t have the info on hand.
Emily, whom I’m staying with, met me at the airport. She has adapted well to the local customs – especially the aggressive driving manoeuvres and assorted curses.
This isn’t the car before it rained, but afterwards. There is so much dust here, than when it rains, well it almost rains mud. Yuck. Normally I find the rain refreshing, but not in Kuwait. Have met quite a few Kiwi expats here and they do like it here, but that is one part that takes some getting used to.
Em was playing netball last night, so I went along to that. Mainly expats, but some of the local girls play also. There were five games on, and they ran short of officials, so I ended up scoring one of the games. I enjoyed twittering last night how I went to the netball and ended up scoring 🙂
I almost ending up refing also. I actually used to manage a netball team, when I was at university (long story) so do know the rules pretty well.
This is the view from the apartment, which I think is pretty damn good. So much prefer crashing with friends than hotels. Not too much to see in Kuwait, but going to some sightseeing this afternoon.