About time

  Cairo, Egypt
Wednesday, April 9, 2008

· Cairo, Egypt
· GMT +2hrs

About time
I'm finally getting use out of the Middle East guidebook I bought back in Canada so long ago. I've flipped it open countless times since then but when I flipped it open this evening in our Cairo hotel room it actually meant something. We arrived in the city a few hours ago after a 4 hour flight from Dubai and while the flight to get here may have been routine we, as yet, cannot say that of Cairo itself, even if we do only have a few hours of Cairo time under our belts. The city, founded c.3100BC, is an agglomeration of half a dozen cities. It's a huge seething, polluted place crammed with, depending on what guidebook you read, anywhere from 11 to 18 million people, all of which seem to be either walking or driving its chaotic streets at the same time. It's the greatest city in the Islamic world and the capital of the world's most populous Arab country - Egypt's population of 75 million accounts for 25% of the whole world Arab population (96% of those 75 million are Muslim). And that is the extent of my knowledge on the place for now. After a nights rest we'll be leaving our hotel room in the morning to have a proper look around. We hear Cairo is hard work, even to hard workers like us, and so a good night's sleep is definitely called for. Judging, however, by the 'suspect' mattresses in our Scarabee hotel room, which looks and feels older than Cairo itself, that may be easier said than done.

Day 239 Observations (continued) (April 8th 2008)

· Last few AED

1 Less baggage

What did we spend our last few United Arab Emirate Dinars on in Dubai International Airport earlier this afternoon? Why, 2 bottles of deodorant and a bag of gorp (trail mix) of course. Smashing.

· Egypt Air
I guess it was only appropriate that it was the good folks of Egypt Air who had the honour of flying us from Dubai to Cairo. It was my first time flying with them and I'd go so far as to say it was an 'okay' flight. Although the air hostesses flashed us a few smiles they, as a rule, weren't as 'hot' as the Gulf Air ones of a few days ago (strange observation to be making on a honeymoon travelblog, but then again this is a strange sort of honeymoon). Oh, and they didn't offer us a beer. Btw, Lonely Planet, not ones to pull their punches, isn't too fond of Egypt Air. According to them the service on Egypt Air,

' isn't particularly good,'

its fleet is,

'in need of an upgrade,

and finally,

you'll do better flying with another airline.'

Whoops.

· DIY
The 1st thing we did after arriving in the arrivals terminal of Cairo's International Airport was get our visa and here's hoping the simplicity of that procedure is an indication of how things work in Egypt. Handing over €10 (of $15) gets you a sticker (the visa) which you best affix into your passport by the time you walk the few yards between the visa counter and the immigration check. I've never before fixed a visa in my passport; at least you get to choose what page it goes on.

· "Welcome!"
Egyptians seem to be a very welcoming bunch of Arabs. We've heard "welcome!" shouted at us numerous times as we made our way from the airport to the Scarbee Hotel in downtown Cairo. That didn't take us too long so as yet we have nothing but nice things to say about the average Egyptian, knowing full well that they haven't really had the chance to piss us off yet. Now, I understand that may sound like a very negative, very cynical, almost inappropriate observation to make having just arrived in the country, but I only make that observation because we're wondering if Egyptian touts, the ones we know we're gonna have to deal with, are...

· ...as bad as India touts?
We're giving the Egyptians the benefit of the doubt, mainly because, as I said, they haven't yet had chance to (really) piss us off. However, we have heard that Egyptian touts are as bad, if not worse, than their Indian counterparts. They have a reputation for being uber persistent, the sort of tout that has immense difficulty understanding the words 'no,' 'thank,' and 'you.' We met a few of the 'unofficial' officials in the airport this evening, all of them freely offering us bogus advice and just waiting for the next opportunity to rip you off (we dealt with them rather easily). We've heard they are everywhere but as I said, we're giving Egyptians the benefit of the doubt for now. It remains to be seen how they match up on the league table of international touts.

· Raping & pillaging - The Return
Egypt does seem cheap; 1 Egyptian pound (EGP) (€0.12) for both of us for a 40 minute bus ride from the airport to downtown Cairo says it all (no, we've no idea how much a beer costs yet). This revelation pleased Pat this evening and made him proclaim that once again we're raping and pil... well, you know. To be honest it's just what the doctor ordered; our 4 day 3 night stop-off on the Arabian Peninsula put a severe dint in our coffers. But thankfully Egypt, thus far, seem more of a piggy bank, less off-shore bank kind of location.

· Gone south?
We flew geographically north to get here from Dubai (north-west actually) but looking on a map it isn't that much further north (it's certainly more west than north) so we're wondering what has happened the temperatures. We're not sure what temperature it is (we haven't seen any Muscat style outdoor thermometers as yet) but it's certainly jumper/sweater wearing temperatures and nowhere near the 36+ degree Celsius temperatures of Dubai and Muscat. Granted, it is the evening so we're wondering what Cairo-in-April temperatures will have us wearing tomorrow. We haven't long to wait to find out.

· 2 to go
Now I've touched the soil of Africa there is only 2 of the 7 continents - South America & Antarctica - to go. South America in particular is too big a chunk of land to be devoid of map pins. It's next.

· Arabic headaches
I commented on the weirdness of the Arabic script in my Oman entry but it wasn't until we got here to Cairo this evening that it began to cause us headaches. In Arabic a zero is written as a dot, a 2 looks like a mirrored 7, a 4 a mirrored 3, a 5 a zero, a 7 a looks like a 'V' & an 8 looks like an inverted 'V'. Only the 1 & 9 looks, or did look, familiar to us Arabic simpletons. We were told by the information desk in the arrivals hall of the airport this evening to get the 357 bus to downtown. Oh the fun we had looking for bus 357.