Trip to Giza Pyramids, Matrouh and Siwa, Egypt

Assalamualaikum guys!

how's everyone doing? 
soryyyy for the superr late upate about my vacation in Egypt during my last winter break. and now it's already summer break! hahhaha and i'm in Malaysia currntly enjoying my cuti and that's the only reason i'm able to update my blog now. 

okay, let's start.

I actually tak plan pun nak pergi mana2 during my winter break, I thought of spending my time at home, enjoying the food and weather in Alexandria and that's all. But then one of my friend ajak me and all my housemates to join this trip since mcm org kata alang2 dah duduk mesir ni, explore la sikit negara diaorang hahha. 

Trip kitaorg sebenarnya 3 hari je, pergi Matrouh and Siwa. Tapi mcm alang2 tu, pergi la jugak pyramid kan, simbolik egypt guys.

Jadi, aku bersama 4 orang kawan naiklah train dengan gigihnya dari Alex ke Cairo. Dalam 3 jam lebih jugaklah dlm train tu, excited la sikit sbb first time naik train kat Egypt hahhah sbelum ni naik tram je 😂😂😂 

from left; Sam, kak Dayah, kak Nurin, Pah, Husna

Day 1 : Giza Pyramids 

Kitaorg pergi Pyramid dengan sorang senior Cairo ni. Sewa kereta untuk sehari, disebabkan kami ni ramai, jadi weolls sewa avanza and it's 300Le for a day. (RM1 = 4.1Le)
Senior tu yang drive kan. Dia dah duduk lama dkt Mesir ni so yea he drove. 

Kaherah or cairo actually means 'kemenangan'.
Tinggi pyramid ni asalnya dalam 142m but then drop tu 137m during gempa bumi on 1996 if im not mistaken. 
and fyi, berat 1 batu yg ada dkt pyramid = 2.5 tan.

7 wonders, done 1 ✓

can you see the nose is missing? well, they said, the nose
hilang kene tembak and now ada kat France 😂

Do you know why Firaun built pyramid? its very tall and its one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. and do you know how did Firaun built pyramid? There's a lott of theory that explain all these questions but in Quran, Allah has already mentioned clearly in Surah AlQasas verse 38 : 

" Dan Firaun berkata 'wahai para pembesar kaumku! Aku tidak mengetahui ada tuhan bagimu selain aku. Wahai Haman bakarkanlah tanah liat untukku, untuk membuat batu bata, kemudian buatkan bangunan yang tinggi untukku agar aku dapat naik melihat Tuhannya Musa, dan aku yakin bahawa dia termasuk pendusta.' " 

One iktibar from this story is, even Firaun did mke some preparation for his next life in hereafter. He made pyramid so that he can see 'Tuhan prophet Musa' when he died. He believes adanya hari kematian. how about us? what preparation do we make to meet our Rabb? how about our good deeds, is it already enough? Let's together strive to be a better servant to Allah.  

Balik dari pyramid, kitaorg singgah Amr ibn Al Aas mosque. 

The entrance

Bila Amr bin Al Aas dihantar untuk buka negara Mesir ni, He came here and bina this masjid pada tahun 21 Hijrah. Masjid ni di bina di Fustat, ibu negara Mesir di bawah pemerintahan Islam. And masjid ni adalah masjid tertua di benua afrika.

inside the mosque

Walking distance dalam 5 minit je opposite dari masjid ni, kitaorg pergi The Hanging Church. Time kat sini memang mencabar siket, sbb mmg raaamaaaai je org2 dlm church tu akan datang and layan visitors nicely and explain everythinggg about that church. (they can speak english, so no worries! :p) Even byk istilah kitaorg tak berapa paham and tak berapa familiar with the terms, but yea still nodding our head is a must-to-do so that we can go home early hahaha because its already late waktu tu. That was my first time visiting a church and yea it's good to learn something I never knew. Egypt has few historical churches to visit even in Alexandria, there is one church near bangunan mara yang ada visitors datang. I have never visited that church bfore but I've seen people beratur to enter the church. 

Entrance

Can you see it's hanging?

The Fortrees of Babylon 

Do you know that Egypt is known as 'ummu dunia' which means 'the mother of the world'? because everyone goes here to search for knowledge, like macam dekat Al-Azhar, people from all over the world come just to kaji ilmu. My senior once told me, dekat Egypt ni ada 4 benda best : 

1) Travel. Full with history, lots of Sirah and maqam orang2 soleh. 
2) Study. Garden of knowledge.
3) Persatuan, train yr soft skills
4) guess what..? TIDUR hahahhahahaha and yea that's truee! summer ke winter ke, tidur memang besttttt!!

so far okay? dah ada rasa macam nak datang Egypt? 😉😉😉

Day 2 : Matrouh

Here the journey begins. We went to Matrouh&Siwa with this one agent (I cant remember the name) but agent tu charge kitaorg 500+Le including makan for 3 days (twice a day) and we need to add up 250Le if we want to join offroad&sandboarding in Siwa (of course I join hehhe ;p). 
From Cairo to Matrouh is about 6-7hours by bus. 

Matrouh is totally different from Cairo. The city is not as busy as Cairo. Cairo has a large number of people, about 70% from 100 million population. Matrouh only has a small number of people so that's why you can feel the difference, it seems like you are totally in a different country when you are in Matrouh because seriously Cairo&Alex are not as 'calm' as Matrouh. 

Laut Mediterranean (view from Matrouh)

The first place we visited in Matrouh was Pantai Ajibah.
Ajibah is ajaib which mean 'miracle'. because they said, time waktu senja, the water will change into 7 different colours but idk how far its true, but I think yeaa, maybe true kot...? 

I fell in love, the view is so beautiful I cryyyy

Dekat area pantai ni ada tempat perfect untuk
ambil gambar squad

how many different colours can you see?
hehehe but not yet senja! ;p

Next, we went to Hamam Cleopatra.
Hamam means 'toilet' right? so jangan memain, toilet queen of Egypt ni dekat pantai tau, bukan biasa2 ni. 

Well, there's 2 diff opinion regarding this queen of kings ni, 
1) is it true yang this queen cantik jelita seperti yang digembar gemburkan oleh netizen 
2) or she has kekuatan politik yang mampu membawa kerajaan Mesir mencapai kemajuan?

well, I guess we are prettier ;p

After queen Cleopatra ni jatuh takhta, peradaban mesir start to hancur hingga ia dikuasai oleh romawi, yunani dan peradaban Islam datang sampailah sekarang.

Day 3 : Siwa

From Matrouh to Siwa is about 3-4hours by bus and along the way tu padang pasir je kiri kanan. Imagine, 300km just padang pasir around you...? 
Siwa is actually perbatasan Mesir and Libya but Siwa is Mesir. Jarak Siwa ke Libya is about 25-50km. 

Siwa is a quiet and calm city as well. Takdek rompakan or kecurian apa semua. They are very polite. Rakyat Siwa masih mengamalkan tradisi lama, for example; women should only stay at home, only men will go out and work. if Women nak keluar rumah, they need to wear purdah and so on. Thruout our days dekat Siwa, it's very very hard for us to see a female. 

As soonn as we arrived Siwa, we went to Offroad. Seriouslyyy, bestttt sangaat sangaat amatt. If I could get another chance, I would like to experience it once again. 

Never knew that drift on padang pasir could be this fun

Our version of roller coaster

Happiness 

My kasih sayang squad

Sandboarding. My first time ever.

At night pulak, weolls pergi Syali Qadimah. Walking distance je from our hotel dalam 15 minutes. Sorry, I cant remember sangat history tempat ni hahahha so yea let pictures speak! 

Ancient town of Siwa.
Ada jual macam2 katsini, like pasar malam.

Exercise di malam hari.

Since malam pergi tak berapa nampak, so we went
again the next early in the morning

#onlyinEgypt
(dekat atas2 bangunan tu after weolls daki, we found this)

Day vs Night

The next morning, on our way back to Cairo, we pay a visit to few places. First, we went to Jabal Mouta (mount of death). It was 'bukit' those days but now jadi kubur/maqam. Sadly, we didnt get off the bus due to the limited time. We need to leave Siwa as soon as possible since our journey from Siwa to Cairo will take us about 11 hours. 

Next, we went to Tasik Garam. Luas tasik ni about 300km. MasyaAllah, you know what so amazing about this tasik? We are far from the sea, we are not in Matrouh. we are in the deserts but surprisingly there is tasik garam here. If Allah wants, nothing can stop.  

Let this picture explain what words can't describe

Kalau sejuk sangat, garam2 ni boleh membeku

Leaves me speechless, turns me into a storyteller

Next winter break nak pergi mana pulak guys?
Ayuh semua levenlipa on tak onn😉💖

Some other places that we didnt get a chance to visit is like Jabal Dakrour. It's tempat pertemuan sekali dalam setahun bagi penduduk siwa untuk discuss masalah kaum mereka sendiri. Normally, perjumpaan will be on October.

They said, kurma dekat Siwa ni lebih sedap&manis compare to Cairo but idk. I didnt try the kurma. Then, after we reached Cairo, we tumpang our senior house since our train ticket to Alex is on the next morning. 

"Travel is the healthiest addiction"

It was an amazing short vacation and I didnt regret that I choose to take the offer from my friend to join them for this winter trip. So, looking forward to our next jalanjalanpusingEgypt.
okay, bye! If you guys have any question, feel free to ask :) see ya!