First step: Login into your Gmail.

Second step: Go to settings – labs – and check these 2 options – click save, then back to your Gmail.

Third step: Now at your Gmail page, you can find this icon at the left bar:

Click at the “phone number”, input your number then “Return”, it pops up something like this way:

Choose from the country list, input the name of the recipient, then here you go:

As Google says, initially, you’re granted a quota of fifty messages, with each message you sent, it decreases by one, but when they reply you (you can get their message from here as well!), your quota will increase by five, for detail please check here.

Enjoy it for now!

Related Posts

• Google is Go Go (0)
• 2 Chinese Characters (0)

Last week, I visited a kindergarten. The children in this kindergarten are a little different, they all have problem in hearing. The kindergarten is actually a pre-school teaching them how to properly pronounce and speak.

Random Posts

• Badachu Park in the western hill (0)
• April 8, Great Wall and Ming Tombs (0)
• Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium (0)
• May 25th, Raining day (0)
• Dec. 10th, 2008, snow expected (0)
• Beijing Exhibition Center (0)
• Bei Hai Park 北海公园 (0)
• April 19, 798 art space and Japanese restaurant (0)
• October 3, Greatwall at Juyongguan (0)
• Feb.6, Snowing day (0)

From July 2nd, a ferocious heat clamped down Beijing. That was the 1st hot day in 2010, I was out in the street for a whole day, by 7:00 PM, the sky came to be like this.

Related Posts

• 20090828 cool day (0)
• Dec. 10th, 2008, snow expected (0)
• Dec. 4th, 2008, cold wave arrived in Beijing (0)
• A little cold night (0)
• March 04,2007,Snowing in Beijing (0)
• August 02, rainstorm (0)
• July 20th, humid day at Beijing (0)
• June 28th, a humid day (0)
• June 17th, still hot day (0)
• June 9th, Sunny day (0)

The Red Sea was very nice place of diving, if you swim some minutes away from the beach, just dive for 2 meters, you can see groups of big fishes. What a pity, I cannot take underwater pictures…

After lunch, about 4 Pm, we were on the way back to Cairo, another long distance driving about 6 hours. Next morning, we were on the way to Alexandria. The photo below was taken at the morning rush hour in a street close to our hotel.

Alexandria is a beautiful City, and it is much cooler than any of the cities we had visited in Egypt.

This is a local lunch in Alexandria.

Some street sight of Alexandria.

That is the Women Street, on the right side of the street is a cemetery, and not far from here is the Pompey’s Pillar. Both the Pillar and the Sphinx were moved here many year later after the original temple was total destroyed.  Underground the ruin, there is still a sanctuary opened for public visit.

Memphis was the old Capital of Lower Egypt, but before century, it was total destroyed by invaders, there are not much to see, as I have already put them in the first part of this Egypt tour, I just skip them here.

After the dinner, we headed directly to Cairo Airport, and after another 10 hours flying, we were back in Beijing again.

I had twice trip in Egypt just in one month, they were exactly the same route, and they were all very impressive. I bought 2 pictorial books about Egypt History, I am reading at them at the moment, as a history even longer than China, I need some more time to grasp some of their glorious past, hopefully by my next visit there, I could be more confident. For sure, I will have more chance to visit this Sun Empire in the future, but I don’t think I will make it this year anymore.

Good luck to our local guides!

View Egypt in a larger map

Related Posts

• Egypt Trip Part IV, Luxor (0)
• Egypt Trip Part III, Temple of Kom Ombo & Edfu (0)
• Egypt Trip Part II, Aswan & Abu Simbel (2)
• Egypt Trip Part I, Cairo & Memphis (3)

Luxor or Thebes, the “world’s greatest open air museum”, was the ancient capital of Egypt. If there is a counterpart of a city in China, I would say Xi’an. Our local guide told me, any dig into the ground, you will find some antiques, private archaeological evacuation is totally forbidden!

Personally I would say Luxor is the most pretty city in Egypt, but it is also the hottest city, not only in the sense of tourists attraction, but in temperature as well, the last rain was 6 years ago.

West bank of the river Nile, A panorama view of Luxor at dawn with the King’s Valley in the background. (click for large)

Colossi of Memnon (see Wiki), they were at the entrance of Amenhotep’s Memorial Temple.  Local records indicated that singing from the twin statues could be heard in many cases, especially in the early morning. The temple behind them is nowhere to find, but as we passed by, I saw workers are digging at the ground, and many pieces of stone with carvings are unearthed.

Nor far from here, maybe just another 10 minutes by bus, we found ourselves at the entrance of the King’s Valley. Same as in the Cairo Museum, tourists are not allowed to take pictures in the valley. The valley reminds me the Ming Tombs in Beijing, in 1827 archeologist numbered them from KV1 to KV15 (KV for King’s Valley), actually all of them were robbed for many times even thousands years ago, there were no breakthrough till the KV62, the tomb of Tutan Khamun, and that was in 1922, many people related died in the next 2 years…, the latest confirmed finding was KV63 in March of 2005.

Too much of the history, under the sun, we just rushed into 3 of the tombs, if you don’t mind to pay another 100 egp, you can visit the famous Tutan Khamun, as everyone in our group heard of the story, we just headed to our next stop, the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsu.

By the way, here you can find a panoramic photo of the King’s Valley.

At the entrance of Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, the only one female pharaoh in the history of Egypt. The easy way of remembering her name is “Hot Chicken Soup”, thanks again to our local guide.

If you don’ t have much like us, there are two temples that you must to visit, the Luxor Temple and the Karnak Temple. The former one is smaller, huge columns are just spectacular and marvelous, interesting enough, you can find a mosque inside the temple, and by the end of the temple, traces of an early Christian church can be found at the small chambers by the end of the temple.

Karnak Temple is a very large place to visit, to see how large it is, please check my the map below. My first visit here was in the afternoon, and there were no where to hide from the sunshine, nice place to go for taking photos, but just too hot in the afternoon. My 2nd time of visiting here, was in the early morning, almost the first group to arrive, and it was much better.

The statue of Ramesses II, and his daughter and wife standing between his legs. The smaller temple at Abu Simbel were built just for her.

That is all for our trip in the upper Egypt, we are heading to the Hurghada, the summer resort city, a 30 years old city. The sun were just too much for us, we need some fresh moment in the water…

The highway leading to Hurghada, a city neighboring the Red Sea. Buses have to stop at these checking points time to time.

View Egypt in a larger map

Related Posts

• Egypt Trip Part V, Hurghada and Alexandria (0)
• Egypt Trip Part III, Temple of Kom Ombo & Edfu (0)
• Egypt Trip Part II, Aswan & Abu Simbel (2)
• Egypt Trip Part I, Cairo & Memphis (3)

Horus, the protector, was one of the oldest and most significant deities in the Ancient Egyptian religion.

To better illustrate the structure of the temple, I just made this 3D map, click for large picture. Commonly a temple was built for a single god, but the Temple of Kom Ombo is an exception. The temple can be divided into two sections, left (the eagle god) and right (the crocodile god). So far as I know, their relation is something like nephew and uncle.

For more information about here, please check Wiki.

Kom Ombo is just about 3 hours away from Aswan by cruise. The Temple is so close to the Nile river, that it was largely submerged and damaged during the flooding seasons over the years, the front yard near the bank of the Nile was totally lost.

Sandstorm is very frequent here I think, as you can see, it is just approaching when I shot the picture. As for my second time here, a terrible sandstorm even effected our schedule.

The double entrance at the Temple of Kom Ombo.

Our next stop was Edfu, a 60,000 populated town next Kom Ombo. The temple of Edfu was our destination, it is about 3-4 km away from our ship, we didn’t have bus transfer, instead we took this type of cart. A 10 minutes driving through the alleys was very interesting.

The main court inside the Temple of Edfu.

The ruins of the temple.

A shop by the bank of the river Nile.

After Edfu, we past this Esna canal lock.

View Egypt in a larger map

Related Posts

• Egypt Trip Part V, Hurghada and Alexandria (0)
• Egypt Trip Part IV, Luxor (0)
• Egypt Trip Part II, Aswan & Abu Simbel (2)
• Egypt Trip Part I, Cairo & Memphis (3)

By the way, my site has reached its limit in space, as I was very reluctant to reduce my photo’s quality during the processing, the result… those photos have taken up too much space in the server, it seems I have to make a mass re-process in the coming weeks.

Come back with more and better photos.

Random Posts

• Digital Beijing Building (0)
• Laoshan Velodrome (0)
• Beijing Shooting Range CTF (0)
• New Year’s Eve (0)
• Jian Wai Soho (0)
• October 3, Greatwall at Juyongguan (0)
• Jan. 30th of 2010, snapshot in the Hutongs (0)
• Bei Hai Park 北海公园 (0)
• Panjiayuan Flea Market (0)
• Wifi hotspot goes free at Beijing Airport (0)

Temple of Philae in the year of 1800.

The temple was built for Isis, the goddess of Love and Beauty, originally on a small island called Philae. With the completion of Aswan Low Dam in 1902, most part of the temple was submerged, from 1960 a UNESCO project was carried out in order to relocate the complex, more 40,000 pieces were reestablished in another island Agilkia, situated on higher ground some 500 meters away.

After Luxor, our train was delayed by another train ahead, sun come out with more heat, we are still fast than the poor donkey.

About lunch time, we arrived at our destination, Aswan.

Aswan was where granite was extracted even thousands of years B.C., an cracked Obelisk was found at its original location.

Pictures of Philae Temple. Click here for more information at Wiki.

View Egypt in a larger map

a little island in the lake

a boatman

The movie “murder on the nile” was shot in this ship.

Our ship is in one of these.

The next morning, we had to get up at 4 AM to catch up this escorted group for Abu Simbel 390 KM south west of Aswan, armed policeman was even on board each of the big bus.

Sunrise in the desert.

Here is the famous Abu Simbel, I don’t have any photos shot inside, as it is forbidden. Our time here was just about one hour, another 3.5 hours return drive awaiting…

View Egypt in a larger map

Related Posts

• Egypt Trip Part V, Hurghada and Alexandria (0)
• Egypt Trip Part IV, Luxor (0)
• Egypt Trip Part III, Temple of Kom Ombo & Edfu (0)
• Egypt Trip Part I, Cairo & Memphis (3)

We arrived in Cairo in an early flight (05:40 AM) on 29th of April. While everyone in Beijing said we have a late spring this year, no problem in Egypt, it was already in hot summer, hot but not humid. I cannot sleep during the flight, my head was still dizzy, we met our local Egyptian guide Yasser at the airport. This was my first time to have a local but not Chinese guide, who supposed to speak Chinese, after some chat with him (a little test), I found that his Chinese was just next to me… by 2 miles…

Yasser told me, he graduated from Cairo University, majored in Chinese, and his teachers were not Chinese but Egyptians as well, wow! He has been doing as a Chinese-speaking guide for some years, and I can see that he is very proud of his job, why not!

We actually spent 2 days in Cairo, the first day and the last day, I just merged the photos together in one post. After a very nice breakfast in a local hotel on the way from the airport, (any food is better than the food in the plane), as everything was tightly scheduled, we didn’t have much time on eating, en route, we headed to the Pyramids in Giza.

This is a snapshot from our bus, we were on a express way I think, the traffic was still rushing, but not bad.

This was my first glimpse of the Pyramids, sorry my lens was not enough for them. People can climb up a bit to the entrance, I didn’t see anyone trying to climb up any further, it was forbidden I think, special tickets needed if you want to go inside, we didn’t have enough time for that, maybe next time. But I was told that to have a mask would be a good idea, the tunnel was stinking.

After lunch, we visited the Saladin Citadel and the Mohamed Ali mosque, for more detail of this place, you can visit Wiki. we had some relaxing moment inside, after that, it was time for the Cairo Museum, where collected most of the treasures unearthed in Egypt. A ticket can go most part of the museum, but to see mummy will needed special ticket, like most of the museum in the world, a two hours visit definitely was not enough, but to focus in Tutankhamen would be a good idea.

Note, cameras are not allowed inside the museum, you have to deposit them at the entrance.

Following photos were shot on our last day afternoon in Egypt, it was at the Khan El-Khalili Bazaar. The place was great if you are good at bargaining, go inside is like a jump into the jungle of peddlers.

Memphis was also our last day’s schedule, I just put photos here as well.

Some of the oldest Pyramids are just around here.

Cairo railway station, we were on the way to Aswan, the first day was just utterly exhausted, after waiting for about 1 hour, our train arrived at last, wagon-lit with air-conditioning, we supposed to arrive in Aswan around 10:00 am next morning, but we were late by 1 hour, someone told me, it was not too bad!

View Egypt in a larger map

Related Posts

• Egypt Trip Part V, Hurghada and Alexandria (0)
• Egypt Trip Part IV, Luxor (0)
• Egypt Trip Part III, Temple of Kom Ombo & Edfu (0)
• Egypt Trip Part II, Aswan & Abu Simbel (2)

I got to know this proverb from an American lady, all together 6 of us had a 2 days tour around Beijing, the first day 24th was just fine, but still a little foggy, the second day on 25th, the weather was gloomy at first, by evening it was raining and cold.

I am going to Egypt today, there will be very hot. Hopefully when I back, Beijing will be in a real spring.

See more photos of Egypt when I back.

P.S. Today I check the google maps, now it provides GoogleEarth view.

Random Posts

• Imperial Ancestral Temple (0)
• National Art Museum of China (0)
• Eight Trigrams of Divination (0)
• The Olympic Sports Center Stadium (1)
• Old Summer Palace (Ruins of Yuanmingyuan) (0)
• Beijing Subway (0)
• June 21st, City Tour (0)
• Pay a New Year call (0)
• May 27th, Temple of Heaven & Toy Market (0)
• May 13th, Great Wall at Badaling (0)