Day 1: Cairo "Brown sugar how come you taste so good..." - Rolling Stones
4/14/2007 Cairo
So we land at the Cairo International Airport...we're obviously in the old terminal, cuz things certainly don't look hi-tech. We quickly breeze through immigration, since we'd already obtained our visas at the Egyptian consulate in Houston. I had to pee so I make my way to the bathroom. When I enter, the bathroom is empty, but as soon as I close the stall door, someone comes in. So, I finish up, and sure enough there's a bathroom attendant. She turns on the water and looks at me expectantly. And thus marks my introduction to the art of baksheesh.
Baksheesh is tipping in Egypt. I don't remember any of the other Arabic words I learned except for Baksheesh, and boy did we have to hand out a lot of it. People don't necessarily have to do much of anything for you to expect baksheesh. Someone would stick a hand out for simply giving directions, or to take a picture of you, or if you take their picture. It's not just a thing for foreigners either, it's simply a way of life in such a poor country.
Anyway, back to the bathroom attendant...I hadn't had the chance to change out my money, so all I had were US dollars. I handed her a buck. The exchange rate is $1 to 5.69 Egyptian Pounds. I basically gave the woman 5 bucks (EGP) to turn on the water for me and not hand me a damn paper towel. Oh well.
So I go back to the baggage carousel where Kerrie is looking out for my bag. Some of the suitcases some folks brought back could fit a human body; I've never seen such large suitcases. Egypt Air must not have a stringent weight limit like American and Continental. It takes about 30 minutes for my bags to finally come off.
I change out some money, we grab a cab, and take the first of many of Mr. Toad's Wild Rides into the heart of Cairo. I can't even begin to describe Cairo traffic. We went the wrong way down a one way street leaving the airport...and cars were following! There's be three lanes of traffic but 5 rows of cars. We made a game of spotting cars without any dents. Drivers just didn't give a shit. They were practically aiming for pedestrians. At night, no one drives with their lights on. They'll flash 'em at you to let you know their coming, but that's about it.
We arrive at the Victoria Hotel where we are supposed to meet the rest of the Intrepid Travel group as well as our group leader. There's 11 people in our group (Intrepid limits its groups to 12), plus the group leader :
Kerrie - my college friend and old roommate who was currently lacking fresh clothes and a change of underwear.
Mohammed - Egyptian group leader. It took him a coupla days to fully warm up to us, but after that, it was like we'd known him for ages; the guy is brilliant.
Kate - Aussie. She was on her fourth week of vacation, and the fifth is taking place right now in Libya (long story, don't ask). She was amazed that Americans only get 2 weeks (if that) of vacation.
Antoniette and Nicole - co-workers from San Diego. Fun fact: Antoniette's birthday is the day before mine, so I wasn't the oldest person in the group.
Onyinye, Kevin, Devak, Henna, Kendra and John - College friends. I called them "The Doctors without Borders," even though only 4 of 'em were wrapping up medical school (John and Kendra are Engineers). Ony, Kevin, and Devak had just been in Nigeria working at a hospital.
We do the "hellos" and "nice to meet yas" and after a brief respite, head off to our first meal together. We did a bit of walking first, and let me tell you, it was not exactly fun dodging the cars. For some reason, we were always walking in the street, but hey, we were just following Mohamed. Anyway, we end up having to sit at three separate tables. Mohamed sat with Tamer (I'd write it out phonetically, but I'm not sure I ever really pronounced it correctly), who I think of as his little sidekick...Tamer would coordinate some of the arrangements while Mohamed was out on the road with us. Kerrie sat with three of the doctors without borders, and i sat with the rest of the group. Three of us ordered the "mixed grill" which was an assortment of meats and just way too much damn food. One plate would have been enough for all three of us. We actually felt guilty about not finishing (I should have taken a picture to show just how much meat was on the plate). So after we eat like pigs, we head off to the Al-Azhar Mosque and Islamic Cairo.
The Al-Azhar Mosque has been around since AD 970. It was once one of the world's most pre-imminent learning centers. We all had to remove our shoes to enter the mosque, and the women had to be covered practically from head to toe. Of course since we weren't sporting the proper attire, we had to use the community burkahs. No telling how many skin cells were left over inside those robes from previous visitors...yes, I think about things like that...but not too hard, since that would distract me from fully enjoying my vacation.
After we leave Al-Azhar Mosque, we tour the rest of Islamic Cairo, which is no more Islamic than the rest of Cairo, but gets its name as a tribute to the city's most important mosque. We make our way down this long cobbled street with shops and vendors along both sides. We try this nasty assed black hibiscus "beer" that tasted like watered down Jaggermeister (I don't do licorice flavored beverages). Muslims are not so big into the alcohol, so they have different "beers" that're sans alcohol. Oh and check this out, the guys selling the beverages walk around with the vats of beverage strapped to their backs, and they carry drinking glasses around with them, and rinse them out (with what I'm so sure is purified water) after each use. Yes, we drank from the community glasses. Very sanitary, I know. That didn't really register with me at the time I tried it, but when in Rome...
Somewhere along the way, a small child latched onto me. The kid couldn't have been more than 2 years old...That's the other thing, there were a ton of unaccompanied kids running around. Okay, back to the kid, I guess she was trying to sell me a pack of tissues (there were a lot of people selling those). I only had big bills at that point so I had to shoo her off: "Sorry little girl, my name ain't Angelina so I'm not looking to adopt a child."
After Mohamed gives us the history of Islamic Cairo and yadda yadda yadda...we're off to Khan el-Khalili, Cairo's famous bazaar. The bazaar was a trip. I was getting calls of "Hey My Sistah" and "Hey Brown Sugar." Seriously, someone would call me Brown Sugar every five minutes. Some people had questions about whether or not I was Egyptian...most of 'em were convinced I was Nubian or at least of Nubian heritage, which I very well may be. I guess they don't see a lot of black people with my skin tone, because some of 'em were astounded that "you're my color!" Some shop keepers would just refer to me as "My Color," as if it were a nickname or something.
The bazaar takes up a huge area; it was at least a few square blocks long. Most of the shops sold the same thing, and there were a lot of "kiosks" (and I do use the world loosely here) set up that sold the same scarves and t-shirts as some of the shops, only you can usually bargain easier with the street vendors. Now when you approach someone, they'll have two prices in their mind: the price for Americans/Europeans and the prices for everyone else. As soon as they find out you're American, they quote you a jacked up the price. Now, when I was shopping, I wasn't thinking in terms of USD, but EGP. I wouldn't cough up 5 EGP for something (even though it amounted to less than a dollar) unless I thought it was close enough in price to what a local would pay for it.
Kerrie and I decided we didn't want to have to be subjected to the community robes again, so we shopped around for some scarves. I stopped at one of the street vendors who promptly quoted me a price of 100 EGP. Motherfucker, you must be crazy. I said 20. He came down some more. I kept saying 20. He came down a little bit more. At this point, I was annoyed. I said 20 was my final offer and once he saw I was serious, he quickly agreed. I start pulling out my 20, but hold up...You went from 100 pounds to 20 pounds without really batting an eye. Bet I can get it for 10. So I tell him I changed my mind, since I can't afford 20 pounds. "But I saw you had 20 pounds." Oh, you wanna call me out, okay, you're about to lose this sale..."yeah, well I need that for the Taxi." Of course he agreed to take the 10, but by then it was too late. If he'd sell for 10 pounds, everyone will sell for 10 pounds. Kerrie and I came across these 2 sisters selling scarves.
The price was right and they were hilarious. They brought the funny, so they got the money.
We make our way to a previously agreed upon bar/cafe to meet up with the rest of the group. At the time, only Mohamed, Tamer, and Kate had made it. Mohamed had ordered a sheesha pipe, which is a big custom in Egypt (although we didn't see that many women smoking).
In front of most stores, at almost every restaurant, you could order a sheesha pipe, which is used to smoke flavored tobacco. It was my first time trying the sheesha...it's surprisingly smooth. It's not like smoking out of any other "water pipe" one may or may not have tried in her youth. You don't feel it when you inhale. I knew I had to take one home...more on that later.
We left the bazaar to check out the fabulous Sufi dancers. As we were leaving, we were practically chased by this woman begging for money. She was holding a little baby, his little arm was wrapped up, it was kinda heartbreaking. Tamer was like "you have to walk faster" because apparently, it's the norm for people to bandage up their kids to gain sympathy from foreigners.
Okay, back to the good stuff, we went to see the Sufi Dancers a.k.a. the Whirling Dervishes. I can't remember the name of the place we saw them, but it was so kool. There's an Islamic sect that spins as a way to get closer to God, and I must say, they must be very close because these guys would spin in place non-stop for like 15 minutes, while spinning off different layers. Had it been me, I would have unleashed a stream of vomit onto the stage like you haven't seen since The Exorcist. I wish I had thought to record a video of it, but I do have a few pics that get the point across. In addition to the actual dancers there were also musicians on stage. One guy, who will forever be known as "Finger Cymbals" was tearing it up. You can even tell by the pictures he was really into it. Kerrie decided that if there was an award for "Little Miss Sunshine," Finger Cymbals would definitely get it.
It was pretty late by the time we left the Dervishes (around 9 o'clock) but some of us had gotten hungry. Mohamed took Me, Kerrie, and 4 of the Doctors without Borders to a local restaurant. I remember Spider-Man 2 was on the tube. Mohamed left after a few minutes to take care of some things and the rest of us dined on Egyptian cuisine. The six of us ate for 25 EGP. That's less than $5 US for six people to eat a meal, how awesome is that?
It was on our way back to the hotel that we realized that the only time you saw headlights was when someone was flashing them as they were about to run you over.
Kevin and I almost got trampled by a donkey...and so marks the end of our first night in Egypt.
4/14/2007 Cairo
So we land at the Cairo International Airport...we're obviously in the old terminal, cuz things certainly don't look hi-tech. We quickly breeze through immigration, since we'd already obtained our visas at the Egyptian consulate in Houston. I had to pee so I make my way to the bathroom. When I enter, the bathroom is empty, but as soon as I close the stall door, someone comes in. So, I finish up, and sure enough there's a bathroom attendant. She turns on the water and looks at me expectantly. And thus marks my introduction to the art of baksheesh.
Baksheesh is tipping in Egypt. I don't remember any of the other Arabic words I learned except for Baksheesh, and boy did we have to hand out a lot of it. People don't necessarily have to do much of anything for you to expect baksheesh. Someone would stick a hand out for simply giving directions, or to take a picture of you, or if you take their picture. It's not just a thing for foreigners either, it's simply a way of life in such a poor country.
Anyway, back to the bathroom attendant...I hadn't had the chance to change out my money, so all I had were US dollars. I handed her a buck. The exchange rate is $1 to 5.69 Egyptian Pounds. I basically gave the woman 5 bucks (EGP) to turn on the water for me and not hand me a damn paper towel. Oh well.
So I go back to the baggage carousel where Kerrie is looking out for my bag. Some of the suitcases some folks brought back could fit a human body; I've never seen such large suitcases. Egypt Air must not have a stringent weight limit like American and Continental. It takes about 30 minutes for my bags to finally come off.
I change out some money, we grab a cab, and take the first of many of Mr. Toad's Wild Rides into the heart of Cairo. I can't even begin to describe Cairo traffic. We went the wrong way down a one way street leaving the airport...and cars were following! There's be three lanes of traffic but 5 rows of cars. We made a game of spotting cars without any dents. Drivers just didn't give a shit. They were practically aiming for pedestrians. At night, no one drives with their lights on. They'll flash 'em at you to let you know their coming, but that's about it.
We arrive at the Victoria Hotel where we are supposed to meet the rest of the Intrepid Travel group as well as our group leader. There's 11 people in our group (Intrepid limits its groups to 12), plus the group leader :
Kerrie - my college friend and old roommate who was currently lacking fresh clothes and a change of underwear.
Mohammed - Egyptian group leader. It took him a coupla days to fully warm up to us, but after that, it was like we'd known him for ages; the guy is brilliant.
Kate - Aussie. She was on her fourth week of vacation, and the fifth is taking place right now in Libya (long story, don't ask). She was amazed that Americans only get 2 weeks (if that) of vacation.
Antoniette and Nicole - co-workers from San Diego. Fun fact: Antoniette's birthday is the day before mine, so I wasn't the oldest person in the group.
Onyinye, Kevin, Devak, Henna, Kendra and John - College friends. I called them "The Doctors without Borders," even though only 4 of 'em were wrapping up medical school (John and Kendra are Engineers). Ony, Kevin, and Devak had just been in Nigeria working at a hospital.
We do the "hellos" and "nice to meet yas" and after a brief respite, head off to our first meal together. We did a bit of walking first, and let me tell you, it was not exactly fun dodging the cars. For some reason, we were always walking in the street, but hey, we were just following Mohamed. Anyway, we end up having to sit at three separate tables. Mohamed sat with Tamer (I'd write it out phonetically, but I'm not sure I ever really pronounced it correctly), who I think of as his little sidekick...Tamer would coordinate some of the arrangements while Mohamed was out on the road with us. Kerrie sat with three of the doctors without borders, and i sat with the rest of the group. Three of us ordered the "mixed grill" which was an assortment of meats and just way too much damn food. One plate would have been enough for all three of us. We actually felt guilty about not finishing (I should have taken a picture to show just how much meat was on the plate). So after we eat like pigs, we head off to the Al-Azhar Mosque and Islamic Cairo.
The Al-Azhar Mosque has been around since AD 970. It was once one of the world's most pre-imminent learning centers. We all had to remove our shoes to enter the mosque, and the women had to be covered practically from head to toe. Of course since we weren't sporting the proper attire, we had to use the community burkahs. No telling how many skin cells were left over inside those robes from previous visitors...yes, I think about things like that...but not too hard, since that would distract me from fully enjoying my vacation.
After we leave Al-Azhar Mosque, we tour the rest of Islamic Cairo, which is no more Islamic than the rest of Cairo, but gets its name as a tribute to the city's most important mosque. We make our way down this long cobbled street with shops and vendors along both sides. We try this nasty assed black hibiscus "beer" that tasted like watered down Jaggermeister (I don't do licorice flavored beverages). Muslims are not so big into the alcohol, so they have different "beers" that're sans alcohol. Oh and check this out, the guys selling the beverages walk around with the vats of beverage strapped to their backs, and they carry drinking glasses around with them, and rinse them out (with what I'm so sure is purified water) after each use. Yes, we drank from the community glasses. Very sanitary, I know. That didn't really register with me at the time I tried it, but when in Rome...
Somewhere along the way, a small child latched onto me. The kid couldn't have been more than 2 years old...That's the other thing, there were a ton of unaccompanied kids running around. Okay, back to the kid, I guess she was trying to sell me a pack of tissues (there were a lot of people selling those). I only had big bills at that point so I had to shoo her off: "Sorry little girl, my name ain't Angelina so I'm not looking to adopt a child."
After Mohamed gives us the history of Islamic Cairo and yadda yadda yadda...we're off to Khan el-Khalili, Cairo's famous bazaar. The bazaar was a trip. I was getting calls of "Hey My Sistah" and "Hey Brown Sugar." Seriously, someone would call me Brown Sugar every five minutes. Some people had questions about whether or not I was Egyptian...most of 'em were convinced I was Nubian or at least of Nubian heritage, which I very well may be. I guess they don't see a lot of black people with my skin tone, because some of 'em were astounded that "you're my color!" Some shop keepers would just refer to me as "My Color," as if it were a nickname or something.
The bazaar takes up a huge area; it was at least a few square blocks long. Most of the shops sold the same thing, and there were a lot of "kiosks" (and I do use the world loosely here) set up that sold the same scarves and t-shirts as some of the shops, only you can usually bargain easier with the street vendors. Now when you approach someone, they'll have two prices in their mind: the price for Americans/Europeans and the prices for everyone else. As soon as they find out you're American, they quote you a jacked up the price. Now, when I was shopping, I wasn't thinking in terms of USD, but EGP. I wouldn't cough up 5 EGP for something (even though it amounted to less than a dollar) unless I thought it was close enough in price to what a local would pay for it.
Kerrie and I decided we didn't want to have to be subjected to the community robes again, so we shopped around for some scarves. I stopped at one of the street vendors who promptly quoted me a price of 100 EGP. Motherfucker, you must be crazy. I said 20. He came down some more. I kept saying 20. He came down a little bit more. At this point, I was annoyed. I said 20 was my final offer and once he saw I was serious, he quickly agreed. I start pulling out my 20, but hold up...You went from 100 pounds to 20 pounds without really batting an eye. Bet I can get it for 10. So I tell him I changed my mind, since I can't afford 20 pounds. "But I saw you had 20 pounds." Oh, you wanna call me out, okay, you're about to lose this sale..."yeah, well I need that for the Taxi." Of course he agreed to take the 10, but by then it was too late. If he'd sell for 10 pounds, everyone will sell for 10 pounds. Kerrie and I came across these 2 sisters selling scarves.
The price was right and they were hilarious. They brought the funny, so they got the money.
We make our way to a previously agreed upon bar/cafe to meet up with the rest of the group. At the time, only Mohamed, Tamer, and Kate had made it. Mohamed had ordered a sheesha pipe, which is a big custom in Egypt (although we didn't see that many women smoking).
In front of most stores, at almost every restaurant, you could order a sheesha pipe, which is used to smoke flavored tobacco. It was my first time trying the sheesha...it's surprisingly smooth. It's not like smoking out of any other "water pipe" one may or may not have tried in her youth. You don't feel it when you inhale. I knew I had to take one home...more on that later.
We left the bazaar to check out the fabulous Sufi dancers. As we were leaving, we were practically chased by this woman begging for money. She was holding a little baby, his little arm was wrapped up, it was kinda heartbreaking. Tamer was like "you have to walk faster" because apparently, it's the norm for people to bandage up their kids to gain sympathy from foreigners.
Okay, back to the good stuff, we went to see the Sufi Dancers a.k.a. the Whirling Dervishes. I can't remember the name of the place we saw them, but it was so kool. There's an Islamic sect that spins as a way to get closer to God, and I must say, they must be very close because these guys would spin in place non-stop for like 15 minutes, while spinning off different layers. Had it been me, I would have unleashed a stream of vomit onto the stage like you haven't seen since The Exorcist. I wish I had thought to record a video of it, but I do have a few pics that get the point across. In addition to the actual dancers there were also musicians on stage. One guy, who will forever be known as "Finger Cymbals" was tearing it up. You can even tell by the pictures he was really into it. Kerrie decided that if there was an award for "Little Miss Sunshine," Finger Cymbals would definitely get it.
It was pretty late by the time we left the Dervishes (around 9 o'clock) but some of us had gotten hungry. Mohamed took Me, Kerrie, and 4 of the Doctors without Borders to a local restaurant. I remember Spider-Man 2 was on the tube. Mohamed left after a few minutes to take care of some things and the rest of us dined on Egyptian cuisine. The six of us ate for 25 EGP. That's less than $5 US for six people to eat a meal, how awesome is that?
It was on our way back to the hotel that we realized that the only time you saw headlights was when someone was flashing them as they were about to run you over.
Kevin and I almost got trampled by a donkey...and so marks the end of our first night in Egypt.
Labels: Vacation Day 1 of 8
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