EGYPT
19th-27th Feb 2019
LUXOR
"I'll be back to self-navigating when I go through Egypt so it won't be as much of an easy ride as I've had through Jordan, however I'm hoping it will be cheaper."
That's how I ended my last blog. I'll begin this one by stating that Egyptians are money grabbing bastards.
My plane from Amman to Cairo was delayed by thirty minutes, then for an over an hour I was sitting on the second plane waiting to fly to Luxor before all the passengers were taken back to the terminal for some unexplained reason. I finally arrived two hours later than scheduled. There were no SIM cards available in either airport and the visa process in Cairo had been a little confusing, so overall I'd found my entry into Egypt to be needlessly fraught with difficulty.
I accept that whenever I've been to a new country it's always taken me at least day or two to feel settled, but I don't think I'll get to that stage in Egypt. You can't go anywhere outside your hotel without it costing a bomb, because everyone has their hand out. Having to so constantly and repeatedly say no (or 'la') and worry about whether they'll be some unstated fee, simply for taking a piss or being given directions, really taints being here and makes you feel reluctant to go anywhere. A few locals have complained about the lack of tourists they get here, blaming unjustified concerns about safety. I feel safer than western media might have you believe Egypt is, although I feel more at risk than I have in any other country. But that isn't the point. Everywhere you go, the bombardment of people expecting money and tips is really overwhelming and offputting, so not only would I think twice about ever coming back, I'm also intending to leave sooner than I'd originally planned. So, at least in part, the Egyptians are unknowingly their own downfall when it comes to any lack of tourism. They seem to see a white man and think he's an endless source of money, as though I have an infinite bank balance and no concern over my outgoings. Basically, if anyone approaches you they want your money - simple as. Many will begin actually delivering some kind of service without stating any price, for example by offering to take a picture of you then later demanding payment, or by offering 3 minutes of advice at the Kings Valley which you'd assume was a kind gesture and free-of-charge but to his mind is worth £7.50. WiFi at the hotel wasn't free like EVERY OTHER HOTEL EVER, they wanted ten dollars (I refused). On my first day in Luxor I needed to find a barber so when a horse/carriage driver offered to take me there for a quid I accepted, but this turned into a £30 day tour that I felt was impossible to escape at the time, along with £50 of unwanted souvenirs as he'd taken me to one of those high pressure tourist shops... At the Kings Valley, a man working (hanging about) in one particular tomb held his hand out as I left, assuming I'd give him some cash for the fuck-all service he gave me - you're already being paid to do this job, that's why I paid an entrance fee, why are you expecting more... I went to the toilet at the Kings Valley and a fella came in, again expecting money, again for doing fuck-all (except watching me take a piss) - it's not like there was a sign outside saying there's a charge. I actually refused to give this bloke any money, sick of it... The guy who drove me round on the west bank of Luxor that day charged £40 and when I gave a £5 tip he complained it wasn't enough. FUCK OFF. No one's paying me extra to do my job, if you wanted more you should have stated a higher price. A tip is supposed to be for particularly good service, it should not be expected and certainly shouldn't be complained about.
I'll try to leave it there for the ranting about money, unless it's a necessary detail in describing where I've been and what I've been doing......
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| luxor temple |
So on the first night in Luxor, after refusing to pay the hotel for WiFi, I needed to go find a SIM card and an ATM in the town. To all intents and purposes it had been a normal, successful transaction at the first ATM, except for the complete invisibility of the cash it was supposed to deliver (not sure if I'll be charged that £50 or not) - then I kept finding other ATM's that neither had touchscreen facility nor any buttons down the sides, so how the fuck do they work!? I couldn't get them to. A really nice Christian dude walked me further into the town and into a proper bank where thankfully I did get my hands on the necessary cash - he was the one exception to the 'money grabbing bastards' argument actually, as he didn't expect any payment for his help (I did however give him £2.50). I'd been needlessly concerned that he would lead me off somewhere with bad intentions.
First full day and I needed to find a barbers like I said already, so that horse/carriage driver, Akmed, took me to the place where he gets his hair cuts. He waited with me and offered to go over to Karnak temple - I agreed because this was somewhere I'd planned to see, but we never discussed price (I asked but he just said "you not worry about price").
Karnak temple was really impressive and the tour guide there made it better, he took me all the way to the far side where surprisingly very few other tourists went, meaning it was really peaceful and nice to be there, plus he explained what lots of the hieroglyphs mean (for example; the god Horus, how walking represents life, how frequently an offering of something is being made to the gods or king, how frequently you see the 'key of life' as he described it). His name was Middo so I wanted to get a photo of us together.
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| taken by akmed. just a few minutes before taking me to buy £50 of souvenirs. |
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| courtyard @karnak temple |
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| lots of the temple is damaged because of roman era fighting between religions |
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| The two Middo's |
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| the original entrance, at the rear of the site. karnak temple dates back further and further the more you walk into it. |
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| king tut @karnak temple |
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| looking proper chuffed with me columns |
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| i think the tour guide said there used to be a roof, but it was destroyed... maybe that's not true. |
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| towards the front (visitors entrance) |
I returned to Akmed and asked him to take me to the mummification museum, which ended up being quite disappointing and I wasn't allowed to take photos there. Over the course of the day, he'd become quite insistent on his suggestion that I went to his house that night to smoke/drink and have a meal with his family. I came up with the excuse that I had some work to do on my laptop, but he didn't buy it and, after dropping me back to the hotel at 6pm, said he'd return to collect me at 9pm... He'd spent so much time throughout the day warning me of various tricks and scams that Egyptians may try on me - including one which had already been attempted, whereby a local says he's seen you in the hotel because he works there, when actually he doesn't, and asks if you want to go somewhere with him. Akmed could have been totally legit and just genuinely looking out for me, but I couldn't know that for sure; actually I was wondering whether he was saying all this to cover his own back and make himself seem trustworthy, so combined with such insistence about getting me (a bloke he's just met) to go round to his house, nahh I wasn't feeling safe - yet didn't know a way out of it. He still hadn't given me a price nor taken any money off me for his day's work (I did try to pay him), so he would be coming at 9pm to get his payment at the very least. Spent some time trying to research the possibility of the whole house invite thing being a scam but nothing came up, so I asked one of the staff in the hotel for his opinion. He said he couldn't know for sure but eventually together we concocted a plan in which I gave 400 Egyptian Pounds to the hotel, for them to pass on to Akmed when he inevitably entered the hotel that night pissed off that I'd let him down. We agreed they'd say I wasn't feeling well and had gone to sleep. All well and good until 9:30pm when the phone in my room starting ringing - the guy at reception telling me that Akmed wanted more money and was waiting for me downstairs. Fuck that. I'm not seeing him now. I got the reception dude to ask how much and then come get the further 200 off me - problem solved. I just made sure to keep my head down every time I left the hotel after that, because Akmed operated from just across the street. Was annoying how a £1 trip to the barbers turned into over £150 that day (transport+souvenirs+temple+guide+etc.etc.) and then having to hide in the hotel at night. Karnak temple was much more impressive than I'd imagined though, so that's good and I'd have gone there and to the mummy museum at some point anyway as both were on my plans. I also planned to see Luxor temple but it was so close to my hotel, pretty much across the street, that I could see most of it without ever actually going in and paying for a ticket.
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| the kings valley over on the other side of the nile. pic taken from out the back of the mummy museum. |
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| luxor temple |
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| my watch tower... never told the hotel staff that, thanks to me never putting the chair back in the room, it did eventually become quite severely stained with bird shit. |
Then for the main reason why I'd come to Luxor - the valley of the kings (or 'kings valley') over on the west bank of the Nile (note: local pronunciation is "neel"). I think more than twenty tombs can be found here, I entered four including the one which houses the actual mummy of King Tutankhamun! You weren't allowed to take any pictures of the site, but I did sneak a photo in one of the other tombs, as well as the surrounding desert hills. Really cool to walk down into actual tombs with a shit ton of real hieroglyphs.
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| (on way to kings valley. the west bank of the nile at luxor was more peaceful than the east) |
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| on way to kings val. |
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| doesnt really show off how good the tombs were. had to take this quick from round a corner where no-one could see me. |
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| the actual valley of the kings |
My driver, Mohammed - who had followed me across from the east bank on the ferry clearly desperate for business - then took me to another high pressure tourist shop (£20) and onto Medinat Habu temple (entry + unwanted guide £14). After that I told him I needed to go somewhere cheap so he took me to a couple of really big statues (free).
CAIRO/GIZA
I got to the check-in desk at Luxor airport to be told that my reservation had been cancelled. The website I used to buy the ticket had emailed me to request that I re-entered my card details, for some kind of security reason (not even because the payment had been unsuccessful) - but I don't check every single email I get for everything I book, so didn't know. The airport staff asked me to wait three hours for a later flight. Fortunately, they actually let you smoke in the cafe at the check-in area and when I went to the toilet I was really surprised to see a sign that made a joke about the inevitability that people will smoke there. In spite of this flight I'd booked supposedly now being full, they did end up managing to get me a ticket for it and rushed me through security, only for it to be delayed anyway. EgyptAir is a joke.
Couldn't ask for better service from the staff at Mena Inn, who collected me from the airport and drove 1hr to reach Giza then offered the choice between a first floor or fourth floor room, depending how decent I wanted the view of the pyramids to be from my balcony. Opted for the fourth floor, where I could watch the pyramids light show each night for free.
The dude running the hotel was so friendly and, after I spent the first day organising my upcoming route through Europe, he accompanied me on the second day for a tour of the three Giza pyramids and the sphinx, twice rescuing me from scammers. I have to admit that, while the pyramids were really impressive and surprisingly big when I first lay eyes on them from the hotel balcony, they didn't get any more impressive when viewed up-close. As fascinating as the history is and the possibility of an even more ancient civilisation having built them pre-Great Flood, they are, ultimately, some towered up rocks. It's not like you go onto the Giza plateau and suddenly the rocks turn to chocolate. But nevertheless, touching and partially climbing the pyramids was a good bucket-list experience, along with actually entering the biggest one and ascending the steep shafts to enter the kings chamber inside. You weren't allowed to take photo's of the inside but I sneaked a couple of low-res pics of the shafts on my phone and have included a photo off Google of the chamber. Don't know why I was surprised by how hot it gets in there - after all, the builders probably didn't install aircon.
On day three I woke up with wet shit in my pants. Not even had a bad dream or anything. Just a mystical midnight bum leak...
Went on a full day self-guided tour of Cairo, albeit with much hassle from the five taxi drivers I needed. First stop was Fustat park, where some guy doing the maintenance stopped me not even a quarter of the way into the park and said I couldn't walk any further for some unexplained reason - whatever, it wasn't very interesting there.
It took me fifteen minutes of walking around the citadel to realise that I was walking around the citadel. I thought it was a specific group of buildings within the area I'd purchased a ticket for, but eventually I clocked that the whole area was the citadel. Mong. So within that area I'd planned to visit the Al-Gawhara Palace, but it turned out to be an asbestos ridden collapsing deathtrap surrounded in scaffolding, so I went to the Muhammed Ali mosque instead. I say that as though it was a logical sequence of events. Actually I visited the mosque first, thinking it was the palace. Generally just very confused by this whole area, clearly.
Possible highlight of the day was the beautiful Al-Azhar park and having lunch at the lakeside restaurant there. Never been to a greener or more lush looking park. Proper nice.
The Egyptian Museum was quite good too. I paid extra to take pictures inside but didn't realise you still weren't allowed to photo the mummies. A guy came over and got me to delete the pic he saw me take, but he didn't know I had another; shown below, this mummy looks like he's waving and is from about 3,500 years ago. It's easy, especially when I've seen so many ancient things in the last few months, to lose sight of just how much time that is. It sounds a lot anyway, but I've been thinking, that's like living to 30 - which I've not even done yet - and then repeating life 116 times! How fucking long would that take... (Answer is 3,500 years. But how mad long is that.) I also saw the genuine gold mask they buried King Tut with, again I couldn't take a photo of it but they had some others of less famous people, so I've included a picture of one of those for reference. Maybe equally as interesting was watching some Egyptian woman do an amazing drawing - check it...
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| I reckon that's how Josh will look by the time he's 50 and clocked his billionth visit to the Nags. |
Rach was going to video call me so I could watch Forest v Derby on her tele, but she went out to watch it instead. I just kept up with the BBC text commentary.
On what would be my final full day outside of Europe, I got a tour via the hotel to go see the Red Pyramid, which to my disappointment wasn't red at all, as well as Zoser Pyramid, which is even older than the Giza pyramids supposedly. I was also taken to the town that now sits where Memphis used to - some famous ancient city that I hadn't heard of, where the driver got me a glass of sugar-cane juice that was actually quite tasty and healthy, before taking me to a small museum which housed the remains of a massive statue of Ramesses II. Went inside another tomb at one of the smaller pyramids at the Zoser site.
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| "bent pyramid" about 200m from the red pyramid.. my driver was saying something about the engineer/architect was the king's daughter's husband so, while if anyone else made such a fuck-up they'd have been killed, he got to have another go and made the red pyramid... at least that's what i understood. |
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| @ red pyramid |
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| EGYPT: The Land of Money Grabbing @ memphis |
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| The first ever pyramid. Supposedly. |
Sure, there's loads of cool things to see in Egypt. But you have to constantly dodge locals and their tricks, they give you nothing but hassle. Made for quite a stressful time that would otherwise have been really good. I don't rate being guilted into giving tips - I'm sorry that you have six kids you're struggling to feed, but here's an idea: don't have six kids. Wherever possible, get around by Uber, it will cost about three times less on average than the taxi's on the streets. The difficulty with that, however, is even if you book an Uber, the driver will probably ring you and only be able to speak Arabic, then drive off when he can't locate you (in spite of you having marked your precise location on the app). Plus you're probably wanting a taxi from an area where the locals know tourists want taxi's, so good luck putting them off while you wait for your possibly-never-arriving Uber ride. Still, I'm happy I came here and saw the Giza pyramids, as well as some other interesting stuff. Amazing to have actually gone inside them. It's just that I probably wouldn't come back to Egypt and a part of me is relieved to be going into Europe, where it'll hopefully be less manic and hassly.
RATINGS:
local food: 5/10
western food (quality & availability): 8/10
cigarettes quality: 8/10
cost/general cheapness: 5/10
friendliness towards tourists: 10/10 on face value, 2/10 genuine
easiness to get around solo: N.A. (just flew between two places)
english speaking ability: 8/10
beauty/nature: 7/10
things to see and do: 9.5/10
relaxing: 2/10
girls hotness: 2/10
girls willingness: N.A.
likelihood of re-visiting: 2/10
