Cairo for the first time

Cairo, Egypt

7th November 2009

Today I flew out to Egypt for the start of a 16-day holiday. I decided to fly with BMI and don't regret it for one moment. It's nice having assigned seats and the feeling that you're being made to feel comfortable, which isn't what most budget airlines offer.

During the landing I sat looking out of the emergency exit window when a stewardess asked me "Can you see the Pyramids?" in a joking manor. I told her I'd let her know if I spotted any. I then asked if she hadn't already seen them, being that she flies for a living. She said she rarely gets to see outside the aircraft and it's mostly just long days for her. About 10 minutes later I did see the pyramids and I told her if she peered through the small window she had she could see them. Suddenly half the passengers on the aircraft tried to jump over to the right side of the plane to catch a glimpse. I guess these are what most people came to see.

Most of the houses around Cairo are the same colour as the dessert around them so they look as through they've grown out of the earth rather than being built and placed in their locations by man.

It took me about 15 minutes to get off the plane, through immigration, get my bags, through customs and finally into a crowd of salesmen trying to sell me taxi rides. Along the way, I was asked to fill in a landing card regarding my health. One of the questions was weather or not I needed to shit a lot recently. I thought to myself "No, but I'm sure my answer would be very different if I were to fill this in after my first restaurant meal in Egypt".

I shared a cab ride with an Englishman into town. A few things I learnt about Cairo cabs during this trip: (1) They smoke (2) You can smoke as many of their cigarettes as you want (3) they like to play distorted Arab music and (4) They don't indicate, they just honk at everyone. At one point we came up to a police checkpoint. I was told to come and sit in the front and to be the only one doing the talking. The police man asked where I was from, I said Canada. He then tried to correct me and said "American?", I then clarified I was Canadian. He then looked like he wasn't interested in an argument about what he believes must be a rebel territory of the United States.

I eventually arrived at my hotel after one of the scariest urban drives I've ever done in my life. I dropped my stuff in my room and went to the restaurant on the roof of the 11-story building. It was incredible to look out at Cairo in the evening, with all the lights and buildings and the ominous, timeless and ghostly call to prayer echoing throughout the city.

Wikipedia says there are 14 million people in the Cairo metro area but with all the pollution, over crowding and constant traffic, it feels like a lot more. The air was really hot and smelly, I was already looking forward to fresh dessert air which I expected later in the trip.

Buses crawled along the street at a slower pace than most people walking by. They were in pieces and rusting away, sort of like rolling dungeons. No one uses sidewalks where they do exist so I feel like a complete immigrant not walking on the road for the whole of my journey.

In my hotel room I have 2 English-speaking TV channels: CNN and CNN. Both require being re-tuned every 10 minutes to maintain any sort of clarity. You can just about hear what they are saying over the interference.

As I walked over the nile bridges in the evening, there were hundreds of couples stood looking out. Everyone seems to just hang out outside. I can imagine being a very bored person had I had the misfortune of being born here.

People stare at me everywhere I walk here as if I was a ghost. Most just looked surprised/bored/fascinated (it's hard to describe the look on their faces but it's pretty consistent) but there is a sizeable minority who look at me like I'm George Bush on holiday.

I set out an ambitious budget for this trip. I'm not sure how well it'll go as I had dinner and I'm still starving and it was still over the top in terms of price. Some of these bank notes shock me, I know they are replacing some of them with coins but it baffles me as to why anyone would mint money this worthless. The lowest denomination bank note I have in my pocket is worth 3 pence. So even if you live on a dollar or two a day here, you'd still have a pocket full of money.

They say there isn't much street crime in Cairo because everyone is a Muslim. I'm sure the police stood every 100 meters armed with AK-47s have nothing to do with that.

A lot of products in the shops have transliterated Arabic or broken English on them so it's not a complete mystery what I'm buying.

I've only seen two Arab women so far who didn't have their heads covered. I did see some white women on the flight over who had their heads covered, they looked like they were poorly dressed for a fancy dress party.