I am so looking forward to visit Petra and its surrounding orangey rocks. The Dead Sea may not be the best time to visit in the winter though. No dipping and floating in the sea I suppose unless you wish to be a popsicle :P Al Aqsa Mosque and the Mount Temple are the historical treasure and a sacred place of three Abrahamic religions, a must visit. The Pyramids of Giza are an architectural wonder and it would be great if it snows lightly when we are there. Wishful thinking? A girl can only wish :P I am also looking forward to visiting Alexandria again. Alexandria, if managed well can be a nice resort city of the Mediterranean Sea.
This trip is organised by SelamatBercuti.com. Yes I did give them a not so flattering review when I went with them to the Southern Europe a few months ago but I will give them another chance just because their itinerary is more comprehensive compared to other tour companies. Let's hope they will not let us down this time round.
This trip costs RM7590 per person. If you are a senior citizen (55 years above) you will get a discount of RM100. I always wonder about this price discrimination policy. Everybody should get the senior citizen price, the company is simply making extra profit out of the younger travellers. This is unfortunately a normal practice by Muslim companies in Malaysia. It should be made illegal because it is so unIslamic. Quran clearly prohibits dual pricing. Ironic?
This tour is for 10 days and 8 nights, full board and the hotels are all 3 stars. Truthfully I am a bit worried of the 3 stars status most especially when applied to Middle Eastern hotels. Europe's 3 stars are mostly acceptable but Middle East? Let's just see how it will turn out shall we? Hope for the best, prepare for the worst :P
Our itinerary are as follows:
1 January 2019 Kuala Lumpur - Muscat - Amman
2 January 2019 Amman - Petra - Dead Sea - Amman
3 January 2019 Amman - Jericho - Jerusalem
4 January 2019 Jerusalem
5 January 2019 Jerusalem - Hebron - Jerusalem
6 January 2019 Jerusalem - Taba - Mount Sinai
7 January 2019 Mount Sinai - Suez - Cairo
8 January 2019 Cairo - Alexandria - Cairo
9 January 2019 Cairo
10 January 2019 Cairo - Muscat - Kuala Lumpur
This is going to be my first time flying via Oman Air. I noticed that a lot of tour companies started using this airline only recently. They must offer a very competitive price out of Malaysia. So let's hope the airline is as good as Qatar Airways.
I will upload the videos and photos as and when possible during the trip. You can find them here:
https://instagram.com/mkhasha.n.travelsHashtags specific for this trip:
#mks2019MiddleEast #mks2019Oman #mks2019Jordan #mks2019Palestine #mks2019Israel #mks2019Egypt
My 360 photos will be loaded here whenever I am ready. Gonna take awhile though :P
https://instagram.com/mkhasha.n.photography
My World Countdown:
Oman#64 Jordan#65 Israel#66 Palestine#67
My mom's would be #53-56
Njoy !!
P.S Maybe I shouldn't count Oman but then again I do "reached" the country even though just at the airport :P Good reason to properly visit the country later right?
POST MORTEM (updated 27 February 2019)Sorry it took me awhile to do a post mortem for this trip. Too lazy to switch on my laptop to write the review. I am currently writing this on my tablet using my newly bought bluetooth keyboard and touch pen. Hopefully with these new gadgets, future post mortem write-ups will be more timely :P
Tour Company: Easy to deal with. The write up of information and reminders prior to departure was very well done. The timing of the creation of WhatsApp group (around one month before departure) for this trip was also good, not too early nor too late.
For this tour they provided us with a daily bottled water each. In Egypt, they even gave us two bottles a day. I suspect this was due to the generosity of our tour leader. Hopefully he will not be in trouble with the company :P
Itinerary: The itinerary was good. We flew into Amman and go back via Cairo. There were no backtrack. The combination of the countries was also a good synergy.
The decision to use Oman Air was a good one because we arrived late in the afternoon and immediately checked into the hotel to rest after a long journey. The sightseeing only started the next day after a good night sleep. On the last day we took a late flight out of Egypt, which enabled us to cram another full day of visits and shopping before flying home.
If I want to gripe, maybe the trip to Alexandria should be done on the last day and then we took the flight out of Alexandria instead of Cairo to go home. As it is people were quite tired after the long journey from Mount Sinai to Cairo the day before and having to start very early in the morning for the day trip to Alexandria the next day. To/fro journey from Cairo to Alexandria took 6+ hours. A waste of precious tour time.
Another thing to improve is in the interest of time, the journey to the Treasury in Petra should be made by horse or horse carriage (to be included in the tour price). The journey back to the main entrance via horse or horse carriage will be optional (own pocket) since walking back to the main entrance is an experience not to be missed. There are so many nice spots to take excellent photos along the way!
Airlines: Our first time flying via Oman Air. The plane to/fro Kuala Lumpur was comfortable with 2-4-2 seating arrangement which is the most efficient for a long haul flight. The plane to/fro Muscat was small with seating arrangement 3-3. So uncomfortable. Inflight meals were just acceptable. No vanity pack either. The flights were all on time with short transits in Muscat.
Tour Leader: Our Malaysian tour leader Azlan was very good. He has the right temperament to be in the service industry; calm, polite, patient, humble and helpful. I am particularly happy with his treatment of my 70 year old mother.
I love the surprise dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in Cairo that he managed to pull off just before we fly home. Very smart move because Malaysians love to shop at HRC, so why not hit two birds with one stone? Furthermore, by that time we can no longer stomach the local food, so burger and fries were very much welcomed.
What I don't like is he loves to take candid photos of the group! Less candid and more structured photos are better I think. Why waste storage space for pictures that people ended up deleting anyway? :P
Local Tour Guide: This trip is quite unique because we had three dedicated tour guides. The first one was a Jordanian named Firaz. This guy is so cheerful. He can speak Indonesian so his commentary was bilingual, English and Indonesian. I wish he would stick to English only because I can't really understand his Indonesian :P
Our second tour guide is Mahmoud, he is a Jordanian by birth but since he migrated to Jerusalem back in the 60s, his citizenship and resident status are complicated. He can freely go to Israel, Palestine and Jordan but cannot vote in any of those countries. This guy's English is superb. He took his job as a guide seriously with long explanation at every place we visited. Unfortunately he was also a bit moody. He was quite cheerful on our last day with him though.
Our last guide was an Egyptian. His name is Hanawi. I can't really understand his English but overall I think he was ok. In Egypt we also had a company representative, Yusuf who made sure that we passed through the immigration without any problem at the point of entrance and exit. Egypt somehow reminded me of the joke "how many people do you need to change a light bulb?". Probably because they have so many people that they needed to create the extra bureaucratic steps just so they have jobs for them. Even the Israel immigration was not as troublesome!
Bus: My first experience having to use five separate buses in one tour. The first bus in Jordan was too small that all our luggage cannot fit into the luggage compartment thus the desperate need for the second bus. The second bus was used to bring us from Amman to the Jordan/Israel crossing at the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge Terminal. The third bus was for our tour in Palestine and Israel. The fourth bus was not in the picture if not for the third bus' battery died on us on the day we were to leave Israel to go to Egypt. The fifth bus was for our trip in Egypt. Luckily for us the fifth bus was very new and comfortable. Can't say the same for the other buses though.
Bus Driver: All the bus drivers were not friendly. Not very helpful either. Luckily for us they practised safe driving :) In Egypt, during the long journey from Taba to Cairo, our bus had two drivers and one armed security officer. I think Egypt is the only country that I have visited who required an armed security officer inside the bus. In 2007, when we visited Abu Simbel, we had an army convoy escorting us but no army personnel inside the bus.
Hotels: For this trip, we stayed at four hotels. Only one hotel in Amman was acceptable, the rest were terrible. The hotel in Jerusalem was so small and dated. The bathroom was mouldy.
The hotel in Saint Catherine (Mount Sinai) was dated, without WiFi and offered only one propaganda channel in a cubic shaped TV. All that were tolerable since we arrived late at night and left early the next morning. The unforgivable thing was the room was without heater and no thick blanket either. It was crazy cold!
I thought the hotel in Saint Catherine was the worst since it was a small town with little hotel choices, who would have thought that the hotel in Cairo was much worse? You would think that Cairo being the capital had better 3* hotel choices. Obviously not. The hotel that we stayed in had a good sized room and bathroom but it was quite dirty. The main lift was also smelly. The cleaners obviously did not do their job well. In fact one cleaner instead of doing his job, was busy knocking on the guest's door asking for tips.
This hotel's bedsheets are the worst in my two decades of travels. It was so shabby that I honestly wonder what were they thinking? The sheets were so not smooth (I don't even know how to explain in English. Malay has a better vocabulary; kusam, lusuh, berbulu) that I think my rags at home are of better quality than their bedsheets. Egypt really need to buck up. Their hospitality industry sucks!
Hotel Breakfasts: The breakfast buffets were mostly acceptable. There were odd dish here and there that were surprisingly tasty. Service was good especially in Jerusalem. The chef cum waiter was very attentive. The exception was our last breakfast in Cairo. They actually ran out of plates and cups! And there were not even one waiter in sight to remedy the situation. The dishes were also chipped and some not even washed properly.
Lunches: We had almost all the lunches at the local restaurants. The food was plentiful and quite good. We had only one lunch at the hotel, in Jerusalem. It was after Friday prayer, so the Chef cooked for us maqluba, a Palestinian specialty.
My favourite was our last lunch in Cairo. The restaurant served us ample strawberries for desserts. They were so sweet. I ate one plateful of them. Super delicious!
My least favourite lunch was in Alexandria. The soup was not edible, the bananas were bruised, the fish was served cold and the prawn still have its tentacles. Shameful when people have no pride in their work. Go check the picture in my instagram if you're in doubt. #mksHolidayFood
Dinners: Dinners were mostly at the hotel except for two in Cairo. The dinner buffets at the hotel were acceptable. The Chef of the hotel in Jerusalem was so nice that he cooked for us fried chicken and french fries when we requested something different than the usual Middle Eastern fare. Too bad the fried chicken were a bit overcooked but it was the thoughts that count right? Very much appreciated :)
Dinner at the Sunz Restaurant in Cairo was the worst. The main fare were not that bad I think but frankly by that time I ate just so I'm not hungry but the desserts were terrible. The cakes were stale and the fruits were not served fresh. Luckily nobody ended up with stomachache due to eating questionable quality of raw fruits and vegetables.
The best dinner was at the Cairo Hard Rock Cafe, just before we flew home. After more than a week of Middle Eastern style of cooking, was it any wonder we appreciated the simple meal of burgers and fries? :P
Rapport With Fellow Travellers: This group took a bit of time to warm up with each other. We didn't immediately click on the first day unlike my previous Southern Europe trip. But after a few days we were more familiar and comfortable to make silly jokes in the bus and tease each other :P
Timing: January is a good month to make a trip to this region. The temperature was very pleasant. Not hot and not so cold either. Only in Mount Sinai it was a bit cold at night and early morning but by mid morning the temperature was back to pleasant. I was hoping for snow, obviously that wish did not come true :P I thought the Dead Sea would be super cold. Surprisingly the water was quite warm, so you can actually dip yourself in the Dead Sea in January.
Overall: I think this is one of the most interesting trips that I've taken throughout all my travels. I like the experience of going through the suspenseful Israeli immigration. The border crossing between the Israel and Egypt in Taba is also different than going into Egypt via Cairo International Airport.
The itinerary prepared by SelamatBercuti.com was the reason why I decided to join them again despite the not so good experience during the Southern Europe trip. Major fault was they didn't bring us to Masjid Omar despite being listed in the itinerary. I don't know why most of Muslim tour companies that I've joined are quite lackadaisical about delivering what they promised in the itinerary.
I personally think that SelamatBercuti.com have the potential to be an excellent tour company if only they make more effort to the quality of hotels and food provided during the trip AND most importantly to train their tour leaders to ensure that all the places of interest mentioned in the itinerary are covered during the trip. If it cannot be covered due to unforeseen circumstances, the fact must be made known to the participants during the trip.
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Bye for now. Until my next post :)
