Goodbye Underdeveloped Goodness

6/22/10: Cairo, Egypt

Another one of those lasts reared its ugly head today: last day in a non-English speaking, undeveloped country. I only suppose it was fitting that today really tested us in pretty much every aspect of world travel. Let me break down today’s post into categories:

1. Sleeping in uncomfortable, moving objects
2. Finding our cheap accommodation
3. Staying in touch
4. Negotiating for gifts
5. Eating foreign foods
6. Side effects of cheap accommodation

1) Sleeping in uncomfortable, moving objects: In this case, trains. I loved the train ride from Cairo to Luxor, but it appears that they only make that one nice in order to get you to take the train back as well. This one was awful! We only received half-dinners (whereas everyone else around us received the full, delicious smorgasbord), our window wouldn’t close and they washed the outside of it without realizing they were splashing us, our sink hardly worked, and worst of all, the conductor must have been racing Gay Focker in Meet the Parents. Stop, start, stop, start – all throughout the night, waking me from my pleasant sleep.

2) Finding our cheap accommodation: Upon arrival in Cairo, we had our directions to the hostel and I was confident we wouldn’t get lost. Rookie mistake! We stepped out of the station and simply needed to head toward the Hussein Mosque on Azhar street, make a left on Mansouria, make a left on El Aded and we’d be at the hostel. Zhou was still a little groggy (read: grouchy) from the sleepless night before, so this one was on me. I wound up asking over 20 different people – this is no exaggeration – before finding our place. It wound up taking 45 minutes, one cigarette burn on my foot (yes, someone flicked their ash out the car window as I tried to dodge getting swiped by their sideview mirror) and nearly my entire body weight in sweat, but we finally made it. When we entered the hostel and told the guy we had walked from the subway station (as they had said to do on their website), he replied, “Wow! There’s no way I’d ever make that walk myself!”

The view from our hostel's roof.

3) Staying in touch: First step: buy postcards. Second step: write postcards. Third step: mail postcards. Today we tried to mail our postcards. This is actually a rather long story, but in summary we had to go to two different post offices, talk to six different people, overpay, and we still didn’t get to send our postcard to Peru because we didn’t trust that it would get there. Those of you who do actually receive a postcard from Egypt, know that you are lucky to get it. Those of you who don’t, it probably got lost in the mail.

4) Negotiating for gifts: We headed back to Khan El-Khalili, the famous Cairo market, to buy a couple gifts. I can’t say what we were haggling here, but I can say that I’d thought I’d heard every merchant negotiating technique over the past year. Nope. This guy surprised us both by saying if money was a problem, we could have the items for free, as long as we took with us his friendship. What? Zhou, back in her usual role of negotiator, didn’t know what to make of this. I was thinking we’d be able to get these for 50 or 60 EGP, but this comment so flustered us that we let our guard down. We wound up paying 80 EGP, which turned out to be so much that he even threw in a small gift for our generosity. Fortunately, from here on out there is no more haggling.

5) Eating foreign foods: “Have you tried koshari?” No, we hadn’t. Without even asking for explanation of what it was, we were both in. We wound up with a large bowl of mostly recognizable food, but all mashed together in a way we’d never seen before. It was like the three cheese heart attack bowl at KFC, only this one contained macaroni, rice, chickpeas, lots of sauce, corn, onion, weird black balls, and a bunch of random spices, and it was served to us in what looked like a tub for butter. It was actually quite delicious.

6) Side effects of cheap accommodation: Actually, we didn’t book the cheapest accommodation – that one didn’t have air conditioning. We splurged on Arabian Nights Hotel for about $18. We were amazed when we arrived in the room that it had towels, a TV, a fan, an attached bathroom, a refrigerator, a closet, two nightstands, a table, a couple chairs – the list of rare luxuries kept going on and on. The problem? Nothing worked! Ok, the tables and chairs worked, but that was about it. Wifi? Broken. TV? No channels. A/C? Blew hot air 50% of the time. Fan? Out of order. Beds? It felt like we were sleeping directly on its springs. “Aww moment:” at least we had each other.

So that’s it: our lasting memory of the crazy, never-know-what-you’ll-get life we’ve been living for the majority of the past ten months. I sure will miss it.
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Picture of the Day: Satellite dishes here are more popular than fast food dishes in the United States.

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Shop/Walk/Eat Like an Egyptian

6/14/10: Cairo, Egypt

We started the day with a visit to Khan el-Khalili, a huge souk (market) in Cairo. We got straightforward directions from our hostel – “Turn left, just keep going straight, and it’s at the end of the bridge” – and after less than five minutes, came to the foot of the aforementioned bridge. “This place is really close!” I thought excitedly. We walked underneath the bridge to stay out of the sun, simultaneously inching around the huge support pillars and narrowly avoiding being knocked over by any manner of vehicles. The bridge went on for a long time – maybe forever – until it suddenly ended, and we found ourselves on the outskirts of one of the biggest markets in Cairo.

It’s been awhile since we’ve been in a market like this, and I was a teensy bit overwhelmed. Ok, maybe a lot bit overwhelmed. We had a list of gifts we wanted to buy but only managed to buy one before calling it a day. I think I’m losing my shopping edge.

Our other big plan for today was to visit the Egyptian Museum. I didn’t want to walk all the way back there in the heat, so we stood outside the market and tried to hail a taxi. It was so unsuccessful, it’s not even funny. I won’t go through the particulars, but I will say that it was pretty awful. Standing outside at the hottest time of day + trying to communicate with people who are trying to rip you off = NOT fun. We eventually gave up and decided it wasn’t worth the hassle, we’d just walk. I’m not ashamed to admit to you that at this point, I was probably 75% of the way to tears. So we bought me a Fanta Blackcurrant (not as good as Fanta Apple) as a cheer-up drink, and Kevin got himself a 1.5-liter water. The total came to 4 EGP (1 USD = 5.67 EGP), and Kevin handed a five over to the shop owner. The owner dug around for some change, but couldn’t find any. So he handed us a package of crackers. Kevin and I looked at each other bemusedly and then back at the shop owner. He shooed us off, so we left.

We got back to the museum awhile later, and I think Kevin and I were both feeling a bit burnt out from the shopping and exhausted from the heat. I wish I could say we deeply appreciated looking at all of the ancient artifacts and that we are better people for it, but that would be a lie. It’s not the fault of the museum. The museum itself was packed with stuff – almost an incomprehensible amount of stuff – and a lot of it was pretty interesting, but I just don’t think it was our day for focusing. It was also hard to get interested because we don’t know a lot about ancient Egyptian culture and there weren’t very many explanation cards (maybe one for every fifty objects). The ones that they did have contained about one sentence each and looked like they were typed on a typewriter back in the 50′s (which they probably were, now that I think about it). We skipped the mummies section – Kevin because it was too expensive, me because I had “seen” (that is, glanced at for a second) one mummy at another museum and wasn’t too thrilled with that experience. I was pretty sure being in a room with a BUNCH of mummies would probably just make me ill. That kind of thing really creeps me out, I’m not sure why. Oh wait, I know why – because those people died four or five thousand years ago but their bodies are still here fully preserved for us to stare at, and their ghosts are probably wandering around the room resenting the staring and wishing people would just leave them alone. Don’t worry Ramses II, I’m not going in there! Please leave me alone!

After the museum, we walked back to our hostel to pick up our bags and got on the metro to Giza station, where we’d be catching our overnight train to Luxor. I love metros, and Cairo’s was really easy to use and so cheap – just 1 EGP per ride. I insisted that we get to the train station forty-five minutes early, which means we ended up waiting around for our train for over an hour. It was so worth the wait. The train was air conditioned. I’m drooling just thinking about it.

I’ll leave you with our conversation over train dinner.

Z: Looking at this food makes me feel like…NOT eating.
K: WHAT? This is a feast for a king! Now we know what King Tut felt like when he was seven.

I've never seen Kevin so happy.

K: Wow! There’s a piece of MEAT in this pasta! It’s like a pasta surprise!
a few seconds later
K: Oh wait. I put that piece of meat in there earlier and forgot about it.

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Picture of the Day: Tucked into my bunk.

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Cairo: First Impressions

6/12/10: Cairo, Egypt

Traffic
A lot of the places we’ve been have had insane traffic. Kevin, fearless and long-legged, adapted to this very quickly, and he was pretty much immediately able to cross crowded, eight-lane streets with ease. I, slow and panicky, took much longer to adapt. But by the time we got to Vietnam, I could generally cross a street without panicking, though Kevin usually had to wait for me for several minutes on the other side. It’s funny, because we had heard so many horror stories about crossing the streets in Hanoi, but by the time we got there, we had had so much practice that we were pros. Now fast forward five months to today. We walked around the city of Cairo, and I can say that this city is hands down, the absolute scariest place for pedestrians. It’s not because the traffic moves so fast (which it does), it’s not because pedestrians never have the right of way (which we don’t) and it’s not because no one follows the traffic “laws” (which they never do). The thing that makes Cairo ten times scarier than any other city is this: the cars don’t care if they run you over. They cut so close to you that even our no-fail method of crossing streets – following closely behind a local – well, it failed. Doing that here could get you run over. The cars – even when they see you, maybe especially when they see you, never slow down and never stop. There were at least two instances today where I saw my life flashing before my eyes. It’s like a really intense game of Frogger. Except you’re the one who might get smushed.

Isn’t it Hot Under There?!
Being a predominately Muslim country, I’d say from what we’ve seen, about 90% of the women in Cairo hijabs to cover their hair, and maybe another 5% wear burqas. I’m amazed by this. I just can’t fathom how hot it must be under there. This is Egypt. In June. It is NO-JOKE hot. It’s so hot I’m dreaming about cold showers. I’m sure they must be used to it, but to me it still seems crazy.

Kevin Can’t Stop Speaking Spanish
It’s not his fault. But it is pretty funny to see the look on an Egyptian’s face after having an entire conversation with Kevin in English and then at the end hear him casually say “gracias” and wave goodbye.

Aren’t Our Numbers Arabic?
We don’t have internet right now, so I can’t check up on this, but…I’m pretty sure I’ve been told before that our numbers are Arabic. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0. Arabic. So I was shocked today to find out that there are other Arabic numbers. Are these the new Arabic numbers and ours are the old ones? Are these the real Arabic numbers and our numbers not Arabic? Did Dan Brown LIE to me? There’s no end to the questions. But what makes this even more confusing is that some of these numbers look like our numbers, but they don’t symbolize the same value. For instance, a backwards three is our 4. Five looks like our 0, and six looks like our 7. As I learned this, my head immediately started swelling to the point of exploding. So I gave up learning the numbers and passed the sheet to Kevin and told him to memorize them. Hey, that’s what he’s here for.
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Picture of the Day: Our only picture of Cairo thus far.

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