Category: Egypt

Egypt: What’s New (to Me)

Not to jinx anything, but I think it now seems a little more appropriate to post my “oh my gosh, I had such a great time in Egypt” pics. Now that people aren’t (at least at this moment) getting tear-gassed and whacked with sticks.

It’s hard to talk about Egypt without mentioning all the political business, of course, but being there was a great reminder of how life goes on, and pretty magnificently. A country can be going through its largest upheaval in 50 years, but people still go to work, shop for vegetables, smoke a sheesha… Traveling there was 95 percent normal.

I did happen to leave just a few days before the November 18 protests got ugly. But I did also happen to be there on October 19, when the military killed 19 Copts. For better or worse, life went on the next morning. Cairo is a very big place.

In no particular order, here’s what caught my eye in Cairo:

Cairo has tuktuks now. Actually, only Giza has tuktuks. They got banned from the east side of the river because it just made the traffic too insane. Small towns have tuktuks too. The vehicles are actually imported from Thailand. Here’s our driver in Wadi Natrun:

Heroooo!
Heroooo!

The best tuktuks have huge sound systems, and our driver was blasting who I later found out was DJ Amr 7a7a (say it ‘Haha’), this tune that I heard many times over the rest of my trip. Sorry–can’t find version with words and his magnificent use of AutoTune. Just imagine 13-year-olds doing gangly dances to that tight bass line in a dusty small-town road, and you’ll get an idea how bad-ass we were rolling in our tuktuk.

Speaking of drivers: Cairo taxis (most of them) have meters. I still am marveling about how the simple addition of meters has transformed Cairo cabbies from some of the worst in the world to some of the best. Now that neither front seat nor back seat has to stress out about the fare, Cairo drivers can turn on their full charm. (Oh, except that one who showed a woman I met pornographic photos on his cell phone. And the one who pulled out a gun–!!!–from under his seat and showed it off to a guy in my class. And the one who, far less nefariously, drove me through the Al-Azhar tunnel for no good reason at all. But all the rest of them are true gentlemen.)

Egypt has a lot of Mubarak to get rid of. Here in Mansoura, he’s been painted out of a mosaic:

Some major young activists come from Mansoura.

In the Cairo metro, Mubarak station (the one at Midan Ramses) has been hastily changed to Al Shohadaa — ‘Martyrs’ — or just blacked out.

For the English sign, they made a proper sticker. For Arabic, they just used a Sharpie.

In Cairo, it seemed like there were a lot more young women out on the street, especially noticeable at night. Though at night I wouldn’t have been able to capture this great look:

On the Nile corniche

Color seems to be used a little more liberally on buildings. At least more than I remember, but in my memory, Cairo is always solid brown. I wonder if we might have the Chinese to thank for the colored paint–I noticed all of it was from there. People rarely have control enough to paint a whole building, but they’ll often paint their balcony a bright color, so it pops out from the rest of the brown building. This isn’t paint, but it gives you an idea of the effect:

That bright orange Bug is also an aberration.

In Islamic Cairo, the stretch of medieval buildings known as Bein al-Qasrein is done with restoration, and it looks beautiful. I was worried it would be too tidy, too fake. But it has aged well, and most important, people seem to hang out here in a way they didn’t before–it’s more of a public space than a thoroughfare. Here’s the inside of one of the buildings:

Unfortunately I only had my iPhone that day.

Elegant, calm, restorative. This is the side of Cairo that’s there, but hard to see–you have to go looking for it, and you certainly won’t read about it in the newspaper.

Egypt #2: Birqash Camel Market

So, so rarely do I get to make a real logistical ‘discovery’ when I’m updating a guidebook that I just have to take a post to brag about the clever route I found to the camel market in Birqash.

Short version: take the train to Birqash village; hop on a truck for the last five minutes to the market.

For all I know, other guidebooks already have this info, but Lonely Planet currently advises a complicated series of at least three microbuses, which frankly in the many years since the market moved from Imbaba to Birqash, has always made me tired just to read about and I’ve never bothered going.

But this time, I’m responsible for the Around Cairo chapter, with the camel market in it. While I was busy putting off the schlep, I happened to notice that the train runs through Birqash. In my mind, any train is better than a bunch of microbuses and having to ask directions repeatedly at the crack of dawn.

The train is the ‘Cairo outskirts’ line (khatt al-manashi) and runs out of Ramses station to Birqash. It goes from track 22, which is a little Hogwartsian in the way you have to walk way up track 11 to find it, up around a bend. And the train is utterly dust-encrusted and looks like it hasn’t moved in years.

At this point, I guess I should qualify my judgment: if you like trains, this particular train is far superior to microbuses. If you prefer a clean seat, no flies and surfaces that don’t make you regret having worn the clothes you just washed, then perhaps you should stick with the microbus strategy.

But even in my nice clothes, I still think a train trumps all, and this one costs only LE1.25 (20 cents), with people-watching for free, and vendors traipsing through selling peanuts and flashlights and safety pins.

I hopped the 9am train, which left on time and got me to Birqash about an hour later. If I were going to the camel market for real as a tourist, though, I’d take the earlier train, at 7am, to get to the market in the thick of the action.

I arrived a little over an hour later at the station in Birqash, which is on a little strip of land between two canals. I crossed the bridge to the south, thinking I might find a cab or a tuktuk (yes, btw, there are tuktuks in Egypt now! Imported right from Thailand!). But Birqash isn’t even big enough to merit tuktuks, it turns out.

But some men advised me to hop on the next truck going by, and I did. Five minutes later, a bit to the southwest of the village, we all piled out at the market. I offered to pay my truck driver, but he waved it off, probably because it was such a short distance, but maybe also because I’d ripped the knee of my pants wide open clambering in and was now cutting quite a pathetic figure with my scarf wrapped around my leg like a tourniquet.

Even though I was there a bit late, the market (which runs Friday, Sunday and Monday) was interesting enough. And I swear camels love having their pictures taken.

Hello, handsomes!
You too, mister!
This kid really wanted me to take his picture, then scampered off. More camera-shy than the camels.

Obligatory warning for animal-lovers: the market resounds with the thok-thok-thok of sticks on recalcitrant camel rumps.

Cool it, camels.

And the area outside the market is like a camel apocalypse, with dead ones strewn around in the dunes, with piles of trash as garnish. It ain’t pretty.

But just like the guidebooks say, the market is a real “whoa, I’m in Africa” experience.

A Chorus Line

And with the train, it’s easier than you might think (if slightly grubbier) to get there. For lone women, I think the train is preferable too, because you’re on there with families going other places, whereas the microbuses and trucks are a pretty much all-dude scene.

I was prepared to walk back to the station, but a truck stopped and insisted I get in, and when it turned out he wasn’t going that way, dropped me off and got me on another truck. You don’t need much more Arabic than ‘souq ag-gamaal’ and ‘Birqash’ (pronounced Bir-ESH) to negotiate the whole day, though the Birqash train station sign is in Arabic only. Some ladies on the train even told me when my stop was coming, which was helpful.

And the kid selling safety pins was on the return train, so I was even able to fix up my pants. (Return trains run every hour or so, and even if you have to wait, you’ll probably meet some nice people in the process.) A mighty fine day that made my job feel all worthwhile.

Egypt #1: Change

By the time you read this, I will have returned from my second of two trips to Egypt. I haven’t been there since 2007. I was of course fascinated to see how (or if) things had changed since the revolution.

The changes weren’t immediately obvious. Same crowds, same pollution, same bad traffic. Worse, in fact, said taxi drivers, because traffic cops weren’t really out in force anymore.

Same hucksters plying Talaat Harb. In fact I got lured into a perfume shop because a guy started talking to me about his experience during the revolution. So adaptable, these guys! Another gambit: “Don’t go that way–it’s closed for a demonstration!”

One concrete change: no more men with giant guns slumped in guard kiosks looking bored. Their presence used to be so common that ‘ZabiT’ (officer) was one of the first words I learned in Arabic class here. In 1992, my friend Karen got a picture of herself posing with some, and captioned it straight from our textbook dialogue: ‘Ma hadha? Hadha ZabiT.’ (What is that? That is an officer.)

And graffiti. Everywhere. Gorgeous and fully formed. Some of it bursting with psychedelic color, some of it in elaborate stencil portraits of the people killed during the revolution. The sad panda of the cheese commercials is slumped on walls everywhere: don’t say no to regime change.

And then there’s simply this:

Near Al-Azhar Mosque and University

I would love to end the post on this note, but it would be dishonest. When I first arrived at the end of September, public spaces felt noticeably joyful. Now as elections are getting closer, there’s mounting anxiety. The election system is opaque and disorganized, perhaps intentionally. The Maspero incident proved everyone’s worst fears about the military council. The Salafists are saying (and doing) ridiculous things but getting all the press. Even the graffiti is being painted over, chiseled out and even covered up by campaign posters.

It will be partially resolved in late November, when elections start in Cairo and Alexandria. Meanwhile, people are looking back at their photos from the 18 days of the revolution and recounting their stories, trying to rekindle that optimism. Hanshuf ba’a. We’ll see.

Why I’m Going Back to Egypt – Soon

At a party recently, I asked a woman about her summer travel plans. “Well, my husband and I had this trip to Egypt and Israel planned,” she answered, “but I guess that’s not a great idea now…”

At the time, I weakly replied, “Oh, I’m sure everything in Egypt is fine….”

Now I wish I’d pushed the issue. Because now I’m home, combing through my photos from my last visit, in 2007, and thinking how much I’d like to be there right now. And how it would in fact be just fine to be there now.

Yes, there has been violence since the uprising. And there was this story about a crime wave in Egypt in the New York Times last week. But let’s put this in perspective. There was previously zero violent crime in Egypt—Cairo, despite its population of 19 million, was one of the safest cities in the world (ah, the bittersweet bonuses of a police state). So any lawlessness is instantly a “crime wave.”

Friday Market: Taxidermy
Don't these boys look perfectly nice?

Well, yes, but: Lara Logan, you’re saying. Harassment of women on the street is not a new issue. But all that you, as a tourist, have to do is avoid mobs of agitated, shouting young men. So don’t go to a soccer game, and don’t join a street protest. But you’re perfectly OK sitting in a cafe drinking tea or walking around a museum.

One simple way to avoid all the post-revolution anxiety is to leave Cairo. I recently got an email from acquaintances who reported having a great time in Luxor and Aswan—they had all the ruins to themselves. The only drawback with traveling now, they said, is that the vendors are all a bit desperate due to low tourism, so sales pressure is high.

But…that’s Egypt. You’ll never have a sales-pressure-free vacation there no matter what. It’s practically where tourism was invented—I’m sure Herodotus got the hard sell too.

Of course something bad could happen tomorrow. But it’s important to remember that something bad can happen at any time. I mean, don’t remember this 24/7, or you’ll be paralyzed with fear. But just know that travel–and life in general–involves a degree of uncertainty, no matter where or when you do it.

Pharaonic Legs
One thing that could happen: You could lose your legs.

I was living in Cairo in 1997, an otherwise unremarkable year, when a tour bus was bombed in front of the Egyptian Museum, spitting distance from where I sat in class every day. Not long after, there was the terrible massacre of tourists in Luxor. Despite these two events, I still felt safer in Cairo than in most other places I’ve lived, and every Egyptian I knew went out of their way to tell me they were so sorry and shocked about what happened.

And I was sorry too, as I saw my friends who worked as tour guides lose their work overnight. That’s why, when I hear someone express worry about going to Egypt now, I think, “Stick with it! Those people need the money!”

Not that your trip should be a charity case. But the last thing Egypt needs now is for its tourism industry to collapse. What’s especially wonderful about the mass uprising this winter was that it was by Egyptians, for Egyptians, and there appears to be a greater sense of pride and independence across the country. But that doesn’t mean Egypt can be so independent as to not rely on outside money from tourism.

In fact, I think there’s no better time to go to Egypt than now. You’ll be showing your support for the country at a time when it needs it most. You’ll get to talk to Egyptians directly about what they think can and should happen next–so many social issues are out on the table now (see the movie Cairo 6,7,8 if it’s at a festival near you!).

But perhaps the best reason to go: Years from now, you can look back and say, “I was in Egypt the year everything changed.”

(Curious what to do in Egypt once you’re there? I just wrote a post about what I’d see in Cairo on Gogobot, a great new travel-info-swapping site.)

#Egypt #Egypt #Egypt!

Garden City GateI’m always surprised when I see a picture of Cairo and it isn’t sepia-toned. Not from some nostalgic glow, but from the dirt. The city, in my memory, is an even dull beige. That’s because it’s freshly coated every spring with a layer of dust from the khamsin wind, and never fully scrubbed clean.

Sand and dirt and trash has been piling up in Cairo for millennia–it’s not exactly a clean city. But the last time I visited, in 2007, it felt like Cairenes cared even less than usual–like the city had nearly crushed its own inhabitants. So, in the midst of the protests of the last two weeks, I was most touched by the images of the protesters collecting trash, organizing recycling and scrubbing the streets. Could the layers of grime in the city really just have been symptomatic of a generation-long bout of depression? The gloom has finally lifted. Boy-boy (Bye-bye), Mubarak–first phase of house-cleaning complete.
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Conned in Cairo, and a Mexico connection

I’m just back from Mexico and catching up on a lot. Happened to read this truly excellent essay at Perceptive Travel about getting conned in Cairo–and the surprising value in it. Cairo is really a test of travel skills–if you keep your guard up too much, you miss the good stuff. In this situation, I think I probably would’ve missed out on the author’s experience.

And by happy accident, the author, Jim Johnston, lives and blogs in Mexico City, where I’m headed in January, and am all fired up to read more about. Thanks, internet, for hooking me up…

By the way, on this Mexico trip, I finally finished David Lida’s First Stop in the New World–it was slow to get into, but wound up covering all kinds of fascinating aspects of the city.

Stay tuned for more meaty posts and photos from the Yucatan in the next few weeks. I finally got myself a snazzy camera, so there’s a lot to sort through.

On “Vintage” Hotels

This past winter, when we were in Bangkok and staying at the totally fabulous Hotel Atlanta, I realized there’s a very particular kind of lodging I like.

For want of a better term, I think I’ll call them “vintage hotels.” [Edited in 2014 to add: Now we have a popular common reference point, thanks to Wes Anderson: The Grand Budapest Hotel, circa 1968.] “Antique hotels” might also work. “Nostalgia bivouacs” are what they really are. And the funny thing is that Peter, he of the Edison bulbs and steam trains, thinks I like these hotels more than he does. Maybe he’s right–I sure have spent a lot of time thinking about what makes one of these hotels exactly what it is.

These hotels must be old-fashioned. But not self-consciously so. Certainly, the owner may have a “things were better in the old days” attitude, but he can’t be out scouring yard sales for old telephone switchboards and other doohickeys to create a “ye olde” decorating scheme. No–that old telephone switchboard has to just be left over from the old days, hulking behind the reception desk.

These hotels usually have old and cranky owners. Years of watching standards slip all around them have strengthened their resolve to do things the right way, even if the desert sands are blowing in, the drunken yahoos are crashing into the bars next door or the country in which they’re situated is finally shaking off its colonial shackles.

But enough generalizations. Perhaps it’s easier to explain the concept with some examples.

In Cairo, Pension Roma is the quintessential vintage hotel. The owner is a French woman (despite the fact she was born in Egypt and will die in Egypt), and she rules the place with an iron fist. The sheets are crisp, the furniture is shiny, there is no dust in the corners, and she even sews little cozies to cover up the propane tanks for the hot-water heaters. Of course there are chandeliers and a rattly open elevator.

I don’t have a picture of the Roma, so here’s a photo from the extremely vintage Cairo Agriculture Museum instead:

Fun in the Agricultural Museum

In Bangkok, the aforementioned Hotel Atlanta is at the end of one of the main Sukhumvit sois for sex tourism. The facade of the hotel is covered with cranky “no sex tourists!” signs, but inside, the crankiness is dispersed into all kinds of details: a book full of cynical travel tips, drink coasters with mean-spirited quotes from the previous owner, and a theoretical ‘guests only’ policy in the hotel restaurant. This would all be oppressive, except the writing desks have little fans in the bottom, to keep your legs cool, and there’s a giant swimming pool ringed with photos of it being used in more glamorous times. The rooms are nothing special, but that barely matters, when you’ve got counter help this charming:

Working Phone Switchboard

In Campeche, Mexico, my absolute favorite hotel in the world is the Hotel Colonial. No one’s very cranky here, fortunately, but there is an old patriarch who sits in a chair dozing all day, and the business cards look like they haven’t been reprinted since 1964. The rooms may be slightly smaller than they used to be, because they’re covered every year or two in a fresh layer of glossy paint in Easter-egg colors. And eff Frette–the sheets here are the best ever for hot weather: crisply starched and almost rough like muslin. The owner buys them from somewhere special in Mexico City. Rooms cost less than $20 per night.

Here’s a montage I made last summer, after my at-least-fifth visit:

Finally, I have to give a shout-out to Garden City House, also in Cairo. Long, echoing hallways with patterned tile floors, rooms with high ceilings, dreary salmon-pink paint and enormous bathtubs, and of course the requisite old telephone switchboard–but overall a little too ratty to count as a proper vintage hotel.

Then, the day I checked out, I was sitting by the desk, chatting with the guy there, and the chintzy plastic phone on his desk rings–this little horrible made-in-China ‘tinky-rink-rink’ noise. He answers the phone, nods, and then gets up and walks around the desk to the switchboard…where he casually moves the plugs around to transfer the call to a guestroom!

My eyes nearly fell out of my head.

Damn. If I had known, I would’ve been giving people my phone number there right and left! That’s why I made sure to sit at the writing desk in the Atlanta and write some postcards. Vintage hotels are like museums you get to live in.

Do you like these kind of hotels? Have any recommendations for me?

Anthony Bourdain Takes My Travel Advice

Last line:

Of course I love this guy! Pyramids–go if you care about your life list. Otherwise, I can tell you they look just like in the postcards, but bigger. Unfortunately I can’t state it quite so plainly when I write a guidebook.

If I could write a guidebook purely to my specs, it would mention major landmarks only if they happened to be in an interesting part of the city and had a good place to eat nearby. The Pyramids in Giza are interesting from a sociological perspective–the town around the Pyramids has basically subsisted on tourism for millennia, but is now in constant battle with the government over how to earn a living without driving tourists insane. But the best place to eat out there is maybe the Pizza Hut. So I think Tony chose wisely.

Egypt: Tale of a Cairo Tout

Just now up on Lonely Planet’s Travel Blog: A short entry about my encounter with a sweet older “guide” in Cairo’s Khan al-Khalili. An admittedly rare case of a person who wants to sell you stuff actually being nice as well!

Although that then reminds me of the guy who normally pushed papyrus on Talaat Harb taking the time to explain the small protest for Ayman Nour that was going on. So helpful!

See, in retrospect, Egyptians come out looking pretty good. It’s just dealing while you’re there that can be a little challenging.

Cairo: The Vision Thing

All your nagging questions answered!

No, being blind in one eye did not prove a hindrance in Cairo. In fact, it may actually have helped.

Before my trip, the half-blind thing was just one small part of the much larger wad of anxiety. My thinking went something like: the traffic is so hideous and chaotic there, surely I won’t be able to keep track of it all and get blindsided by a bus! But the disproportionately higher number of people in Cairo with disabilities who get around just fine every day…. (Breathe.) Or maybe it’s not disproportionately higher, because they get killed off faster! (Stop breathing.)

But crossing the street proved no more difficult than it had back when I had two working eyes. Cars still careen nonstop, with no traffic lights, and you have to convince yourself that they will in fact drive around you once you step down off the sidewalk. It is still an overwhelming process that you eventually get a little better at. (Or not–Mandy, who’s lived there ten years, admits she still panics during street crossings, and happily takes taxis just to cross particularly bad intersections, such as the mess around the Ramses Hilton. One native Cairene once said to her, “I don’t understand–you speak Arabic. So how can you not have learned to cross the street?”)

So it’s not like you step off the curb casually, midway in a chitchat with a friend over where to get the best koshari. No, it commands all your attention, and usually gripping tightly to the arm of said friend–there was no chance that I would just, say, forget to look to my left.

But where the blind spot actually came in handy–and I was not expecting this–was with street hassle. It turns out it is so much easier to ignore people if I genuinely cannot see them!

Of course, they don’t know I can’t, so they think I’m a callous bitch either way, but in desperate situations (like trying to dodge someone while crossing a street–v.v. complicated!), it worked like a charm.

Speaking of callousness, I did notice a few beggars trying to capitalize on half-blindness, usually with one eye looking all cataract-y, or rolling horribly off to one side, or just not being there at all.

Dude. Please, I wanted to say. I can see right through you.