Frustrated in Egypt
(The editor will note that this was started over three weeks ago but he will probably not tell you that we only have one laptop and “Angela’s post” had to wait for “Henry’s post” to catch up and finish his bit on Egypt. Please note though that Angela does sincerely appreciate Henry’s help with blogging.)
We flew in to Cairo from Istanbul over two weeks ago and spent the first evening feeling really unfamiliar with our surroundings but excited and anxious to get oriented. Technically, it was not only our first trip to Africa but also the very first Arab country we’ve ever traveled in. Everywhere we went we could not read the Arabic-only signs and numbers, nor could we confidently figure out how to cross the manic, busy streets. We tried to apply our steady-predictable-forward-movements march we cultivated and perfected in the Vietnam streets but to no avail. We still felt like we were throwing ourselves at moving traffic and may the luckiest person survive.
As recommended by our Rough Guides travel book, our first stop was at the American University bookstore to read up on Cairo literature and to pick up a user-friendly city map. Little did we realize that we needed much more than a mere map to take on the city.
Cairo is actually quite a fascinating and large city made up of several districts. At the advice of our savings account, we were staying in the Islamic Cairo district near the popular, 800-year-old Khan El Khalili souk, but in retrospect we should have chosen another city to be frugal with. Here, the boundaries between urban and rural, modern and ancient blur because much of the city’s buildings, streets, and churches-turned-mosques date back many hundred years. In particular, Islamic Cairo seems to be untouched by modernization. The streets are ungridded, uneven and mostly unpaved. If they were paved in the past, it has not been maintained and you’ll often have to tread carefully as the road will be cracked with exposed pieces of concrete revealing all the pipes running three feet underground. The streets are filthy and littered with plenty of household garbage. If you venture further up the hills in the back alleyways, it is not uncommon to find men and their donkeys hauling carts of goods around. Browsing the neighborhood, there are so many sights, smells and sounds to overwhelm your senses. All in all, this neighborhood had huge makings for a really fantastic and adventurous stroll. Except if you’re staying here and every night the cabs don’t seem to know where your dinky hotel is and they randomly drop you off and you end up having to run through this maze of obstacles just to find that one street with your familiar sight of particular clumps of garbage laying along the path towards your ghetto-ass hotel.
Having said all that, in addition to the chaos and confusion, we were constantly and regularly hassled to start conversations geared towards purchasing a product or service we were rarely interested in. Even worse, there was this annoying culture of baksheesh, otherwise better known as pass-money-out-blindly-to-everybody-whether-they-deserve-it-or-not. Both our Frommer’s and Rough Guides travel books warned us about this. The idea is similar to giving alms to help your fellow man out and to enrich one’s spirituality. Unfortunately, this rite has been twisted and contaminated under the guise of tourism. Now, it is both a tourists’ obligation and the local Egyptians’ entitlement. We didn’t realize this then but, we were spoiled in Turkey when visiting the beautiful mosques on a donations-only basis. Here, in Cairo, as we remove our shoes and enter a mosque, someone darts out and directs us to put our shoes into the very obvious shoe storage boxes. Within the next second, his palm is out expecting some payment for that deed. When it is not enough, he will tell you “no good” and then instruct you what is “good.” Additionally, he will offer to show you a closed-off area of the mosque like the door to go up one of the minarets and expect payment in return. Sadly, you can even bargain for these mini adventures. We discovered this on day two during our attempted self-guided tour of our Islamic Cairo quarter. That day, we found out that not only were we hopelessly blind and deaf because we didn’t know Arabic, but that there were absolutely minimal descriptions available at most places of interest. We also discovered we needed to utilize a tour guide for many of Egypt’s sites. We pride ourselves as independent travelers and we never join tours or hire guides. So as you can imagine, that was a sad, sad moment.
To complicate things further, everything I read about women traveling in Egypt, or any other Arab country for that matter, prepared me for constant harassment, verbal and possibly physical. All our guide books recommended females to cover every part of their body leaving no skin exposed, especially, arms, legs, and even the nape of one’s neck. Also, I had to don shades so as to make no eye contact as it may be misconstrued as inviting harassment. As a result, I wore Henry’s oversized shirt daily throughout our time in Egypt. I was even prepared to cover my head up with a scarf. Thankfully, I was never bothered.
It is with frustration, anger, and a bit of regret that we cut short our Egypt trip. We literally flew by the cities of Aswan and Luxor. The peak of our anger was after arranging a guided tour to the Valley of the Kings and trying out our very first group tour of reportedly ten just to find out that we were sharing our one guide with a second group of ten. By then, our patience was gone and we were fed up with the dishonesty and money-grubbing greed in the Egyptian tourism industry. Maybe one fine day, when I grow an even thicker skin and am more apt to handle this type of tourism, I might return to see the rest of the amazing sites……likely sans Henry.