My first time in Cairo

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  Cairo, Egypt
Friday, February 8, 2008

At first I thought that the smoggy air in Cairo was from all the smokers. Almost every adult male seemed to be smoking and they smoke everywhere. If you thought Japan was a smokers heaven then you won't believe Egypt. The air is full dusty, dirt and fumes. The vehicles produce a lot of the air pollution and contribute to the noise as well. Cars, buses, motorbikes, trucks, donkeys, horses and people add they own noise to Cairo's streets.

The people are friendly. We have received numerous "Hello, where are you from?", "Which country?", "Do you speak English?" and "Your first time in Cairo?".

Crossing the road requires you to reset your tolerance for vehicle distance or proximity. If you see a small gap in the traffic you just to walk into the traffic. The cars adjust their path for you. They are travelling slow enough and are accustomed to weaving passed stopped cars and pedestrians. Something we will try to take a video of on our camera.

The Metro was easy to use and cheap. We used it to get to Coptic Cairo. We only needed to take one line and the stations were in Arabic and English lettering. On the train we started looking at the Arabic writing and compared it to the English lettering equivalents. The Arabic could be streched with the effect that all the station names were the same lengths in Arabic.

we spent time at Ramses Train Station trying to buy tickets from Cairo to Aswan. It was a no go. We were told that the tickets were all sold out. We tried both first and second class seat but received the same response. Our reward for our efforts was a strawberry syrup and banana shake for Jillian and fresh sugar cane drink for me.

At the Cairo Museum, we walked around the bottom floor for three hours. The highlights were an unfinished sculpture of a lions head and a visiting Mayan Temple and Cultural exhibit. Most of the items on display had no information explaining the item. The Mayan exhibit on the other hand was clearly explained and the displays well thought out. Unfortunately the rules have changed in the museum and you can no longer take photos, except if you sneak some on your mobile phone camera. I would have taken some of the lion's head, which doesn't make it into any of the museum photo books that we looked through.

These are my early impressions of Cairo.

Cheers, Cameron

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