Long Day

So on Saturday I left Cairo for good and started my trip through the Middle East, the following is an after-the-fact diary of the longest day I've ever had.

8:30: I get to the bus station 2 hours early because I thought the bus left earlier than it did
10:30: After reading maybe 20 pages in the past 2 hours I board the bus (sidenote: I was reading The Education of Henry Adams, which is as boring as it sounds. I don't know why I was reading it except I brought it from home in my pre-trip maybe I'll read hard books when I'm abroad phase-that phase ended quickly. Anyway the point is I was like halfway through, and decided that it would be stupid to stop, so instead I decided to grind out the rest. Except the rest was like 150 pages. Poor decision on my part.)
10:35: It looks like I have 2 seats next to me to myself. Score.
10:36: The fat middle-aged Egyptian man in the seat next to me decides he wants to practice his English and asks if he can sit next to me. After a few seconds past and I fail to find a reason why not, I begrudingly say yes.
11:30: I've spent the last hour talking about this man's family, job, and what America is not. He also told me he had no interest in going to America, and then asked me about almost every conceivable scenario for getting a visa/green card. I assume the conversation must end soon.
12:30: He's still going. Now asking in detail what the earning potential of accountants (he's an accountant) in America is. He also asks about American movie stars. His way of learning English is to repeat words to himself then spell them out loud. ("Chaos. C-h-a-o-s. Can you use that in a sentence for me?")
1:30: After a brief pause in the conversation I close my eyes and pretend to sleep. At a rest stop I sort of array myself across the seat hoping he'll go back to his old seat when he gets on. He doesn't
2:00: I'm awakened by the bus driving blaring an Egyptian Musical on the TV. Why he's doing this I don't know. But Egyptian bus drivers love to blast random movies at random times at night, I've come to find.
5:00: I finally resign myself to not sleeping. The guy next to me after seeing me wake up (I'm pretty sure he didn't sleep all night): "You sure slept a lot."
5:30: We reach the Red Sea. It's pretty.
6:30: We reach Nuweiba, which is where I get off. I am now going to take a ferry to Aquaba, Jordan.
6:45: I sit on the steps outside the bus plaza area waiting the 1.5 hours until the ferry ticket window opens, I'm joined by probably 300 other Egyptians. It looks like a refugee collection area. This will be a recurring theme.
8:30: I buy my ticket. It costs $70. This seems kind of exorbitant, but since there are no other options I agree. There are no ferry schedules posted anywhere, which in retrospect was a pretty ominous sign. I ask the man when the ferry leaves, and he tells me to wait in the port.
9:00: I enter the Ferry waiting room. It looks like a slightly less extreme version of a deportation center to a concentration camp. It's in a warehouse sized room. There are benches for half the people. The rest are lying on the dirty cement floor. Some are sleeping and are covered in flies. I hope I will not stay here long.
9:05: I settle in on the floor near a group of Syrian painters returning back to Syria. They are pretty friendly.
10:05: I get through 10 more pages through Henry Adams no announcements on leave times
11:05: Nothing's changed. Except a guard comes in periodically and yells at people to stop talking, and pushes people who gets in his way. He's also really short. I think he's on a massive power trip.
11:30: Still nothing, I ask and get told that we will leave at 1.
12:30: Signs that Egypt has made me racist: I start wondering why they don't have a separate area for foreigners
1:00: Still nothing except the Syrians have started to give each other massages: (sidenote: they were also alternating giving each other massages. The amount of homo-eroticism in Egypt still sort of weirds me out. Men always hold each others hands or links arms as they walk about. But none of them are gay. It's weird.)
2:00: I ask again and am told we will leave at 4, at this point, the lack of sleep, heat and flies are starting to get to me
3:00: Signs that Egypt is racist: Some other foreigners walk outside, so I follow them. The guard lets me wait outside. It's now completely segregated with all the Egyptians inside and all the Foreigners outside
4:00: We board a bus to bring us to the boat. The man at the boat tells me I can't board because I was supposed to have gotten an departure stamp somewhere else in the port. When I ask where he vaguely points "there." After asking 2 more people and getting 2 more vague points I find the building. I also am ready to hit someone.
4:45: I enter the office and the man tells me he is not stamping right now, but if I come back later he can stamp. When I inform him that I have a boat leaving, he says there is another one at 8pm (given what I've seen over the past few hours I don't believe this at all.)
4:48: I start yelling that there's no way I'm not getting this passport stamped. The man gives in, but then comes back a few minutes later to tell me that he can't find the man who enters the names into the computer. When I say maybe he can just write down my name and enter it later, he laughs. I am not pleased.
5:00: I am pacing around the room certain that the boat will leave. The Jordanian woman who also needs a stamp's daughter starts crying. When her mom asks why, the daughter comes over and whispers something and then they look at me. I take this as a sign to calm down.
5:15: The man returns with a stamp. I set off running the 400 meters to the boat. My sleeping bag starts unravelling from the bottom of the backpack where I strapped it. I don't care. There's no way I'm going through this hell again.
5:20: I make the boat. The man tells me the fast one is finished boarding even though it's sitting right there. I argue, until I realize some boat is better than no boat.
5:30: Boat leaves
8:00 We reach Jordan. The oddessey is over. I sleep for a long time.

After spending last night in Aquaba, I am now in Petra. It's definitely the coolest place I've ever seen. Hopefully I'll have pictures up on facebook soon.

Sam