The Adventure Begins

Leaving Auckland Airport was a bit tearful but we know we are going to see you all again shortly. Mum get Broadband and don't forget if we are skyping you we will e 10 hours behind so send a gmail to say when.
The start of the adventure ...
29 hours to get from Auckland to Cairo and boy it was tough. Can't complain about Singapore Air. I think we've both gained a couple of kilo from all the food we ate on the flights over. Singapore Airport was a nightmare. Because I was so tired I decided to take a nap for a couple of hours and when Tony came to wake me up 11.40 (half an hour before boarding) we realised my laptop was missing. For the next half an hour we ran (literally) around the 3 terminals trying to track down where we had left it and Singapore Airport is bigger than Dubai!! Anyway to cut a long story short it was found on a chair in the food hall, where we hadn't even been, and was handed into the information booth who we had checked with first. We rescued it and ran to our boarding gate which was a 10 minute walk away. Thank God for travelators! The really annoying thing was we got to the gate and there was a long cue still waiting to go through security gggrrrrr. We went through every emotion you could think of  during that 6 hour stopover.
We decided to get off the plane at Dubai and grab a coffee. It took 30 minutes to walk to the coffee shop via security ( boots, belts and laptops out of covers) and get back to the plane in time to reboard. Nice coffee though :-)
We arrived early at Cairo Airport so the man who was supposed to meet us got there after we went through the visa stuff and were waiting for our bags. THAT'S WHERE THE FUN BEGINS. He had a flat tyre so we had to wait in the airport for him to fix it and come back. In the meantime there were about 30 taxi offers ... pretty intimidating. He hadn't realised we were staying at the Meridien so he organised a cab to bring is out to the hotel. He told us everything was paid for. When we got in the taxi Tony repeatedly said to the driver about it being paid for - YEAH RIGHT. He persuaded us to stop a couple of times to take photos and wanted to drive us to the tourist venues after we dropped our bags off. We were pretty adamant that we wanted to get here and rest so said we would ring him about the tourist thing. Anyway as we are pulling up to the hotel he starts going on about a tip. We had to get the guy on the door to help get rid of him cos he was expecting a 40 pound tip from us. The guys at the hotel have been really helpful and we are looking forward to an early night. The "Egyptian way" may take a little more getting used to than I thought.
Right now we are sitting in the lobby having lunch and an Egyptian Stella - not bad. Wifi is free for 15 minutes so have to keep my updates short. Will add photos I have taken later. 35 degrees today woohoo for airconditioning. Gotta be better than the 12 degrees we left in Auckland eh?