Cooling our heels

With our trip lasting only nine days in all, every minute is precious. That's why it was so annoying that our entire first day here was all but wasted tied up in red tape. We spent nearly half the day shuttling from bank to bank trying to get our travellers cheques cashed. Some places just didn't accept them, one kicked up a fuss over our pixman's cheques, because he felt the signatures didn't match (none of us could see what he was talking about!), even the Amex office had problems - they had run out of money! But, things were finally settled and we then rushed to the Malaysian Embassy, a nondescript building tucked into a residential/commercial area in Cairo. There, embassy financial controller Mohd Sharbini Zaini told us that a letter from the embassy would not even allow us access into Rafah. The only thing it would do is get us the chance to apply for another letter from the Information Ministry, which might then stand us a better chance of getting to the border town. After that, we're on our own. So, we're leaving for the ministry at 8am today, hoping to get the paperwork sorted by 9 or 10. At least we might then have a chance of completing the 370km journey to Rafah by nightfall. The main challenge, aside from the obvious problem of the distance, is that there apparently are a lot of checkpoints along the way where military personnel try to block off media from accessing the border areas. While the people of Egypt are strongly in support of the Palestinian cause, the government is more ambivalent about the whole thing. The local media believe that the obstruction of press movement to the affected area is intentionally being done by Egypt at the behest of the Israel. I don't know about all this-lah. I just want to get into the zone, one way or another. We've got oh so limited time and it's running out as we speak.