Egypt 2006

Reminiscing my first year of working abroad. By looking at the picture below, can you guess where it is? I actually wrote about this place in my first blog, in msn spaces.

The river is one of the branches of Nile river, Damietta. The other side of the river is a small town or village called El Burg. At the position where I took this photo is Ras El Bar. Ras El Bar and El Burg are totally different. 

Ras El bar is more developed, because it is also a summer runaway town. It will be very crowded especially during summer. Most of the building have architecture taste from many countries. However in El Burg, it is more like a village, in bad condition, not as luxurious as Ras El Bar.

When I went wandering with some friends (Malays Malaysian) in Ras El Bar, many eyes kept staring at me. My friend told me that I had attracted much attention, because no one pay attention of them when they went there before. It is not a normal scene of  Asian lady in the small town and moreover an Asian lady walking with so many men. Some local Egyptian tried to earn some money by offering to be our tour guide. It freaks me out when that guy touched my shoulder when I ignored him. Lucky, we met some Egyptian colleagues, who gave the guy an earful and shooed the guy away for us.

Therefore, I prefer to walk in El Burg. People in El Burg are not very materialistic. They did not see us as 'money'. The villages are friendly and not over friendly. Hardly get any weird stare from the villagers. Although the road I walked is soil ground, not a nice pavement, I actually felt safer there. No big threat from the villagers, but there is a big threat from bird's dropping. BIRD FLU!!

Bird seems to be very popular there. The name of our local boat's driver is 'Hamama', which means bird, not sure what kind of bird. He said my voice is nice, and gave me a name, Asfura, a small bird with a beautiful voice. A compliment indeed. I am a bird who can't sing.

This is a usual scene in most of the rivers in Egypt. Slippers and shoes at the riverside. If you decided to start a shoes business, you can start collecting all the shoes from the riverside. I am sure they have the Gandhi's spirit.

As Gandhi stepped aboard a train one day, one of his shoes slipped off and landed on the track. He was unable to retrieve it as the train was moving. To the amazement of his companions, Gandhi calmly took off his other shoe and threw it back along the track to land close to the first. Asked by a fellow passenger why he did so, Gandhi smiled. "The poor man who finds the shoes lying on the track," he replied, "will now have a pair he can use."  

Wish you all the best in your shoes business!