For a long time, Kuniko and I have been considering a trip to Egypt. To see one of the ancient wonders of the world, to visit Africa for the first time in our lives, and to taste a food culture that we knew almost nothing about – it sounded like the perfect combination. Unfortunately, politics and safety played a large part in keeping us away for a long time. Just when we thought it was safe, Arab Spring rose up and put a big question mark on the future of Egypt. We waited things out, and finally decided that this winter was the time to go.
My holiday began on Friday, but Kuniko had to go in to work and wrap things up with her students. That gave me a chance to leisurely clean up the house, prepare it for a couple of weeks without us, and then I went into Sannomiya to meet Kuniko at the bus stop. I bought a couple of cans of beer and some Jagarico – a potato snack that we’re addicted to – and then we hopped on the bus to Kansai airport. Surprisingly the bus wasn’t that full, and the traffic was light enough that we arrived on time. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant – dim sum and spicy chicken – and then a celebration cocktail at the airport café before heading to the gate. We flew on Emirates airlines, and they have a convenient flight every Friday night around midnight, which is perfect for our schedule and allows us to start the vacation right away on Saturday. While we waited for our flight at the gate, we noticed a large group of students being led by a guide wearing a nametag that said “Megumi”. She looked a little stressed, and I wondered what she’ll look like after the trip – she was just getting started.
It was an easy overnight flight to Dubai, and surprisingly I got a lot of sleep. In the Dubai airport we killed time at a café drinking coffee and eating a shawarma wrap. We had one of these wraps the last time we were in Dubai on our way to Georgia, and they really got our attention. A warm wrap filled with spicy chicken, vegetables and yoghurt – yum. It was a short layover in Dubai, so by the time we walked over to the gate they were already getting people on buses and taking them out to the airplane. We joined the crowd and got our seats onboard. The flight to Cairo was short, only three and a half hours, but there was a bit of drama on board. Around us were a lot of Chinese tourists, and they appeared to be rookie fliers. They switched seats with each other five or six times, they reached behind their seat and used our power outlet because they didn’t have one, they suddenly reclined several times causing the person next to us to get a lap full of coffee, and they fired up their own tablet computers and watched them with the volume on high so most of the front of the plane had to listen as well. I guess everyone is a rookie at some point, but it was still a little surprising to see the lack of awareness of the people around you. Maybe that’s just because I live in Japan where they suffer from maybe a little too much awareness of the people around them.
We flew into Cairo around noon local time on Saturday, but couldn’t really see anything interesting from the window as we landed. Immigration and customs were a snap and we could buy a visa-on-arrival for US dollars at a small bank window just before entering the country. There was no application to fill out, which was a little odd compared to other visa-on-arrival countries we have visited like Laos and Turkey. Once we got our suitcase, I changed about 50,000 yen into Egyptian pounds, and we got quite a lot of cash to carry out of there. The exchange rate was definitely in our favor here in Egypt.
During our research for the trip I heard that the taxi situation in Cairo (and Egypt in general) is particularly troublesome. Most taxis have no meter, and so you have to haggle over prices every time you ride. In order to avoid a potentially stressful start to our trip I had arranged a ride through the internet and paid in advance, and so we exited the arrivals gate looking for someone holding a sign with my name on it. Unfortunately, no such person was there.
Of course there were plenty of other people standing around looking to make money. But I had already paid for my ride – I just had to find it. There were some desks for taxi services inside the building, but the company that I had reserved didn’t have a signboard there. When we stepped outside to see if the taxi driver was waiting at the curb we could see hundreds of guys standing around, but nobody with a sign for us. Plenty of guys came up to us and said, “Need a taxi?” but each time we had to say no thank you. Back inside we decided to approach the taxi service desk, and they were absolutely ready to arrange a taxi for us. I explained that I had reserved one already, and since I am kind of naturally suspicious in these situations I was really surprised when I gave him my name and he pointed to a list with Arabic writing on it and said, “Ah, here it is right here.”
He guided us out of the building and to a car that was waiting, and then talked a little to the driver who was sitting in the car looking bored. The clerk said that this was our driver and he would take it from there. At this point I still wasn’t entirely sure I was in the taxi that I had reserved – I didn’t want to get to our destination and have to pay again. So I asked the clerk to confirm our hotel name – since I hadn’t told any of these guys our destination yet I figured it was a good test, and luckily the clerk knew our hotel and passed the test. Before closing the door he smiled and said, “If you like sir, you could give me something now for helping you with this situation.” So I passed him a ten pound note (about fifty cents) and he seemed satisfied and waved goodbye as we drove off.
So this was a good example of doing things to try to make your life easier and ending up with the stressful situation anyway. Oh well, it turned out to be good practice for future taxi rides in Egypt.
Our driver got on the road and headed towards western Cairo. Driving in Egypt is a strange experience because people tend to ignore the lanes and drive wherever they feel is best at any given time. There are lines separating each street into distinct lanes of course, but everyone collectively just chooses to ignore them. So on a “three lane road” at any given time you usually have five cars across, which physically is possible because the extra two cars take up all that safety buffer space that is normally a part of the driving experience in other countries. Cars dart in and out and honk and honk and honk, and by the end of our trip we had figured out the code for the honks for the most part. We saw quite a few accidents on the road, and we were even involved in one minor accident ourselves towards the end of our trip. Driving in Egypt is not for wimps.
Our driver was surprisingly zen about the whole thing. One of his hands he kept almost exclusively in his mouth, as he chewed on his nails like some kind of cannibal. He didn’t stop eating his own nails the whole 30 minute drive, while listening to Egyptian pop music and he even managed to take a few phone calls. We kept one eye on the nail-consuming driver and the other eye on the fascinating landscape. Some areas of Cairo we saw looked like strip malls, others like war zones. Huge neighborhoods were made up of broken old red cement buildings, dusted with sand. From our position on the elevated expressway we couldn’t see the lower levels of the buildings but they must have been occupied because each building was decorated with hundreds of dirty satellite dishes arranged haphazardly on top. Some areas of Cairo are probably upscale, but on this particular journey we didn’t have a chance to see them.
We arrived at our hotel, the Safir Hotel, and the driver accepted a small tip and drove off, happy to get back to gnawing on his poor fingernails. We went inside the hotel and had to walk through a security gate and put our bags through an X-ray machine. This turned out to be standard operating procedure for most buildings in Egypt, and a sign that they are taking security quite seriously these days.
We hit a bit of a bump during check-in, when they had us reserved for two nights but we had reserved online for three nights. The clerk asked us to sit down while she made some calls and sorted things out, so we walked around the lobby to kill time. There were some decorations up for Christmas, which caught me a little by surprise because I had heard that Egypt is a primarily Islamic country. There were some events happening in the hotel ballrooms, and most of the people in the lobby seemed to be Egyptian rather than tourists like us. The hotel had an old feel to it, not rundown, but more of a classic feel. I walked by the concierge desk and took a casual look at the price list for taxi rides: $65 USD for a ride to the airport (I had just paid $10 USD), so I was a little suspicious of the other prices for tours of the Pyramids and such. My casual look was apparently not casual enough because soon the concierge came over and tried to sell us on a few package tours.
After a surprisingly long wait we lost patience and went back to the clerk, who said everything was sorted out and we were OK for the three nights. We checked in and the room looked just fine. After a brief freshening up we went back outside to do some exploring.
Our hotel was located in the Dokki area of Cairo. It is just west of the Nile River, and is a bit old and not at all touristy. In fact, we didn’t see many tourists at all, even around our hotel. The neighborhood was pretty run down, with broken streets, dirty parked cars jamming the avenues making it an adventure to cross the streets, lots of shops with mysterious goods lining the shelves, and even some street food down the sidestreets. We loved it. This kind of neighborhood is exactly what we usually look out for when traveling – it feels like the real deal and often you can find the most authentic experiences and delicious food in places like this.
We started our food experience by hitting a koshary restaurant that was recommended on the internet. Koshary is apparently the working man’s meal in Egypt – chickpeas, pasta, rice, spicy vegetables, and topped with garlic oil and tangy vinegar. We entered the place and the cashier pointed us upstairs, and as we sat down we noticed that we were the only foreigners here. The menu was written only in Arabic, but we were saved by the waiter who spoke English to us fluently and recommended their signature dish. We ordered two small plates, and then sat back to wait. I noticed that lots of people were watching us covertly, and the place was filled with younger people, especially couples. When the koshary came we added what we hoped was the right ratio of oil and vinegar and went to town. Very delicious – and very filling. It was a lot more carbohydrates than we normally eat, but what the hell – we’re on vacation!
We paid the bill (about $2 USD) and then went back out on the street to look around some more. We found a few upscale supermarkets that were almost deserted – apparently the prices were too high for the local people but they were quite affordable for tourists. The people everywhere were so nice to us – they called out, “Hello!” (and “Nihao!” to Kuniko – evidently they are more used to Chinese people than Japanese people). Mostly you could tell who was friendly to be friendly and who was friendly to try to sell you something. The longer we stayed in Egypt the better we were at making that distinction quickly, with one notable exception that I’ll talk about later.
In the evening we went back out on the street for dinner, and ended up going to a take-out restaurant that had some delicious looking foods on their menu. The place mainly served kebab and kofta – grilled meats – and the staff were very friendly. They asked about us and where we are from (I always said Canada, just in case). They took a liking to us so they put a bunch of free salads and side dishes into our bag. We found a place to buy alcohol (which is not easy to do in Egypt), and so we brought back the food and two tall cans of cold beer to the hotel for our first dinner in Cairo. As we brought the food and beer through the security check, the staff noticed the alcohol and had me sign a paper saying that I was fully responsible for any bad behavior that happened because I consumed alcohol on their premises. Religious reasons? It was very unusual and a nice snapshot of the social situation there.
The dinner turned out great – the meats were laid out on a bed of fragrant yellow rice and we enjoyed trying all the salads, soups and sauces that they included. We drank two Egyptian beers, Sakkara and Stella. Later Stella turned out to be a frequent companion for our stay in Egypt.
We were pretty tired from all the travel and walking around, so we ended up falling asleep at 8 pm, much earlier than usual. I forgot to hang out the do not disturb sign on our door, so I was startled out of bed when someone started knocking at our door urgently. I groggily answered the door in my pajamas, and a housekeeper handed me a plate with a couple of oranges on it and said “goodnight!” It was an unexpected event to wrap up a busy day. From tomorrow we’ll hit the Pyramids and start the sightseeing.
