Author Topic: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison  (Read 11973 times)

Offline Wizmanison

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Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« on: June 11, 2018, 06:09:35 PM »
Although this trip was not 'technically' a RTW trip or a honeymoon (as we have been on several 'honeymoon' trips before and after this trip) the title seemed fitting. Like most people a trip to the Maldives or Bora Bora was always high on my bucket list. Having recently getting married and with the sale that was going on, I thought what better excuse to make a trip to the Maldives! When beginning to plan I noticed that most of the TR’s I read were lacking some information either intentionally or not. Therefore, I will try to make this TR as transparent and detailed filled as I can! I will try to include prices for everything I remember as well as any information I uncovered from my countless pages of reading. Thank you to all those who contributed, whether I read your TR or not it really does help others a when planning.

I apologize in advance if I make any grammar mistakes, input any unreliable or false information, bad photos or anything else that might offend you. No intentions to do any of the above but if it happens SORRY!

Breakdown of Costs:

Flights:
LAX-JFK = $572 ($286 each paid for with B6 Travel Credit)
JFK-AUH w/ Cai RT = 208k MR (104k ANA each) + $205 YQ               
CAI-MLE = 50,066 UR 
MLE-SR MLE= 64k Arrival + points + $735
MLE-SIN= 37k UR (18.5k SIN each) +$100 YQ
SIN-DPS=15k (7.5k SIN each) +$50 YQ
DPS-USM= 25k (12.5k SIN each) +$40 YQ
USM-URT-DMK= $138 ($69 each)
BKK-HKT=$104 ($52 each)
HKT-CNX= $228 ($114 each)
CNX-BKK= 26k UR (13k each)
BKK-AUH= 36,000 AA (18k each) +$50 YQ
JFK-LAX= $408( $204 each paid in AA travel credit)

Hotels:
Le Meridian Egypt: 3k spg
SR MLE: 234k spg (5 nights @ 46.8k)
Andaz Singapore: Free Night Cert
GH Bali: 36k (3 nights @ 12k) - 20k (for complaining)= 16k
Conrad Koh Samui: 190k (2 nights @ 95k)  (Received Be My Guest Cert for complaint)
Bangkok Thong Ta Resort Suvarnabhumi: $22
Le Meridian Chiang Mai: 24k (3 nights @ 8k)
Hyatt Regency Dubai: 8k
Park Hyatt Dubai: Free Night Cert

Breakdown by Currency:

TOTAL UR: 177,066
TOTAL AA: 36,000
TOTAL MR: 208,000
TOTAL SPG: 261,000
TOTAL HILTON: 190,000
TOTAL Arrival +: 64,000
TOTAL CASH: 1,672 (Most of which were paid with CSR/Ritz travel credits and Arrival + points)
VOUCHERS/CREDITS USED: 2 Hyatt Free nights (50k Hyatt), AA GC ($408), B6 Credit ($572)...

TOTAL POINTS/MILES USED: 936,066

FLIGHT ROUTE:



TRIP PLANNING:

For those that just want a summary of what and how I booked and not the super detailed trip report that will follow, here you go:

   
I happened to book 5 nights at the SR MLE in May of 2017, around the time when all the bloggers were writing about the reduced price for the SR MLE. Since I was able to cancel until December I thought why not just hold the dates just incase. So for 234,000 SPG points I booked the 5 nights in the Maldives. I was busy at the time planning my Summer trip and pushed off the idea of planning the MLE trip.
   
It was only till about late October - Mid November that I started getting realistic about making a trip out of this booking. I seriously thought of just cancelling the 5 nights but after speaking to several people about how amazing their trip was I had to at least try to plan a trip. So I started reading and slowly kept on adding a list of possible stops to this trip to the other side of the globe. My thought process was more or less if I am already flying all the way out there I might as well make the most of it.

We used travel credit from price matching our flights as well as family members flights and other credits we got from complaints to book LAX-JFK for $286 each.
 
After looking at several options it seemed most feasible to make AUH the hub and use ANA to book the roundtrip from JFK-AUH.  I planned to book side by side Etihad Apartment suites for our longest flights and EY was showing availability for 149k MR—> ANA eacH. So I transferred hoping to book. But, when it came too booking ANA was not able too see availability :(. So we booked just Business class. Since these RT flights offer a free stopover, I chose Egypt. Mostly because other places were either to far, not interesting enough, or we had to little time to explore that destination.

We then used 50k Merrill points for two flights from CAI-MLE. But, for reasons you’ll read later we actually ended up using 50k UR.

MLE-SIN (Singapore) costed us 18.5 UR—> SIN plus $50 YQ each (CSR credit).

I then waitlisted a bunch of SIN-DPS (Bali) flights on SIN. A couple weeks before departure they cleared up and I booked it for 7,500 UR—> SIN and like $25 YQ each (CSR credit).
   
It was pretty hard finding a DPS-USM (Koh Samui, Thailand) flight for our dates but we finally found the option to book DPS-USM with a stopover in SIN. How it would work is we would fly DPS-SIN on Singapore airlines and then SIN-USM on silk air. It cost 12.5 UR—> SIN and $20 in taxes each (CSR credit). This flight had us getting into Singapore at like 1:30 AM and the next flight to Koh Samui was only leaving at 8:30 am. I chose this flight because I wanted to get into Koh Samui and enjoy the Conrad the most I could for the short time we were there (2 nights). So we went into one of the PP lounges and slept there.

For the next flights, besides AUH-JFK, I booked them all days before travel as I started to get really busy the weeks before the trip and even during the trip. It was really hard to find flights from USM to anywhere else in Thailand that didn’t leave early morning. And, like I said I wanted to enjoy my time at the Conrad KS. I looked at every option to literally every airport in Thailand and even other routings out of Thailand and back in but could not find anything. And for the flights I did find they either had no availability or only 1 seat available, or were ridiculously expensive. Thinking I struck gold, I booked a flight from USM to BKK on Expedia only to see after paying that it was for dates 3 months out! This was because when I translated google flights to Expedia, it inverted the month and day with the google translation. I immediately called in and with enough HUCA they refunded me. They claimed that these flights were non refundable because flight was within a week and these carriers don’t offer 24 hour refund. I escalated to manager and they gave me a “one time exception” refund. So, with all other options exhausted we ended up taking a ferry from USM-DonSak Pier for $9 each. And then transportation to URT, other known as Surat Thani Airport in Thailand, for $8 each. I then took a flight from URT-DMK for $52 each person (CSR credit) on Air Asia.

We spent like less then 12 hours in Bangkok, pretty much just in the markets as my wife wanted some purses and stuff and we got a massage. Stayed at a $20 hotel found on Orbitz since we were only in the room for like 2 hours and it offered a shuttle to the airport. Our flight was at 6:20 am. We flew from BKK-HKT for $52 each person (CSR credit) on Bangkok Airways.
   
We arrived in Phuket at 7:45am and went to do the Phi Phi Island tour. Came back to airport at around 6:30 for our 7:20 flight to Chiang Mai. We flew AirAsia HKT-CNX, booked a day or two before, for $114 each (CSR/Ritz Credit) and arrived at 9:15pm Thursday night.
   
Stayed in CNX for 3 nights before heading back to BKK for a flight to AUH. We flew Thai Airways CNX-BKK from 3:20pm-4:35pm for 13k UR or $98 each.

With a unforeseen SUPER tight connection it was only by a matter of pure YMMV that I made it to the next flight: BKK-AUH 6:05pm-10:05pm. We flew business for this route as it was a longer flight at around 7 hours and I had been driving my wife crazy with all the intra Thailand flights. It was also a great price! Since I have so many AA points it was easy to spend 40k miles, each, for biz class. With the Citi 10% bonus it ended up being 36k and $25 in taxes each (CSR/Ritz Credit).

After taking forever in customs in AUH for reasons that I never found out (I was like the only one in line and the man left with my passport for like 30 minutes somewhere) and going through a whole ordeal with the rental car we got to Dubai and spent 2 nights there before returning for our flight back to AUH-JFK with Etihad to complete our RT. We left at 10:15 and arrived in JFK at 3:50.

Purposely giving us like a 5 hour layover, our flight from JFK-LAX with AA for $204 each, booked with AA gift cards, courtesy of plat and biz plat travel credit, was from 9:15-1:06am. We did this so we could land, see some friends & family briefly and finally eat  freshly made food!

So all in all we took about 16 flights and a ferry ride over a 3 week 2 day period. We spent approx. 60-66 hours in flights and visited about 3 Continents, 7 Countries, 8 States/Cities, and 11 Islands.

Detailed Trip Report in the works. Have written some of it, but adding pictures on DDF is relatively new to me and seemingly time consuming. Will be posting Egypt TR in the coming days as soon as I finish figuring out the pics.

Offline davidrotts63

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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #1 on: June 11, 2018, 06:21:14 PM »
Wow. Insane!
Can't wait for pictures.
(next time try figuring out what value PP you on the redemptions)
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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #2 on: June 11, 2018, 09:30:01 PM »
Wow. Insane!
Can't wait for pictures.
(next time try figuring out what value PP you on the redemptions)
Show some love with that like button.
Doesn't bite,  nor does a browser, you can leave the taptalk app for 20 seconds to like since that feature is blacklisted.
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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #3 on: June 11, 2018, 11:59:04 PM »
I apologize in advance if I make any grammar mistakes

I'll let it slide.

input any unreliable or false information

Excusable.

bad photos

Off with his head!


(In all seriousness, looks like an awesome TR, looking forward to the rest and some pics. I'll also reread the first post when I'm a bit less tired, there seems to be a ton of great info there.)
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Offline tzifanya54

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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2018, 06:06:01 PM »
Great info! Keep it coming.

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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #5 on: June 14, 2018, 04:11:56 PM »
can we get Africa too? 8)

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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #6 on: June 14, 2018, 07:17:21 PM »
can we get Africa too? 8)
Only just got to CPT! Writing notes as I go along but nothing ready to be published just yet. Did get some cool Safari pics I’m excited to share though!


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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #7 on: June 14, 2018, 07:28:49 PM »
Did get some cool Safari pics I’m excited to share though!
So share them! :D

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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #8 on: June 14, 2018, 07:29:24 PM »
So share them! :D
Not the right time or place


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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #9 on: June 16, 2018, 02:57:36 PM »
Wow amazing!

Let's get the tr already!
Enjoy Africa!

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Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #10 on: June 16, 2018, 03:25:07 PM »
Wow amazing!

Let's get the tr already!
Enjoy Africa!

Have been writing this TR up during my SA flights! Got several coming up so next couple of segments should be up shortly b”h!


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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #11 on: June 17, 2018, 01:40:13 AM »
Awesome can't wait

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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #12 on: March 17, 2019, 06:18:38 PM »
Detailed Trip Report in the works
BUMP :)
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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #14 on: March 26, 2019, 10:59:32 PM »
+1  :)
+2.. You need help writing it? ;)
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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #15 on: March 26, 2019, 11:00:51 PM »
+2.. You need help writing it? ;)
Writing is the easy part! It’s the embedding and sorting through pictures that would take me too long! But, I intent to start working more on it ASAP as well as my several other TR’s :/

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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #16 on: April 09, 2019, 09:24:17 PM »
Unnecessarily Hyper Detailed Trip Report:

Hello and welcome to my second TR since I found this amazing Hobby! (You can find my first TR about Kauai here and second of Maui here. TR in the works are 1. Cancun, 2.South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Seychelles, and Israel 3. Bora Bora 4.Miami 5. Park City Utah 6. London and Paris - Writing them down so I am held accountable for actually writing the TR's!)

Since I have taken so many pictures and I am not the best at choosing what to or not to include I have decided, throughout the TR, to include less important pictures embedded in the writing, as is done in the above paragraph, as opposed to cluttering the TR with standalone pictures. The standalone pictures will also be clickable so that if someone wants to see more pictures related to that one picture displayed they can do so by clicking through. Also, please note that any clickable links are simply to help the reader and have no affiliate link or anything of the sort to my knowledge.

As I am sure most of you have come to realize, for me at least, planning a trip like this was insanely time consuming. I would find myself spending sleepless nights and countless hours researching every destination I either wanted to go to or was advised to by those so kind to answer me through PM, on and off the thread, or from reading what must be thousands of comments spread out through different forums and threads. Although, this was not my first multi-city redemption since I started to amass points (LAX-JFK-ZRH-LHR,LTN-TLV-ZRH-ORD-LAX) this trip was definitely way more difficult to plan and more emotional considering the amount of points I was using. 


So, over a three week and two day period these are the destinations we visited:

Los Angeles-New York-Abu Dhabi-Cairo-Maldives-Singapore-Bali-(the following are 5 cities/islands throughout Thailand) Koh Samui-Bangkok-Phuket-Phi Phi Islands-Chiang Mai- Abu Dhabi-Dubai-New York-Los Angeles


Before our first flight I realized my wife’s birth year was incorrect on our Etihad (EY) flights but I was able to do fix it easily by calling in. (In hindsight we likely didn’t have to even bother fixing this as it seems to be quite rare that they verify birthdates). With that taken care of we proceeded to our first flight. We flew Jetblue from LAX-JFK. Matching to Mosaic through their status match they offered in July was really convenient. Besides for constantly getting upgraded to EMS since matching, I have been setting google alerts for my flights and ‘price matching’ it every time a lower fare became available. Since my wife is a heavy packer and we had a ton of food to bring with us(seems I forgot to take a picture of the cooler bag or its contents), the increased 70 pound luggage limit for Mosaic members really came in handy. We were already considerably over the 70 lb. limit but after chatting up the CSR she allowed us to breeze through with no excess baggage fees and upgraded EMS seats. I love Mosaic <3
   
We spent a little over 24 hours in NY to see family and to pick-up some POM meals before heading to JFK for the first long leg of the trip.

More about the POM meals for those interested:

I only ordered a few items from POM, as we found it easier for us to make, freeze, double wrap, and pack into our Polar Bear Cooler our own homemade food. It was super simple. We just made food as if we were making it to serve but prepared bigger portions that we then divided into aluminum takeout pans we purchased from amazon. We used a label maker we got from one of Dan’s post a while ago to label what was what and then shoved it in the bag with some ice packs providing enough room to fit the rest of the POM meals we were collecting from NY. My wife also created an itinerary (which we of course didn’t actually follow) of what meals we will be eating and when, so we get a sense of what food we want and when we would have it as well as all the non frozen goods we needed for day to day or for shabbat (feel free to PM if you’d want it for any reason at all).

Food we prepared:
BBQ Ribs w/ Cous cous X 3
Schnitzel w/ Cous cous X 5
BBQ Chicken wings X 4
Olive Chicken X 6
Salmon fish X 2

Pom Meals:


I will review them as we eat them throughout the TR. But, pretty much everything but a dish or two was really amazing. Like everyone says the dairy food was truly spectacular and we wish we would have ordered more of those over the meat meals!

I flew EY to AUH. I decided to take advantage of the free stopover EY offers and visit Egypt, for about 32 hours, before heading off to our main destination of this trip; The Maldives.

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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #17 on: April 09, 2019, 09:24:35 PM »
JFK-CAI:

For our EY flight, we arrived about an hour before departure (not on purpose!) and went to the Biz check in line. Like anything else in this hobby/life, when you are nice enough or simply genuinely kind, your chances of YMMV are greater skewed to benefit you. Therefore, the rep at the desk was nice enough to let us pass while being 15 pounds over the limit. We were then guided to the expedited security lane for business and first passengers, which are placed directly beside the TSA pre-check lane. It was nice to be able to chose between the two and at that instance the pre-check lane had no one in it so we went with that.





From there, it was only a short walk to the Etihad lounge. The lounge was truly stunning. At first glance the exterior and entrance of the lounge was breath taking. Inside, the lighting and design of the room and bar were definitely notable. After spending about 10-15 minutes in the lounge it was time to head to the gate for boarding.









The cabin was really nice and although flying in the apartment suites did not work out (although there was availability; ANA and EY have been having issues, for a couple months leading up to when they decided to implement a temporary suspension, where ANA was only showing availability for some seats) their business class product is still great. Kosher hot meal was served mixed. As in, we got our breakfast starter with dinner and dinner starter with breakfast. Besides for that, the food was bland and not the best, as expected. The bar/lounge was also really cool and we hung out there for a little bit. One thing I usually love on these flights is being able to view the camera views on the plane and see below and straight ahead. When not seeing oceans or clouds it was quite cool to see icy mountains and landscape tops among other things.













We landed in Abu Dhabi airport, which looks quite nice, and since our flight to CAI was booked in economy, for whatever reason, and we were not able to enter the EY lounge. So we went to the nearest PP lounge which was actually really nice and I gravitated towards the back where I davened Shacarit and then we walked back to our gate for boarding.







Our Economy EY flight was about 4 hours and we pretty much slept through the whole thing. Our kosher meal did not look appealing at all so we passed on that. We happened to be sitting next to someone my wife met once at work and he kindly noted some things to see as well as tips for Cairo, which were already on our itinerary.







Will work harder on getting the more exciting parts of this TR out ASAP!
« Last Edit: April 09, 2019, 09:32:20 PM by Wizmanison »

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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #18 on: April 09, 2019, 10:05:54 PM »
Nice work there!
 Was waiting for this for quite some time!
Does the message on the seats really work?
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Re: Around the World in 23 days, A Honeymoon TR by Wizmanison
« Reply #19 on: April 10, 2019, 01:09:25 AM »
EGYPT:

We landed at 4:30pm and Cairo’s airport was rather interesting. The outside looked rather nice and modern, whereas the inside was not nearly as much. They did not have Wi-Fi, which is just truly inconvenient these days.



Customs/immigration and getting a visa was pretty simple. Just had to pay $25 each for the visa. We hired a guide for $205 for the next 25 hours or so hours we spent in Egypt. We shopped around until we negotiated the best price we found for this guide. This included rides to and from the airport, all the entrance fees, lunch (Which we obviously did not take advantage of), and a camel ride by the pyramids. Our guide Laila was kind, knowledgable, and highly recommended. I will post her contact information because when seeing only a few others post theirs it was really helpful. The company was Egypt Tailor Made and her email was: Lailahassan33@gmail.com She mentioned how tourism has been really bad since the revolution and most people think Cairo is not a safe place, which in turn has a real effect on everything from wages to taxes and so on. She mentioned there were only 12 jews living in Cairo but that they had 25 synagogues and that she did not know of any hatred towards jews although it is pretty clear that there is no separation between state and Islam… I didn't care or want to delve any deeper about the 12 jews or synagogues as we were exhausted and we fell asleep on what must have been at least an hour drive from the airport to the Bazaar. Regardless, we felt safe and had no problems throughout our stay here which will hopefully shape the thoughts of the countless people who warned us how unsafe Egypt was and how we must be crazy to go there…

In regards to Egypt and its infrastructure, driving in Egypt is quite hectic to say the least. Although there are lane lines they are simply a recommendation and not an enforced rule. Just like seat belts, texting and driving, stop lights, and the list goes on. Cars and motorcycles confidently drive inches away from each other and I can say that in the short time I spent in Egypt I heard more car honks then I have in total all my life. They honk for any and every reason. The traffic is likely always terrible and it can take hours to get from the airport to the old city.

Our first stop on our tour was the Khan El-Khalili Bazaar. Here we simply walked through the Bazaar passing by shops, cafes, restaurants, in a souk like format. There were some tourists and lots of locals as this seems to be the place to hang out at night. The Bazaar streets are filled with historic buildings as well as several Mosques. We were not here for long before we left as there was not much to see.

On the drive to the old city from the airport









Popular spot for locals to hang out at night





Driving by the Nile River

Our drive to the Le Meridian Pyramids in Giza took us quite a long time (about an hour) with the traffic. Upon arrival, like almost everywhere else in Cairo (not exaggerating), we had to go through metal detectors and the bag check machine. When checking in I had already confirmed an upgrade prior to arrival to a pyramid view room. The lobby was pretty nice and we were to exhausted to properly check out the property so we went straight to our room. As I emailed every property before our stay how excited we were to stay, blah blah blah, celebrating anniversary, birthday, honeymoon, as well as the holidays as it was Christmas time (which all happened to be true) to heighten my chances of upgrades at every hotel they also brought along gifts like birthday cakes, champagne, rose petals decorations and so on… It’s a shame the cakes and the champagne had to go to waste every time so we just gifted it to the bell man or the cleaners every time. Whether they understood what we were saying or not was beyond me.









View of the pool from our Balcony

Balcony night view from our room with Pyramid View

Besides the Balcony view of the pyramids, the room was nothing special. We lit our 8th day of Chanukah candles on the balcony overlooking the pyramids, ate our food that we had the hotel store and heat up for our short stay, and then called it a night. Since the Wi-Fi was truly terrible and was constantly turning on and off I called the front desk to complain and they sent a technician over to install my very own modem for the room which actually helped a lot.

Being able to light our last night of Chanukah candles with the view of the Pyramids was surreal

Just to show how the meals were labeled

Olive Chicken made by me :)

Schnitzel and cous-cous that we made



The following morning was super stressful. I intended to check into my Emirates flight scheduled for that evening to MLE only to see that my wife’s flight was under a different name! I had booked this ticket using my Merril+ points and this was the first time I ever used them. I booked using the portal and only realized the day of that her ticket was booked in some other name I definitely have no recollection of putting in. I found it truly strange as her birthday and all the other info was correct but whatever... Just another issue to deal with on this trip! I only had a couple minutes to deal with this as our tour guide had just arrived downstairs to start our days journey. Just my luck the power in the room seemed to go out taking out the modem. I had no time to call and get someone to fix it so I came to peace with the situation and decided to not let it ruin my morning activity of visiting one of the 7 wonders; the Giza Pyramids.