Greg (E.Tn)
Well-known member
Summation:
Went on a dive trip to the Red Sea, via a short stop in Cairo, Egypt, the pyramids/sphinx, El Khalil Bazaar, and the Cairo Museum.
Day 1: 9.5 hour flight from New York to Cairo, bus trip to the hotel--drove past some pretty horrendous poverty areas to arrive at a plush hotel w/ a view of the Great Pyramid from the room. Inside the hotel proper was a 5 star restaurant, pool w/ swim up bar and waterfall, and virtually all the amenities. Outside of the hotel compound were people riding mules, horses, donkeys, and bumper to bumper traffic. 23 million inhabitants in Cairo alone w/ jobs only for about a tenth of that..........I won't go into the details of what results in this scenario where there's little or no garbage pickup or sanitation, but you can probably imagine--it wasn't pretty.
Oh yeah--tipping is extremely encouraged in Egypt..............more on that later.
Day 2: Impressive guided tour of the Pyramids and Great Sphinx. Local vendors everywhere using all kinds of high pressure sales tactics to the point of almost being belligerent, provoking some anger, until I reminded myself that they are just trying to put food on their table to feed wife and kids. BUT, the tactics were creative; if all else failed, a vendor would offer you a gift and play on your courtesy to not turn it down, ask personal questions about you and your family in an attempt to establish a friendly bond, then before bidding you goodbye, "ask" for a slight monetary gift in return. Another tactic was to encourage you to take a photograph of a camel or cameldriver or what have you, then after you take the photo, they would demand payment.
It was something I wasn't prepared for at such an extreme, because they were everywhere around the pyramids, almost constantly plying you with items for sale, and I never got to the point of being actually rude, but some I just walked away from. Then later, I felt bad after I got to thinking about the economical situation there, and realized that they had to do that to put food on the table..............
Flight to Hurgada, on the Red Sea. Get on the boat, Emperor Superior, dive briefing from Divemaster Sonia Goggels, a Swiss lady who speaks at least six languages. She was probably the best divemaster I've ever had the pleasure to be around. Warm, personable, friendly, with some neat animated mannerisms thrown in to make herself understood when briefing a group of 21 divers who speak three or more different languages..........
Day 3-8: Dive, Dive, Dive--"The Brothers", Ras Muhammad, SS Thistlegorm, and other sites that escape me right now. Saw my first Lionfish outside of an aquarium, not to mention first Oceanic Whitetip Shark, first Whale Shark, two Octopii, and about a dozen large Moray eels. Visibility was +100 feet.
Food on board: excellent, catering to all types of diets including Kosher and Vegetarian.
Crew and Staff: all Egyptian, all GREAT people, who are warm, friendly, humorous, and like westerners, and WANT us to like them, too. One of the crew members, Sameh, told me it was his dream to go snow skiing in the US one day. I told him I would accomodate him any way I could, if he could make it to the states. He said he would love to come to the states, but unfortunately 9/11 changed a lot of things, for Egypt as well as America.
Weather: perfect.
Divers: 15 Americans, 1 Canadian, 2 Dutch, 1 German, 2 Russian. All good people, but I'm afraid to say they might have gotten a little culture shock--not from the Egyptians, but from 15 American rednecks (myself included) in one place at one time.
Day 9: Back to Cairo and the Cairo Museum, then the Bazaar. No cameras allowed inside the Museum. It was a two hour tour in a setting where about a half a day at least was needed. Then the Bazaar.............
Whew. What an experience. Alleyways within alleyways filled with vendors, shops, selling mostly tourist stuff, cheap items, and they use every trick of the book imaginable to get every last dime you had in your wallet. But always friendly, and respectful. It was hard not to just wave the vendors off, and sometimes that's what you had to do, but the best thing to do was to just be patient, view their wares, then kindly inform them they didn't have anything you were looking for.
Another vacationer and I were escorted into a small shop where a vendor was selling artwork: handpainted images placed on handmade Papyrus just like the ancient Egyptians did (or at least that's what we were told). We were asked to sit down and accept a cup of Hibiscus tea, which we did, then asked to go through a collection of artwork and pick out anything we liked. Then the bargaining began................
The items were priced about ten times what they were worth, and they expected quite a bit of haggling. It took me awhile, but I finally learned that haggling was expected and welcomed, because I bought a $350 piece of artwork for about $80 bucks and I'm sure they made a ton of money off me at that, so I guess both I and the seller came out happy.
As far as incidents, none were bad. There was a lot of graffitti on the walls, apparently related to the recent ousting of Mubarak, and we saw the burnt out remains of his headquarters, but it looked as if things were at least TRYING to get back to normal.
I saw Egyptians dressed in Western attire, some wearing burgkas, some wearing more traditional Middle Eastern dress, and some women with their faces completely covered. But it seemed that the dress was more preferential than forced; meaning that there was no discernible groupings of people by dress, except around the Mosques. And there were about a thousand of those........
Egypt is about 80% Muslim, 20% Christian, with about a 1000 jews. Our guide informed us that religion wasn't mandated by the government or any particular entity, but that it was personal preference, and considered a personal choice.
Lastly, the traffic: I have to laugh about this one, but I can safely say that if you can drive in Cairo, you can drive anywhere in the world, and probably be a race car driver as well. We were driving on a six lane highway (3 lanes going in both directions) and in Cairo, those broken white lines diving the lanes all going on the same direction mean absolutely NOTHING. Constant horn blowing as cars passed with literally inches to spare, forced merging, and there's no "slow drivers keep right" rule in Cairo. I'd say that the most often repaired portion of an automobile in Cairo is the horn, they use it so much.
Matter of fact, I might go over there one day and set up a car horn repair business. I could probably make a small fortune.
Oh yeah, one more thing: one the plane ride back to NYC, there were a LOT of Egyptians on the plane, wearing a variety of dress from western to conservative Middle Eastern including full face cover for the women. And apparently, Egyptians like to travel with their little kids on airplanes, because there were more squalling kids on that plane than you could shake a stick at----------no sleep to be had for the weary. And, it seemed that ALL the children I saw over there were beautiful and handsome kids. I saw some beautiful women over there too, and I will contend that their flight attendants have ours beat all to HECK in the beauty department.
But I saw a LOT of love that the parents had for their children. I saw one father with his son, about 4 years old, who was sitting just up from me, and the little tyke was really sleepy when they served breakfast on the plane. He couldn't hold his eyes open, so he slouched over onto his dad and laid his head down on his dad's left arm.
Rather than disturb his son's rest, the father unpackaged and ate the entire meal with one hand............
All in all it was a fantastic trip, one I will probably do again, mostly for the diving. There weren't really any negative experiences, and the positives were fantastic.
Once I get my photos processed, I'll try to post a few here.
Went on a dive trip to the Red Sea, via a short stop in Cairo, Egypt, the pyramids/sphinx, El Khalil Bazaar, and the Cairo Museum.
Day 1: 9.5 hour flight from New York to Cairo, bus trip to the hotel--drove past some pretty horrendous poverty areas to arrive at a plush hotel w/ a view of the Great Pyramid from the room. Inside the hotel proper was a 5 star restaurant, pool w/ swim up bar and waterfall, and virtually all the amenities. Outside of the hotel compound were people riding mules, horses, donkeys, and bumper to bumper traffic. 23 million inhabitants in Cairo alone w/ jobs only for about a tenth of that..........I won't go into the details of what results in this scenario where there's little or no garbage pickup or sanitation, but you can probably imagine--it wasn't pretty.
Oh yeah--tipping is extremely encouraged in Egypt..............more on that later.
Day 2: Impressive guided tour of the Pyramids and Great Sphinx. Local vendors everywhere using all kinds of high pressure sales tactics to the point of almost being belligerent, provoking some anger, until I reminded myself that they are just trying to put food on their table to feed wife and kids. BUT, the tactics were creative; if all else failed, a vendor would offer you a gift and play on your courtesy to not turn it down, ask personal questions about you and your family in an attempt to establish a friendly bond, then before bidding you goodbye, "ask" for a slight monetary gift in return. Another tactic was to encourage you to take a photograph of a camel or cameldriver or what have you, then after you take the photo, they would demand payment.
It was something I wasn't prepared for at such an extreme, because they were everywhere around the pyramids, almost constantly plying you with items for sale, and I never got to the point of being actually rude, but some I just walked away from. Then later, I felt bad after I got to thinking about the economical situation there, and realized that they had to do that to put food on the table..............
Flight to Hurgada, on the Red Sea. Get on the boat, Emperor Superior, dive briefing from Divemaster Sonia Goggels, a Swiss lady who speaks at least six languages. She was probably the best divemaster I've ever had the pleasure to be around. Warm, personable, friendly, with some neat animated mannerisms thrown in to make herself understood when briefing a group of 21 divers who speak three or more different languages..........
Day 3-8: Dive, Dive, Dive--"The Brothers", Ras Muhammad, SS Thistlegorm, and other sites that escape me right now. Saw my first Lionfish outside of an aquarium, not to mention first Oceanic Whitetip Shark, first Whale Shark, two Octopii, and about a dozen large Moray eels. Visibility was +100 feet.
Food on board: excellent, catering to all types of diets including Kosher and Vegetarian.
Crew and Staff: all Egyptian, all GREAT people, who are warm, friendly, humorous, and like westerners, and WANT us to like them, too. One of the crew members, Sameh, told me it was his dream to go snow skiing in the US one day. I told him I would accomodate him any way I could, if he could make it to the states. He said he would love to come to the states, but unfortunately 9/11 changed a lot of things, for Egypt as well as America.
Weather: perfect.
Divers: 15 Americans, 1 Canadian, 2 Dutch, 1 German, 2 Russian. All good people, but I'm afraid to say they might have gotten a little culture shock--not from the Egyptians, but from 15 American rednecks (myself included) in one place at one time.
Day 9: Back to Cairo and the Cairo Museum, then the Bazaar. No cameras allowed inside the Museum. It was a two hour tour in a setting where about a half a day at least was needed. Then the Bazaar.............
Whew. What an experience. Alleyways within alleyways filled with vendors, shops, selling mostly tourist stuff, cheap items, and they use every trick of the book imaginable to get every last dime you had in your wallet. But always friendly, and respectful. It was hard not to just wave the vendors off, and sometimes that's what you had to do, but the best thing to do was to just be patient, view their wares, then kindly inform them they didn't have anything you were looking for.
Another vacationer and I were escorted into a small shop where a vendor was selling artwork: handpainted images placed on handmade Papyrus just like the ancient Egyptians did (or at least that's what we were told). We were asked to sit down and accept a cup of Hibiscus tea, which we did, then asked to go through a collection of artwork and pick out anything we liked. Then the bargaining began................
The items were priced about ten times what they were worth, and they expected quite a bit of haggling. It took me awhile, but I finally learned that haggling was expected and welcomed, because I bought a $350 piece of artwork for about $80 bucks and I'm sure they made a ton of money off me at that, so I guess both I and the seller came out happy.
As far as incidents, none were bad. There was a lot of graffitti on the walls, apparently related to the recent ousting of Mubarak, and we saw the burnt out remains of his headquarters, but it looked as if things were at least TRYING to get back to normal.
I saw Egyptians dressed in Western attire, some wearing burgkas, some wearing more traditional Middle Eastern dress, and some women with their faces completely covered. But it seemed that the dress was more preferential than forced; meaning that there was no discernible groupings of people by dress, except around the Mosques. And there were about a thousand of those........
Egypt is about 80% Muslim, 20% Christian, with about a 1000 jews. Our guide informed us that religion wasn't mandated by the government or any particular entity, but that it was personal preference, and considered a personal choice.
Lastly, the traffic: I have to laugh about this one, but I can safely say that if you can drive in Cairo, you can drive anywhere in the world, and probably be a race car driver as well. We were driving on a six lane highway (3 lanes going in both directions) and in Cairo, those broken white lines diving the lanes all going on the same direction mean absolutely NOTHING. Constant horn blowing as cars passed with literally inches to spare, forced merging, and there's no "slow drivers keep right" rule in Cairo. I'd say that the most often repaired portion of an automobile in Cairo is the horn, they use it so much.
Matter of fact, I might go over there one day and set up a car horn repair business. I could probably make a small fortune.
Oh yeah, one more thing: one the plane ride back to NYC, there were a LOT of Egyptians on the plane, wearing a variety of dress from western to conservative Middle Eastern including full face cover for the women. And apparently, Egyptians like to travel with their little kids on airplanes, because there were more squalling kids on that plane than you could shake a stick at----------no sleep to be had for the weary. And, it seemed that ALL the children I saw over there were beautiful and handsome kids. I saw some beautiful women over there too, and I will contend that their flight attendants have ours beat all to HECK in the beauty department.
But I saw a LOT of love that the parents had for their children. I saw one father with his son, about 4 years old, who was sitting just up from me, and the little tyke was really sleepy when they served breakfast on the plane. He couldn't hold his eyes open, so he slouched over onto his dad and laid his head down on his dad's left arm.
Rather than disturb his son's rest, the father unpackaged and ate the entire meal with one hand............
All in all it was a fantastic trip, one I will probably do again, mostly for the diving. There weren't really any negative experiences, and the positives were fantastic.
Once I get my photos processed, I'll try to post a few here.
I've never seen the like.