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Other entries in Cairo

Welcome to Egypt.....

what a time to arrive! arriving in cairo's airport was not a huge amount of fun mostly because of the time we were arriving and considering we hadnt had much sleep in the lats couple of days, we didnt appreciate this too much. of course arriving in egypt was also a hassle with people not leaving you alone but there was a representative from the hotel that we had booked into so it was all done smoothly enough.

eventually we arrived at our hotel at stupid-o-clock and fortunately the staff at the hotel appreciated our state and we were spared all the talks and check-in details that are usually required. we were shown to our room and already the things that were to become the norm in egypt were apparent to us...tipping!

after a fairly cold shower and a read of the english paper, it was time to sleep. the following morning we were up relatively early considering and headed to the dinning room for breakfast - the usual: coffee (horrible egyptian stuff!) an egg, a piece of cheese spread and some bread.
we were then invited over by the manager of the hotel who wanted to tell us about the tours available. we were of course offered another "welcome tea" and listened to what he had to tell us which included telling us that there was no obligation to book through him what-so-ever, he was merely giving us the information of their hotel and we were welcome to shop around with other agencies/hotels.

we then decided to head out and explore a bit of cairo before making any decisions and of course we wanted to check out other agencies tours. we returned to the hotel for around lunch time and were told we absolutely had to go and get our students cards then and someone from the hotel would take us. we really did not want to do it at the moment but were told we must so we headed off with the bloke from the hotel to the ISIC office. when asked if we were students, we both said "yes". asked for proof, we said we didnt have any on us and this didnt seem to be a problem as we just handed over our passports, told the name of our uni, gave one id photo, paid our 65 egyptian pounds and we were handed our office ISIC students cards. easy as that.

in the end, we booked through another agency that was offering us the exact same tour, with the same hotels and the same amount of days but for US130 cheaper so we told our hotel that we had booked with friends through another agency and were leaving in the morning. the agency/hotel we had booked through had asked us please not to tell our current hotel that we had booked through them as they had had problems with them in the past with the managers saying that they stole their customers.

after a lovely dinner out and a bit of shopping and looking around, we returned to our hotel and got ready for bed. around midnight, another manager came knocking on our door demanding our student cards back! he said that because someone from his hotel had taken us to buy the student cards, we had to book through them and if we werent going to, we had to give back the cards. we of course said this was absolute nonsense as we had not been told this by the person who had told us about the hotel tours or the person that demanded we get our students then and there! the manager demanded to know who we had booked our tour through and telling him we werent sure just seemed to make him more angry but quite frankly, it was absolutely none of his business!!! we were not backing down on this issue at all and went straight downstairs and settled our bill and were out of there first thing in the morning.

of course the matter wasnt settled though and i was really worried that we were going to be followed. we did a slight detour just incase and then checked into our new hotel. we enjoyed our breakfast there and headed out for our day of exploring.

our first stop was the pyramid of sakkara. unfortunately as we didnt have a guide and didnt really know what this pyramid was all about, it was all a bit lost on us but it was still really cool to see and later we found out that it was the first pyramid ever built. we also got to see a few other tombs and temples which we didnt really understand before we were taken to The Great pyramids.

of course egypt wouldnt be complete without being scammed. this was our day. we were taken by our driver to house where a bloke owned camels and horses. we were basically told that everyone goes to the pyramids on horses or camels and they promised us a good deal. of course the price was incredibly high but we bartered with them until we got what thought was a fair price for what they offered. they told us they would buy our entrance tickets but what we didnt know is that they were bribing guards to lets us in through a gap in the fence. as a result, we didnt have a ticket to go right up to the sphinx or to the temple behind it. we also didnt have much time to explore around the pyramids and we both felt that we would have been better off going in on foot and hiring a horse or camel once we were in there if we wanted one. it was a great day though and it was truly magnificent seeing the world famous pyramids. unfortunately though our guide was also the most miserable and condescending person i have had the pleasure of exploring with and he didnt seem to care that neither of us wanted the horses to be belted so that they would bullet through the desert! they were pretty skittish horses too! there was no quiet easy take off for these things either! the minute they heard the words "yallah!" they were out of there and you had to hold on for dear life as they sprung into action and bolted! our guide even had the gall to ask for a tip at the end of it but we had no money had even had to borrow money from our driver to cover the cost of this tour. as part of the deal with the horse guy though, we were allowed to watch the light show from his balcony without paying. we were wondered around the area for a few hours killing time and waiting for the show to start. it was a great show to watch although we couldnt always hear what was being said although the one advantage that we did have was plenty of space to rest our camera's still to do the night time shots of the pyramids lit up.
eventually though it was time to head back to our hotel and not only had our driver disappeared, but it took ages for another one to show up and when he did, his car didnt work and broke down half way to the hotel! eventually we got there though and were greeted by the manager of the hotel who had booked our whole tour for us. apparently as we had worried, the staff of our previous hotel had followed us that morning and of course they called up our new manager and gave him grief! we both felt pretty bad about the incident but atleast the manager wasnt worried and said he was sick of the other hotel anyway and it gave him the opportunity to tell them where to go!

that night was pretty tame as we just relaxed and enjoyed a good dinner and got a good nights sleep in preparation for the following day's tours.

our first stop was the egyptian museum. it was an extremely interesting place but i have to admit that i have never in my life seen such a disorgised place! it was great to explore there and have a look around but most of the time you didnt really know what you were looking at! on top of that, there must have been thousands and thousands of tourists in there each trying to get a look at the important stuff and after being shoved around by some pushy spanish people, mark and i had had enough and headed on out. it was a huge museum though and if you wanted to properly expore it, you would needs DAYS and a brilliant guide!

we were at the museum with a greek couple and after the museum we all headed to the Mohammed Ali mosque where this leader from a few centuries ago thought it would be nice to take apart the outer layer of the great pyramids and build a mosque dedicated to himself! it was a truly beautiful mosque but i have to admit, i struggle to get excited about something which destroys truly great monuments! we also had a visit to a pretty confusing place - the coptic church - and after about half an hour of aimlessly wondering about not really knowing what we were looking at, we headed off...supposedly to look at more mosques. as none of us were up for this, we decided instead to skip it and instead go straight to the markets, Khan el-Khalili to explore. these are absolutely fantastic markets and we got a taste of what great things to expect in the rest of egypt but of course we didnt want to buy then and there. what amazed us most of all was the egyptians ability to say things in just about every language in the world and it because a lot of fun to try and find a language where they didnt know any words. we of course failed....
the thing which i did find incredibly annoying though was responding to the constant "welcome to egypt"! and for some reason i was constantely being spoken to in spanish as most of the egyptians seemed to think i was spanish! of course it didnt help that my natural reaction was to answer them in spanish!

anyway, after about 2 hours exploring, we headed back to the hotel to get ourselves ready for leaving the following day. it was also this day that we were introduced to what was to become our regular meal - koshari, a meal of rice, pasta, tomatoe sauce, fried onions and lentils. it was dirt cheap and really great!

that night it was time to head out to the train station and we headed off in 2 cars with the greek couple and a french family to wait for the train.

i know most people really dont like cairo but like bangkok, i seemed to to like the place! the shopping was obviously one reason and i couldnt wait to return to take full advantage! seeing the pyramids was also a childhood dream that i had got to live out and it still doesnt feel real that i have actually been there!

Photos / videos of "Welcome to Egypt.....":