Egypt is a land of amazing historical monuments and for this it is best known. We arrived in Cairo unprepared for these monuments or for the transition from sub-Saharan Africa to Arab North Africa. Our plane went from Ethiopia to Kenya and from there to Khartoum in the Sudan where we literaly ran down the stairs, touched the tarmac, shook hands with a policeman and then ran back up again. Finally we landed in Cairo and we were met by our hotel's driver thus avoiding a sea of taxi touts and hotel spruikers.

Our hotel is caled the Windsor and is the former British Officers club and Royal Baths. It is on a tiny side street opposite coffee shops crammed with shisha smoking, java swilling Arab men. It is fantastic. The Windsor retains a faded old world charm complete with antique but functional manual switchboard and manual elevator. The hotel has been the set to a couple of B-Grade Hollywood movies and Michael Palin stayed here (in our room apparently - insert grain of salt) when making his "Around the World in 80 Days" program for the BBC. All in all we quite pleased with our lodgings.

The day after we arrived, we were up early and headed off to see the Pyramids. Who knew they were here! We were grossly unprepard mentally for what we saw. We rode camels (as one does) around these truly amazing structures and tried to compute where we were and what we were seeing. Having come from the back blocks of northern Ethiopia it was proving a difficult adjustment made no easier by the fact that our camels were called Michael Jackson and Bad Louie. I can tell you that sitting on Michael Jackson's back looking at three monuments that were 2500 years old at the time of Jesus Christ can spin you out a bit!

That day we also visited some amazing medieval mosques, climbing up into the minaret of one for a magnificent view of an enormous city. Cairo is home to around 20 million people and stretches out in all directions as far as the smog will permit your eyes to see. We returned to the hotel still processing the sights and sounds we had seen.

We relaxed for a while before meeting our friend Courtenay who is studying here at the moment. We had a drink in the bar of the Windsor (a well known Cairo watering hole) and then headed out for some of the best food we have since leaving South Africa. After this we headed to the Cairo Jazz Club where we met some other expats and sucked down a few too many Meister Max beers. They are like a blocksplitter to the head the next day! It was a great night enjoyed by all except our cab driver home. Extortion doesn't pay when Louise Sara is on taxi duty!

The next day we headed....oh yeah the Meister max was still having it's effect. We didn't do a damn thing!

But the NEXT day we went to the Egyptian Museum or Abdul's Bargain Basement Antiquities Warehouse as it should be known. It is sad to say that a child visiting the tiny Egyptian room at the South Australian Museum would learn more about ancient Egyptian culture, society, burial practices and chronological history than in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It has a huge (perhaps too huge) wealth of antiquities but no explanation as to their origin or significance. We did see the famed Tutankhamun exhibition which was full of amazing objects including 110kg solid gold coffins and masks. I still know bugger all about who he was but the stuff was pretty! We also saw the Mummy Room which had a whole bunch of dead bodies in it. They were pretty cool and the look on some of the kid's faces was excellent.

The folowing day we did lots of walking and stumbled across the Khan Al Khallili which is a massive collection of windy lanes and home to a huge market. It was here that the Egyptian fascination with Louise's boobs really kicked off. There were several guys that followed us through the market (over the course of more than an hour!) trying to look innocent but ogling their eyes out. There was really not too much to buy either. Gaudy Egyptian kitsch was plentiful but there was little that you would feel comfortable displaying in your own home. It was, however, a fun wander through the bustling streets of the biggest Arab city in the world and we had a thoroughly good time.

Yesterday we arranged a driver and headed off to see more monuments. This time we saw Djoser's Pyramid, the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid. Rather than being investment schemes for the narcoleptic, stoned and communist respectively they are in fact the oldest pyramids in Egypt.

The step pyramid of Djoser is the oldest stone structure in the world having been built in 2700BC. The successful construction of the step pyramid paved the way (pardon the pun) for the construction of the Bent Pyramid. The Bent pyramid initially had sides angled at 54 degrees. As they built higher they realised that those sides wouldn't hold and so the top of the pyramid has sides angled at 43 degrees and thus it's shape looks 'bent'. The final attempt was the Red Pyramid. This was built with sides angled at 43 degrees and sits beautifully. It was the model for the Great Pyramids at Giza which also have 43 degree sides.

We clambered into the Red Pyramid and I learnt something about the ancient Pharohs that I hadn't realised before. They went into these things lying down. I doubt that too many people working on them were six foot four because it was a tiny passage that went down into the depths of the tomb. Watching me walk through it you could be mistaken for thinking that I was about to start some sort of Cossack dance! The end result being that I have the sorest legs in the Arab world today!

Today we had planned a relaxed day of visiting the markets and the pyramids again. We decided to go and see if we could buy some travel guides for Europe and New York in the streets near our hotel. That is when our first dangerous encounter with an African snake occurred.

The fascination with Louise's western womanhood draws stares and leers but today as far as we can tell a charming young Egyptian man thought it would be lovely if he popped Uncle Happy out of his pants. As someone not averse to going 'dacks down' in public i am hardly one to be offended but this was a little different. He was brushing past Louise and I, fearful of groping or pickpocketing, got between him and her. I noticed a flash of something that in hindsight must have been skin pinker than that that normally bears the force of the Saharan sun. On grabbing him and demanding an explanation (Louise was still unaware of what had happened) he tried to show me he hadn't stolen anything but his demeanour was guilty about something. I couldn't see his fly as he kept it covered with his coat and he quickly made his exit. The more Louise and i dicussed it the more we came to the revolting realisation that she had had a close encounter of the genital kind. This website would never make ethnic generalisations but it is fair to say that all Arab men are filthy minded, sex starved pigs and there is little room for redemption except for them to be driven into the sea and wiped from the memory of the rest of the planet. After our encounter with his handsome lady killer we saw no reason to venture much more on to Cairo's streets today.

Overall Cairo has been a fun colourful city of beautiful architecture, a shawarma on every corner and a bustle that resembles New York in a headscarf. We fly out tonight to Amsterdam and we gleefully await the anonymity that travel in the First World will bring. We have seen alot of museums and they are generally bad. Their monuments are spectacular but poorly cared for (including ancient hyroglyphics freshly covered in the urine of an antiquities policeman). The people in the street are obnoxious, extortionate and obstructive. And yet we have had a really good time here. Go figure.

I think alot of this has to do with our excellent hotel and our love of an anecdote. Mr Street Doodle will be talked about for years to come.