My initial interactions there were great - I made one of my classic spontaneous, and wholly foolish, decisions to hop on the bus at the airport that everyone else was getting on, without a clue as to where it was actually going. This may make even less sense when you consider that these are the kind of busses that are old enough not to really have doors or windows anymore - which is very handy for those who want to get on and off while the bus is still moving - but is slightly terrifying if you happen to be standing in the rusty stairwell with a lop-sided, overweight backpack, watching the asphalt wizz by at 60 KPH. (Kilometers Per Hour - Even Egypt has the sense to recognize the superiority of the metric system. But I digress.)
On that bus, I met a young man whose English was sparse, but after a few questions, he quickly realized I was definately not going the right way. At that point, he not only gave me a ticket (not that anyone checked) and got off the bus with me, he also led me to the "station", (ie, the parking lot/ flea market where the other mini-vans congregate, with the drivers shouting out where they are going, and only leaving when they are full) wrote down instructions to the driver in arabic of where I needed to go, and told me how much the one I needed should cost. I paid as sooon as I got on, but I only had a 20 Egyptian Pound note (about $3.00 US) and the ride cost about five, so when I didn't get my change back, I figured the cabby was trying to make a nice tip off the foreigner. But, as I later learned, no-one in Egypt ever has change, so it took nearly the entirety of the half-hour trip, with money being passed constantly between all the passengers, and the driver, to make sure everyone got their correct change, and for me to get mine. It took one more transfer with the help of a little old man to get me to the now famous Tahir Square.
I knew that the hostel I was staying in was nearby, but I had lost the address. So yet another stranger wound up spending a lot of time on his iphone trying to help me find it, even making a few calls to friends who might have heard of the place. When he didn't have any luck, he even lead me acrosss the square. This sounds like it would be a relatively simple thing to do, but you would be wrong. If you are familiar with the old Atari games Frogger or Freeway, you can get a pretty good idea of what it entails. You dash in between lanes of speeding traffic, with horns constantly blaring, (and I do mean constantly - apparently they use them an a sort of automotive morse-code to convey everything from "I'm coming up from behind you on your left.", to "You're the son of a flea-infested camel.") all the while trying to repress your normal instincts not to dash out into oncoming traffic in good faith that the drivers will slow down, or at least swerve around you.
So far, so good.
Then it started. I paid $55US for a relatively nice hotel that night and the next, thinking it was the same price as Sean's 55 EP hostel. (What a steal!) I'm almost positive I clarified the important detail of "Pounds - right? Not Dollars?" with the front desk, but I couldn't remember for sure. In retrospect, and considering that I later met someone who only paid $33 a night in the same hotel, I probably did ask. It seems to come with traveling in this part of the world that you will be exposed to every conceivable scam, distortion, deception, half-truth, and outright lie designed to part you with your cash. It's almost a game. If you know that no price is ever fixed and that, as a tourist, you will be asked for 5x what anything is worth, (only double if you're a local) then you can start to negotiate a fair price. By the end of the trip, I was the best. (Or worst, depending on your point tof view.) Most street vendors aren't used to someone who will argue over a price for 20 minutes, only to walk away from the transaction. Of course, I like to waste the time of telemarketers, too.
Where it's worst is at the pyramids. I could go on about how majestic they are, and they really are amazingly photogenic, but what most people aren't braced for is the constant badgering you receive there. I had already been warned that they are not out in the middle of the desert as the postcards suggest, (they are actually right on the edge of bustling, uber-smoggy Cairo.) but, good grief, you can't walk ten steps without hearing the words "Hell-O! My Friend!" This then followed by an offer to sell you every conceivable crappy trinket in existence at 5x what it's worth.
But it's not just the trinket guys. Our cab-driver, Sa-id, who we had for the entire day, first dropped us off at his friends camel shop. He took us on the roof and pointed out how far away the pyramids were, and how it would take us all day to walk the 8km between the pyramids. There's a few flaws in that argument that I've picked up from previous experience: A) Camels at their normal pace aren't all that speedy, and B) They will be hand-led by someone walking ahead, anyway. So, after having the price re-re-renegotiated, we finally peeled ourselves away and told Sa-id we'd be back around 1:00. It was, or course, easy to walk between the pyramids, easier to take photos, and a lot cheaper, sans camels.
Thinking about it now, though, and considering that some of those camel guys were hired to beat down anti-Mubarack protesters, having a camel would have been a good way to possibly avoid all the touts who try to give away "free" gifts. Here's a typical interaction:
Tout: "Hell-o, my friend!"
Tourist: (Until now, trying to avoid eye conatct.) "Er...hi."
Tout: "Look, for you, this (cheap crap probably made somewhere even poorer that Egypt and imported for pennies.). Special price!"
Tourist: "No, thank..."
Tout: "But WHY?! This VERY good price! Here... I give to you for (only 3x what it's worth)."
Tourist: "I don't want any..."
Tout: "OK, OK... here, for you... for free!" (If you don't quickly accept, it might be forcibly stuffed in your arms, your bag, or, in the case of beduin style head wraps, shoved on your head.)
Tourist: "Uh... thanks."
Tout: "Baksheesh?" (This is essentially, a "tip". I was there two weeks and never learned the word "yes", but "baksheesh" I picked up in the first couple days, after hearing it about two dozen times.)
At this point, if you don't give a tip approximating at least half the original asking price, you will have your "gift" snatched back, and you will be called something you assume to be highly insulting, of which you have no idea what it is, but in arabic, even sweet nothings sound like a violent argument. (Though I did end up with a free set of postcards from a guy who said he liked me because I reminded him of Chuck Norris. I am a lot of things, but a dopelganger to "Walker - Texas Ranger"? I guess maybe all white people do look alike.)
Then there are the guys who ask you for your ticket. Unsuspecting tourists might assume that they are having their ticket officially checked. They would be wrong, of course, as this is just an attempt to blackmail you into a "tour" (with highly dubious information, by the way) for a generous baksheesh at the end of it in order to reclaim your ticket.
So, where are the police through all this? There are plenty of dark-blue uniformed individuals with automatic rifles hanging about, and I think if I were a con-artist, I might tone it down a bit in front of these men, but alas, they're as bad as the touts. Most of us, seeing a barrier with obvious "Do not enter." markings, universal despite the language they're written in, wouldn't cross for no other reason than to avoid the wrath of the guys with the guns. But never fear, the Tourist Police are here, ushering you over (sometimes with the barrel of the gun, which is a little disconcerting) to peek into places you shouldn't be allowed, all for a little baksheesh. (More often that not I'd ignore them, or at least stiff them for the baksheesh. Not only am I put out by the abuse of power, I figured they weren't going to shoot a tourist over $.50. Of course, that was back when the only recent black marks on the countries tourist industry were a few sharks and coptic church bombings. Now, though, they may have less to loose.) *Note to self - ask Sean next time not to book a hostel down the street from a coptic church.
We endured this throughout the morning, but after waking Sa-id from his nap back at the car, we continued on our way. We were about a half an hour late, since we weren't able to climb into the Great Pyramid, Cheops/ Khufu, until after the hour-long break they give it daily between noon and one. Sa-id seemed a little put out at this. Shaking his head, he told us: "I said 1:00. Now, maybe no time for the others." The others he spoke of were the Pyramid of Djoser and Memphis. The Giza plain is dotted with all sorts of pyramids, built for various higher-ups, but we wanted to see this one since it is considered the world's "earliest large-scale cut stone construction". (Actually, we were told it was "the worlds oldest manmade structure", but my cursory Wikipedia searches afterwards always ruin the fun.) Now, it was a pretty long drive to get there, but I can't help but think that if we were really pressed for time, perhaps along the way we wouldn't have been offered the chance to see his friends gift store, and soon after, a stop at the restraunt of what I assume was yet another friend.
The Djoser pyramid, though somewhat crumbly, is neat for its antiquity, but for my money the best pyramid in Giza is the "Bent" pyramid. Apparently, an early attempt at making pyramids as we know them somehow went haywire, and the sides of this one ended up a bit... crooked, hence the name. I can't help but wonder how, with an investment of what must have been a fortune, plus the efforts of hundreds of people, over the course of who-knows-how-many years, it came to pass that someone didn't notice that the thing was wonky while being built and try to fix it. I can only assume that at some point, someone said to the head of the project: "Sir... uh, doesn't it seems like it's a little, er... well... off, somehow?" But, contractors being contractors, I'm sure they had already been paid and were biding their time in the hope the pharo would be long dead before anyone noticed.
Memphis was.... meh. Kind of creepy, actually, as there was a LOT of security for some reason. Being surrounded by manned gun-nests, no matter how bored the gaurds look, doesn't lend itself to a very peaceful stroll through the antiquities park.
Through all of this, though, I was aware that Egypt is, like all places, a result of it's current socio-political and economic status. Culture plays a part, of course, but given the chance, I believe most people probably don't enjoy trying to pawn off crap merchandise to aggravated tourists. For me, seeing the parallels between recently deposed President of Tunisia Ben Ali, and soon to be deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubark (though I couldn't know it at the time) were striking. Both were western-friendly dictators who had been in office for approximately three decades. Both had been suspected of skimming quite a lot off the top of the national economy for their own benefit. Both had a dissatified populace, especially among the young men and women who couldn't find work, regardless of their level of education. And both had their creepy Dick Clarkian never-aging faces plastered over every wall and in every shop in the country. Few people I talked to were happy with Mubarak or his administration, (some were afraid to talk about it for fear of retribution) so when I got an email from home, saying "I hope you weren't anywhere near that guy who lit himself on fire in Cairo yesterday." I had a feeling that, like Tunisia, that one solitary act could very well be the spark that would ignite the flames of revolution. (Self-immolation pun intended.)
Turns out, I was right.
