As we were told that the Ethiopian embassy was closed due to their national day today there was nothing much for us to do except to get the letter of introduction from Encik Saiful at the Malaysian mission. We had packed everything by 0930hrs and as we were certain that we wouldn’t find the Embassy on our own accord decided to go to Holiday Villa which we had spotted on the way in last night, thinking perhaps they could give us directions.

When we woke up this morning we saw a few incomplete buildings surrounding us but no one was working on them which was a relief as I had left my mark somewhere nearby. Not much time was wasted and we packed up as soon as we had breakfast watched by a couple of girls on donkeys.

I was up and about at 0015hrs and did some shots of what it looked like on board at that ungodly hour. I tried to take some shots of the deck passengers but it was so dark and I didn’t have the lights for the video camera.

The thought of the ferry crossing on Lake Nasser, being one of the highlights of our adventure made me wake up pretty early. We were ready but the hotel didn’t have any staff readily available to cater for our breakfast but once called upon they were immediately attending to us.

At breakfast I found another disappointment when Tony suggested that he could specially arrange to make us cooked breakfast, as I could see the other guests all having theirs in boxes. As it turned out I was charged for the omelets we had and at the same time had the packed breakfast served in a plate.

At breakfast I had only one bowl of lentil soup as I wasn’t quite sure what caused my tummy upset yesterday and even than I was taking a risk but just couldn’t resist it.

As there was time to kill before we needed to be in Aswan to buy the ferry tickets and as El Minia was a reasonably nice place and cheap, we decided to spend and extra night and look around. We actually had cooked breakfast at the hotel and they had nice soup as well which I enjoyed very much.

The Hor Moheb hotel Manager Mr. Mohsen must have felt sorry for us as he gave us a 10EPnd discount on our room. He walked us to the car park and really tried to pacify us saying things like there are bound to be some bad amongst the good, but generally Egyptians are not prone to stealing.