Egypt (April 24-28): Part I

I woke up at 4:30 am the day I left for Egypt, since we were meeting up at 6:00 at the ISH building in central London. There, I met the group of people who I was to be traveling with (none of whom I knew before). The group was a very diverse one (18 people, with 16 different nationalities), which made for interesting conversations. I really liked the group – half the fun of the trip was the people who went along. We took a bus to Heathrow and then flew from there to Cairo, which was about a 5 hour flight.

We touched down to a hazy, dirty, and warm city. There was so much sand and pollution in the sky that it was a brown color (it was better the other days, but Cairo was definitely the most polluted city I’ve ever visited). We were picked up at the airport by Attif, the hostel owner / local godfather (as we later discovered), who transported us to the King Tut Hostel, down in the center of the city. Once we arrived, we had free time to relax and unpack our clothes. A few of us decided that we would wander the streets a little around the hostel, so we went out with Oscar, a funny guy who worked at the hostel (and was Attif’s nephew).

Egypt was quite a change from the West. There are rarely fixed prices on anything (unless one is at an establishment catering to foreigners) and the true value of an item is probably far lower than one would expect (labor is extremely inexpensive there). Thus, one will get ripped off (luckily, with the exchange rate, things are still cheap, even being ripped off). Furthermore, vendors actively try to sell you items. Walking down the streets (which are always very crowded – the population density in Cairo and Alexandria is far higher than American cities) is an interesting experience due to the constant haranguing. Since I was normally with either Nicole (an American girl) or Kasha (a Polish girl) when out walking the streets (we often split up into smaller groups), we would get significantly more attention (mostly unwanted). Most of the Egyptian men acted like they’d never seen a woman before (granted, basically all the women there wear coverings as opposed to Western clothing, but we weren’t the only tourists to ever visit Cairo).

Crossing the street was also always interesting, as they don’t have traffic lights, stop signs, pedestrian crossings, lanes, or really any rules concerning vehicles, it seems. It amazes me that there are not more accidents, as the street traffic there is extremely heavy. To cross, one just has to start walking confidently and hope that the cars will stop (they will). It is a rather unnerving experience at first, however, and I was one of the few people in the group who was willing to be the leader in crossing (once someone has gotten out there and stopped the cars, it is easy to cross). Another thing I found interesting was that the army and police are everywhere. I remember reading that before I left and thinking, ok, they have more people than America does. In actuality, Egypt has police and soldiers everywhere. It seems like 1 in 10 guys over there is a soldier or policeman. And these police are strolling around with AK-47s. Tourist spots have even heavier protection forces (the pyramids had several hundred soldiers guarding them), normally with armored vehicles, heavy machine guns, and defensive posts. I found this quite cool (I like military things), and it meant that we were always really safe (almost anywhere we were, we could see a policeman or soldier).

That evening, we went down to the Nile and boarded a riverboat. It cruised up and down the Nile (though in the city area, which isn’t really all that exciting – I imagined us cruising along out in the desert) while we ate dinner and watched live entertainment. Getting our food was an experience (people – not our group – stampeded to get it, even though it was buffet and it wasn’t going anywhere). Since we were close to the food, we all got squished in by the hoard of people. The entertainment consisted of musicians and singers, whirling dervish dancing, and belly dancing, which was all fairly interesting. Afterwards, we headed back to the hostel. Some of us walked around the streets a little longer before heading off to bed. I shared a room with Alexis, a guy from Mexico, John, an American, and Tee, a guy from Thailand, all of whom are friendly. I'll add the next few days soon.