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 It was an hour later than we’d been told to expect, which honestly isn’t too bad overall. We were, however, almost kicked out of our spot.

It turned out that we were inside an area that gets locked off when the ship is underway. One of the staff came out and cleared out all of the Sudanese/Egyptian guys that had chosen the same area, and gestured to us that we’d need to move. We packed up our stuff, but by the time everyone else had cleared out, the captain told us that we could stay. It was clearly only because we were white, but we weren’t going to argue when it meant that we wouldn’t have to try and squeeze in elsewhere.

(to be continued)

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 It seemed that no-one was boarding yet, which made it a good time to sit on the dock and get a couple of photos of the boat that we’d been spending the night on.

Once we were allowed to board, we took a quick look at the hard seats that we had the tickets for and decided that our other option was much better. Namely, that of just spending the night on the deck of the boat instead. We went up to the top and claimed a spot at the front, near the bridge. And here we waited for a couple of hours until the ship finally departed.

(to be continued)

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 Ferry from Sudan to Egypt
The final check was a security check, where you can see just how little they’re concerned about tourists. We watched the suitcase of an Egyptian guy in front of us being completely emptied out and examined in great detail. When my turn came, I’d barely even opened the first zip on the bag before they said that it was fine and waved me on. We passed through one last door where they were checking for the stickers on the bags that said they’d been inspected and then headed down to the ferry itself.
(to be continued)

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 We never actually got the tickets back from this, though that didn’t seem to matter. Next up was immigration, where we handed over the stamped forms and received our exit stamps from Sudan. 

In this same hall, there were a number of money changers wandering around, though their rates weren’t great. They were slightly better than the ones in town though. You’d probably only need a little cash for the ferry – snacks, drinks etc – so I wouldn’t bother changing any here if you don’t need to.

(to be continued)