Egypt: The whole story

Leo and I couldn’t participate to the “official” graduation trip to Tunisia because the dates were not convenient. Both our parents were coming to France for graduation, and the trip to Tunisia conflicted with their dates. We therefore decided to book a “5-star” “organized” tour of Egypt.

We flew out of CDG T3 on Saturday afternoon in a 3 month old 737-800. There were some delays at departure so we landed in Luxor past 1am. We met our very kind female guide named Molly. She took us to the boat on which we would spend the next 3 nights. There were some disagreements on the bus as some people in our group had not realized, or were not told that they needed to pay all visits separately, although the trip is advertised as all-inclusive. We finally arrived to Edna, where the boat was parked, to have a welcome drink and meet our fellow travellers. It was the worst social event ever. It had a funeral feel to it, as no one was talking and everyone was falling asleep.

The next morning, we were awakened at 7am for buffet breakfast. We took the bus to the Temple of Luxor and learned a little bit about the 30 dynasties of Pharaohs who led Egypt over the last few millennia. The workmanship and the amount of detail are astounding. The Egyptians built enormous structures which stand proud and lasted through earthquakes, wars and other forces. As with every other day we were there, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the temperature was around 40-43 degrees Celsius. It’s extremely important to wear 30+ FPA sunscreen and run from shade to shade. After the temple of Luxor, we visited the Temple of Karnak, were we saw the twin obelisk of the one given to France and is now standing in Paris at La Concorde.

We then had lunch in a small restaurant with air conditioning before taking a boat across the Nile to the Valley of the Kings, where we visited ancient beautifully conserved tombs which were unfortunately raided and looted at some point. We also visited the Colossuses of Memnon, and the infamous Hatshepsout where 70 tourists were gunned down by terrorists in 1997. Today, every tourist site is guarded by numerous “Tourism and Antiquities Police” armed with WWII weapons, and Special Forces dressed in civilian and armed with UZIs. We were not allowed to take pictures inside any of the temples throughout the trip, so we only have a few to show here. The problems with our guide started that day. She was trying to convince us that the Valley of the Kings was not worth the 10-minute detour, so I had to single-handedly convince the 12 people on the bus that we should go there. The stop was on the official list of optional activities, and Leo and I definitely wanted to visit the tombs. After winning the support of everyone on the bus, she quasi-reluctantly agreed to take us there. After a long day in the sun, we boarded the boat and left for Edfou. We had dinner on board and it was pretty disgusting, as with every other meal we had on the boat. The buffet food reminded me of airplane food.

The next day, we were awakened by an extremely loud call to prayer from a local mosque. In the morning, we visited the Temple of Horus. There’s little point in trying to describe all the temples because they will all sound the same from my descriptions, and no words can justly explain their grandeur and splendour. Just go visit yourself. After the visit, I purchased a traditional Egyptian dress for the Middle-Eastern party held on the boat that night. Leo stepped into water as we attempted to go down a submerged underground passage so we had a good laugh. On the way to Assouan, we stopped at Kom Ombo to visit the temple there, where we saw mommies of crocodile and learned about the ancient medical techniques. We also smoked our first shisha of the trip. As the boat sailed towards Assouan, we partied on the boat until about midnight. On that night, we decided that the guided-tour was much too boring and “adventureless” so we vowed to drop the tour as soon as we could and experiment on our own. In the morning, we visited the temple of Philea, which was cut into blocks and relocated to higher ground prior to the construction of the new dam in Assouan. After the visit, I purchased water and discovered that Egypt has a 50 pound note and a 50 piastre note, worth 10 times less. If you’re an avid reader of this blog, you’ll remember a similar story on my last day in Beijing last summer. I told the story to Leo and we concluded that we had to be careful not to get 50 piastres notes when we were owed 50 pounds.

After the temple, we stopped by the papyrus and perfume “museum” where dozens of sales people tried every trick in the book to make us buy something. Leo and I appeared poor and uninterested, so they mostly hounded the other more gullible French couples on the tour.

We had the afternoon and evening off, so we decided to hire a guy with a horse carriage to take us around. That’s when the real Egyptian adventures started. For about in $5, negotiated down from over $20, we hired him to take us to the NEW dam, the unfinished obelisk and back to the boat. He agreed and we hid in the shade of the carriage while he steer the poor beast in the blazing sun. He took us to the old dam, which is much closer and smaller. We protested that he was taking us to the wrong dam, so we when for a little circular ride and he took us to a different part of the same dam, and announced again that we were at the new dam. After seeing that we were not buying his story, he took us to the unfinished obelisk while tossing all his garbage on the street. The unfinished obelisk was closing but the guards allowed us to go up for a quick look. Our driver then told us that we had to visit the real new dam by car because it was too far to reach by horse. He took us to a friend’s garage where a guy offered us a ride to the dam. He insisted that we “get in” without negotiating the price first. Feigning to walk away, we agreed on a price of 50 pounds including 20 pounds for the dam toll. He drove us to the dam, but we were turned down because it was too late and the visits were over. We walked around quickly to take pictures, but the guards were not amused and I was afraid we could get shot if we wandered too far off the road. The dam is a prime terrorist target so they would not hesitate to defend it if they feel our wandering could present a threat. The taxi took us back to town, where a confrontation emerged. We wanted to pay 30 pounds for the horse guy and 30 pounds for the taxi, since he did not have to pay the 20 pound toll. The driver claimed that he did pay the 20 pounds so we asked for the receipt. He couldn’t produce one so we told him off. Leo gave the two guys a 50 pound bill and a 10 pound bill. Our young horse driver quickly swapped it for a 50 piastres bill and claimed we had made a mistake. Leo apologized and gave him another 50 pound bill. The joker tried to pull the same stunt again, twice within the same minute! This time, we realized what was happening so we started yelling at him. For some reason, he took out a 50 pound note from his pocket, so Leo snapped it from his hands. We therefore walked away having paid 50 piastres less than what we had originally bargained for. We managed to beat him at his own game. We laughed about the story until the end of the day. After a delicious boat meal, we joined a French couple, Philippe and Tatiana, to watch the French-Spain World Cup game in a local café. We were the only tourists in the place. I asked the owner which team most people were supporting and he responded that it was about 50-50. Spain scored, and no one reacted whatsoever. The French responded in kind a short while later, and the place exploded with cheers and laughter. The breakdown was more 99-1. (Leo is Spanish) After an uneventful few days, we finally had a very good time and that day was probably the most exciting and interesting of the trip.

The next morning, we took a bus to Abou Simbel, two beautiful temples carved right into a mountain face. Molly had promised that we would be alone at the site, yet there were dozens of busses and hundreds of tourists. The temples were also cut into blocks and relocated following the building of the Assouan dam. The 3-hour desert bus ride was extremely worth it. I slept most of the way there. We took many pictures and explored every room before heading back to Assouan for a much needed shower. We were stuck on another boat for a good hour while the boats were being reordered at the dock. After lunch, we visited the park and walked around a Nubian area.

Molly, our lying guide, tried to convince us to buy her Cairo tour for 100 Euros. She claimed that the pyramids would be so far from the hotel that it could cost 30 euros of taxi. I laughed in her face and told her that I could become the owner of a taxi for 30 euros. She also told our friends the French couple that they would be the only ones not purchasing the package. Finally, she would negotiate on behalf of the salesperson whenever we asked her for help, and always managed to find a better price than what she claimed was the “local price”. I was not sad to leave her behind as we boarded the night train to Cairo. We had our own little cabin, equipped with reasonably comfortable beds and a sink. As soon as the train left the station, we reached the train bar and stayed there from 6pm until 1am. We met a couple from Australia, a couple from France and a Romanian guy working in London. I fell asleep as soon as we came back to the cabin. The plan was to get a wake-up knock at 5am, one hour before arrival. Leo and I knew better, and asked to be awakened 15 minutes before arrival. We received our breakfast trays. Leo didn’t want to get up so I started kicking his upper bunk from my lower bunk. He rapidly got fed up and tossed his entire breakfast on my head. We laughed and laughed until a small bus picked us up and brought us to the Grand Pyramids hotel, located about 1km from the pyramids. Thanks again for your honesty, Molly.

We dropped our bags and went to the Great Pyramids of Giza with Philippe and Tatiana. We managed to get tickets to enter the Kheops pyramid. Only 300 per day are sold, so we were fortunate to get them. The pyramids are breathtaking and truly leave you in awe, especially when considering that they were build millennia ago, without fancy cranes and machines. The inside tunnel of the pyramid is very narrow and claustrophobic. We finally emerged in a small, dark and humid room where the air is very stuffy. There are no inscriptions on the wall. It is a very plain room. After walking around the Sphinx and the other pyramids, we decided to go the panoramic viewpoint. We got a ride from a private car on the way up, and I managed to convince a tourist bus full of Indians to drive us back down by telling their guide that we were lost and needed to find our bus at the parking lot at the bottom of the hill. The Indians were very nice with us and offered us chocolate chip cookies. Leo and I tried to walk back to the hotel but missed our turn and ended walking a good hour and a half. We didn’t mind so much because we were discovering the city and had plenty of water. After a shower, we couldn’t find any decent restaurants around so we had fast food at Hardee’s, the Egyptian version of the American chain Carl Jr’s. After lunch, we hired a cab for the afternoon to take us to the Saqqara pyramids, the older set of pyramids located a bit outside the city. Our driver did not speak English but was very nice so we gave him 50 pounds instead of the promised 40 pounds. This translates to about 7 euros for 3 hours of service. After a quick rest, we headed for the city center. We had drinks on the 40th floor of the Grand Hyatt hotel, which holds the best view of the city of 18 million inhabitants. I was looking over the drinks menu and was disappointed by how many spelling mistakes there were, especially considering this was the top business hotel in Cairo. The manager came by and I showed him several. He thanked me and mentioned that he would take to the drinks manager. On the way out, he invited us to tour the fancy rotating restaurant on the 41st floor. The French restaurant is one of the finest establishments in the Middle East. We warmly thanked each other and proceeded to find a restaurant recommended by Karim, an Egyptian/Canadian/Palestinian/English friend of ours at INSEAD. On the way there, we asked for directions from a kind-looking guy on the street. He told us he would walk us there, that his brother lived in Montreal, and that he visited him a few years ago. Before letting us go the restaurant, he said: “Please let me get a business card from my office”. So we followed him a bit to his perfume shop, where we immediately understood what was happening. He offered us tea and started showing us samples of perfume. I started questioning him on Montreal and rapidly figured out that it was all a lie to get us to smell his perfumes. I was very firm that we did not want to buy anything, so he told us that we could buy a tiny-weeny-bikini bit for 2 pounds. We said fine, but he tried to sell us 60 pound bottles. I firmly told him that we were not interested, but he poured the bottles and started packaging them. When we refused to buy them, he looked sad and almost pretended to cry. We just left him there and went to have a rather disappointing dinner. After dinner, we were turned down at a popular Thursday hangout called After Eight on the pretext that we needed reservations and had to be couples. We then went to the Nile Hilton’s rooftop bar, which was completely transformed for the World Cup. They had astroturf on the ground, big screen TVs and the staff was wearing popular team jerseys. We ordered a shisha and some drinks while watching the end of the Swedish game. Leo was completely asleep on the couch so we decided to call it a night.

On our last day in Egypt, we walked around the Mosque neighbourhood and the old Christian neighbourhood, before heading to the famous Egyptian museum. We had lunch on the way at a touristy place which served pigeon. I preferred the grilled pigeon over the stuffed one. In the museum, we saw countless artefacts including some from the Tutankhamen tomb. We also saw some actual mommies dating thousands of years. They were surprisingly well preserved, with teeth and even hair. The skin is dark and has the appearance of wood or rock. You could definitely recognize the person if you knew them. We walked around much more in the Old Cairo and Christian cemetery, before heading back to the museum area. We met a doctor who worked at the museum. He’s a specialist in animal mommies. More interesting even, he closely resembles Snoop Dogg, and had heard that comment before. He showed us to a liquor store and took us to a papyrus store where we talked for about an hour. I was 100% clear that we didn’t want to buy papyrus so he then took us to a perfume shop. I clearly stated that we wouldn’t buy anything so we only stayed a minute. We then parted the doctor’s company to eat “koshery”, a traditional Egyptian dish adopted from the Jewish culture. It’s a mix of beans, noodles, lentil, red sauce, lemon juice and another few mystery things. After a filling and outrageously cheap dinner, we went back to After Eight to see if we could finally get in. The doorman asked if we had reservations. We obviously did not so he asked us to wait for a moment while he checked inside. We were permitted entry and discovered that we were the only ones in the entire place. We had a couple of Sakkara beers before heading back for our hotel. We had a 5am wake-up call to fly back to CDG. I had rented a car from Alamo but it wasn’t ready so we had to wait about 20 minutes. I spotted a pretty girl with a Canadian flag on her backpack, so I walked by and wished her “Happy Canada Day”. She was a bit surprised. We talked for a few minutes and I mentioned that we were graduating. She said that her friend’s brother was also graduating this week, and we figured out that she was Coby’s sister’s friend, and that Coby’s sister was flying in from Vancouver in 30 minutes. We waited for her and drove her to Coby’s place. Small world!


Final thoughts on Egypt:

99% of the Egyptians we met were annoying and always trying to take advantage of us.

Everybody asks you: “Where you from?” and 90% respond “Canada Dry” when I said Canada.

The pollution is horrible. Piles of garbage everywhere and foul smell across the city

The heat is unbearable

The food is bad, as far as what we’ve eaten over the week

The traffic is absolutely crazy. People drive extremely aggressively and no rules apply, except if a policeman is nearby. Parents with babies and young children stand right in the middle of the street between to cars to attempt to cross the street. Our doctor told us that the best way to cross the street is to: 1) Close your eyes 2) Pray to Allah 3) Run! We had 3 accidents in 1 day, someone hit our mirror, someone rear-ended us and a kid hit a car door and flew over his bike.

Overall, Cairo is the only city I’ve ever visited where I would feel strongly against living there. It’s a definite on places to visit, however.