Card A Journey To Egypt: Fill & Download for Free

Flew with mom, stepdad and sister, intending to go to Egypt together(sis and I were adults). We were flying through Istanbul and circled for 6 hours before we landed. Spent another 4 hours on the plane before we got off. It had snowed in Istanbul and the airport couldn’t handle it.It was pure chaos in the terminal. There was no one to help with rebooking when we got off the plane and we were told we needed visas to get into the airport. Luckily, as US citizens we could get them on arrival but my mother was upset that we had to pay to get in. I told her just get the visas and we will deal with it later.Found a line to rebook that was several hundred people deep and a longer line for a hotel room. My stepdad wanted to sleep in the terminal. My sister decided she had had it and wanted to go back to the US now. My mother took her passport and said we were staying together. I had to tell my mom not to take a passport from someone in a foreign country.We got rebooked for the next day. I did find that Egyptair had 4 tickets to Cairo leaving that night for a lot of money. I hesitated and kicked myself for not jumping on it but I had been up for something like 40 hours at that point(our flight from the US had left at night and I can’t sleep on planes). Luggage is lost in the mess and there are no hotel rooms. We had bought travel insurance, but my mother didn’t actually print the information. I had to call them with no international phone plan. Within 20 minutes they had rooms and a cab waiting for us.My mom and stepdad had not packed any clothing in their carryons so they had nothing with them. I had also told them to grab some free water bottles that Turkish airlines had put out in the airport as you couldn’t drink the local stuff. They didn’t grab anything and wanted to try to find some at 2am when we got to our hotel. Nothing is open. My sister and I share our stash.We are about to check in and my mother starts questions the price of the hotel(I think it was something like $80/night). I handed over my credit card and told them to charge it. I needed sleep and wifi to try to figure a game plan.My sister is adamant she is not going to Egypt, but instead going home. My mother is adamant she is going to Egypt(my sister was 25 years old at the time). I am on the fence and just want sleep, but everyone wants to argue. I tell them all to go to bed and we will deal with it the next day.We head back to the airport the next day and it is still in chaos. We wait for hours and it is clear that our flight isn’t going anywhere. At this point, we won’t be able to make the cruise we booked in Egypt. I have been in contact with the guide we hired, trying to keep him updated. He suggests just staying a few extra days to catch everything. This is where Turkish airlines decides to tell everyone that the still have to catch their original flights home and they will not be changing anyone’s flight back and we would have to absorb the cost if we wanted to.My stepfather decides this is a good time to call US tech support for his iphone to figure out why, when he turns the phone, the screen doesn’t reorient(he had set it that way). The call is an astronomical cost.Turkish airlines rebooks us again and, at this point, the trip isn’t salvageable for me because I have to get back to work by a certain day. My sister and I decide that we are headed back home but my mom and stepdad want to press on. My mother cries about this but I had it.I call travel insurance and get us tickets home on British Air for the following day. My sister and I figure we need to get my parents in a decent situation before heading home. We are told we need to put in a lost luggage claim, but you can only do that in the arrivals area which we can’t get to. We ask several people, no one can help. My sister starts loudly crying(possibly for show) and someone escorts us through where we are given number 546. They are on number 184. We sit down to wait.My mother breaks down and wants to go home, but my stepdad isn’t sold. They decide to come home ultimately and want the same flight booked for my sister and I. They had tripled in price. I book anyway.I call the guide and tell him we won’t be coming. We had promised to pay the balance when we got there. I tell him we will still pay him as we promised but we have to do so from the US. He tells us that we need to get on a flight to him. I tell him that we are exhausted and I need to get to work at a certain day. This continues until I yell, in the terminal. through the phone that we are not coming but he will still be paid. I can’t do anything else.My sister calls me over to the luggage counter to answer questions about my bag. I see number 207 is up and I mention something about it and my sister tells me to be quiet. She waited for a number to be called and no one to claim it before walking up. I applaud her cleverness. After this she goes to duty free to get Jack Daniels. I applaud her forethought.We now try to get out of this area so we can go back to the hotel. We get sent to 5 different desks before being told that we had already entered on our visas but had not been stamped out(because of the way we had to get to luggage claim) and no one knows what to do with us. I stare at the man without looking away, silent, and then ask him what he would like us to do. He sends us to another desk to get photocopies of our passports and then walks us through. I have no idea what happened to make that work.We go back to the same hotel for the night. My mother wants a family dinner. My sister wants to sleep. My mother proceeds to speak with every tout who we cross. After dinner, I want to go for a walk. I had been to Istanbul the previous year and knew the area. My mother is not happy. I go anyway and buy simit. This makes things a little better.The next morning we wake up to our flight being delayed so we get to the airport two hours before that. Check in is about to close because they expect you to still check in as if it’s the original flight(I did not know that). I run through the terminal to get to the check in desk. They offer to rebook us on a Turkish airlines flight which will leave at our original time. We decline.We watch as the flight Turkish airlines had booked us on to Cairo does not leave.The flight to Heathrow is nice until the flight attendant tells my sister she is too young to drink. She pulls her id which the flight attendant does not accept and my sister nearly looses it. I decline the meal service because it didn’t look good. The flight attendants are offended and talk about ungrateful passengers.Our flight to the US is delayed, but there is tons of room. The man sitting behind us keeps talking to himself about how he will all make us his slaves when Satan returns. I spend the entire flight bolt upright, waiting for something bad to happen.We get stopped by customs on the way home because my mom brought fruit back and the ag dog caught the sent.Our luggage, which I had taken for lost, was returned to us a few weeks later. My parents had decided to pack fruit in it for eating in Egypt. It wasn’t pretty.I try to get some sort of refund from Turkish airlines(they said at the airport they were not issuing them and get it later). They tell me because I did not do it at the airport, they will not give it to me now. I can get the taxes refunded, but only if I drive 3 hours to their nearest station.I give up.

I believe in the saying: “there are no coincidences,only synchronization… everything happens for a reason.”The following experience is the perfect manifestation of the above mentionned:Almost 7 months ago, I packed my laguage to go to VietNam, I was planning to work there for 6 months. Set. Ready.Go.The flight was way too long and tiring from Morocco to Ho Chi Minh City, but I’ve been farther.. it didn’t matter, I knew great things were waiting for me. I was already imagining myself eating vietnamese street food, chilling in beautiful islands, decorating my new room, having nights out with my coworkers and so on… Suddenly, the voice of the person sitting next to me interupted my imagination.I spent the whole flight avoiding the conversation, but … “Hey, where are you from?”Me: “Morocco, and you?”Him: “ I’m from Egypt”Me: “Nice to meet you”The guy was in his mid thirties, tanned skin, a bit familiar. He told me about his travelling stories around the world and his Import/Export business… I tired to listen but I just found myself zonning out everytime. I was too tired to care but I’m good at pretending.Once the plane landed, he handed me his Business card that I just carelessly put inside my bag. We said Goodbye and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t meet him again.Arrived to Ho Chi Minh city, what I expected to be a beautiful experience turned out to be a nightmare. I was put in one of the worst districts of the city. The house was litterally inside a market, open 24 hours a day where noises became a constant background sound.I couldn’t sleep, not because I was Jetlagged. Everything around me was turning into a nightmare. I tired to resist, to book a hotel room, to get a calm place to rest but I guess it was too late, my body clock was seriously disturbed and I got anxious.I didn’t know anyone in that city, or that country and I was hundreds, not to say thousands of miles away from anyone I could rely on.Third day of no sleep. I had to be more solution-oriented and to find a way. It occured to me that I still have the business card from that guy of the airplane! I didn’t care, he could have been a serial killer, he could have been a psychopath, he could actually have been anything, yet I called him.I explained everything and he welcomed me in his hotel room like I was his own sister, with all respect he took good care of me and tried to cheer me up in every possible way.However, in the 4th night I reached a point where the only recomforting thing that could happen was to see a doctor.Emergency was seriously costly, a consultation and 15 pills that didn’t even work.The guy didn’t leave my side for a seconde, he spent his night between the hotel and the hospital and didn’t even sleep. It’s true that I was under the effect of the pills, but I could feel how he was waking up everytime during the night to check on me, put a wet towel over my forehead to reduce the fever then bring me water to drink and massage my feet.The morning after, he managed to make breakfast for me, he left his room for me to take a shower, he helped me book my return ticket and paied for the Grab from the hotel to the airport and didn’t leave me until he was sure I was getting inside the plane.He took care of me like an angel would, that’s why until this day I believe he was an angel sent to me. I don’t know what could have happened to me if I didnt meet him, if he didn’t hand me his business card and eventually if he didn’t start that conversation on the airplane.I so believe nothing happens for no reason. People we meet, places we go and things we do are all connected in some way or another.Mohammed, If you’re reading this, I want to thank you so much for everything you did for me.

Manna is bullshit.No - let me correct myself.Bulls are real and they do shit, for real. Bullshit is real.Manna is inferior to bullshit.Manna is one of the dumbest plot hole fillers, for one of the most obvious follies, of one of the stupidest stories ever told."Manna" appears as the solution by "god" for the Israelite people traveling from Egypt in the desert, about to starve, in Exodus 16. This is the only mention of Manna, ever in the old testament.It never reappears, nor is it mentioned earlier and the only description of what it even is is: "It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey"... (Exodus 16:31)I feel compelled to say, that if you consume some white powder, and then talk about miracles... well, that's not Manna, that's Meth.But I digress.Basically, some of the original tellers of this myth were faced with questions about logistics, and played the miracle card: " What? "God" made magical food fall from the sky, so what of it?"By the way, remember what the reason the Israelite went to Egypt in the first place was? (They didn't, it never happened - Exodus is entirely made up from A to Z, nor was there any significant Hebrew settlement in Egypt at the time the story was supposed to have happened)It was MASS FAMINE in the land of Israel (Genesis 42: 5 "for there was famine in the land of Canaan")One must ask, why would there even be famine if the "god" of the Hebrews has this phenomenal feature: sprinkling catering?...By the way, there was famine in Israel at the time of Abraham too, according to the old testament. But Abraham never got any manna. I guess Moses had connections.But "god" doesn't settle for a boring one ingredient diet, no.Later on in Exodus 16, the Israelite whine about running out of meat. So "god" also provides the Israelite with Common quail, a type of bird, which according to Hebrew scripture is so stupid, that flocks of this species land, in the thousands, on a daily basis, right on the trail of progress of the dozens of thousands of Israelite, and just sit there, waiting to be captured, killed and eaten.They have this huge desert wasteland (which they are not indigenous to, by the way) they can land on, but they choose to land on the predator.What a dumb creature... and yet it doesn't become extinct! The Israelite feast on Manna and Quail as if they are drive thru stops on Route 66.Of course, I forgot to mention, navigation in the desert is done with a pillar of fire at night and a pillar of cloud (cloud technology?) during the day. Despite this amazing navigational system the journey would take 40 years...Oh, by the way, if all this Quail and wonder bread, sorry, "Manna" and 40 years of walking in the desert made you thirsty, worry not:In Exodus 17, Moses will hit a rock with his cane and water will come out.What? You mean you haven't tried that? In the middle of the desert?Common knowledge.What a stupid tale.