hurghada

So our second week in Egypt was to be at a 5 star all inclusive resort on the red sea. After having experience the *5 star Nile cruise (*Egyptian norm) we were both thinking the same thing when the bus dropped us off: How much’s the water?


To our delight 5 star really was closer to what we imagined 5 star to be. Spacious studio apartment style room, king sized bed, big flat screen t.v. you could watch while taking a bath. You could even make phone calls when on the crapper! The best part was the bottles of water replenished daily at no extra charge.

We spent the majority of our time in the same routine. Get up, eat, beach, eat, beach, ice cream, beach, shower, eat, sleep.

We did go one day to Cairo. Having really enjoyed our visits on the Nile we booked with the hotel, which as a mistake. It’s a 6 hour car ride from Hurghada to Cairo and we were told that they would wake us up and give us breakfast. No one woke is up, and when walked around the almost empty resort looking for food, a guy who didn’t speak English/French shoved our reservation papers on our face and made “follow me” motions.

Turns out not a lot of people want to get up at 2am for a 6 hour car ride to Cairo because there were only 6 people on the trip which meant we had a caravan instead of a bus. We now knew very intimately the poorly maintained Egyptian roads.

Going was much better than coming back because the nice couple we had met on the Nile shared their breakfast with us and I was able to sleep. Coming back however was a different story. The only rule when driving in Egypt is that the person in front has the right of way. Add to this poorly lit roads and a driver on his cell phone the entire way and it’s hard to get any rest. It was also really hot as one of the girls with us was sick and turned off the A/C. She eventually threw up. We stopped once at a rest stop where the driver pointed to some dodgy food stands and then disappeared. We opted for some overpriced Pringles, 2 boiled eggs and leftover crossaints from breakfast, and ate them while waiting indefinitely for our driver to re-appear.

When we were in Cairo there was a guide, though at first we didn’t know it since he never introduced himself, we were simply dropped off at the Egyptian museum and some guy told us to follow him. Once in the museum he provided information on things, based on what I could tell, its proximity to him as he walked speedy through the museum. Not that it mattered much, he had a strong accent so I couldn’t really understand him. Husband told me he stopped listening when he couldn’t make out if he was saying one thing or it’s opposite.

It continued on like this throughout the pyramids and sphinx with him giving us a brief commentary and ample free time whilst discouraging anything costly [read: time consuming thus preventing him from leaving early].

The trip was a bit of a shock for us as we had been sheltered in the tourist bubble for the past week and a half. We had to scrounge for our own food. No air-conditioned bus. People wouldn’t let us pay in Euros and demanded instead Egyptian pounds – I hadn’t even seen Egyptian money until this point.

Brought me back to my backpacking days and it felt nice.  But of course, being catered to and lounging around without a care in the world is nice too. 

egyptian norm

So the one week on the Nile part of our trip was advertised as a *5 star all inclusive cruise for 1 euro. (*Egyptian norm)


What we actually got:

*5 star cruise ship (*Egyptian norm)

To give an idea of what a 5 star cruise ship based on Egyptian norms is like, imagine a big casino based on Atlantic City norms and not say, Las Vegas norms.

Still it was nice, deck with a swimming pool and clean rooms the size of an average hotel in Paris with private bathroom and hot water. We even got a towelagami animal greeting us each day on our room after our daily morning visits (swan, alligator, monkey, and even Mickey Mouse - guy was a real artist).

All inclusive

Three meals a day and tea time in the afternoon whenever ship was in transit. Someone even rang a bell to get our Pavlov digestive juices going. Drinks not included in the all inclusive. We spent about 10 euros each for water for the week, double the going rate on the street. When we tried to bring water we bought on the street to the table we were scolded.

I had been told by friends that Egyptian food was nothing to write home about and I’d have to agree. On about the third day of the trip we were served spaghetti for appetizer, hamburger patties and fries to follow, and ice cream as dessert in what I interpreted to be some kind of effort to give the foreigners a taste of home.

Activities:

Life on the cruise ship can get boring but the crew has that covered with nightly planned fun inducing activities like gala dinners [read: same food served instead of buffet style with the lights dimed] and dancing to music ala my cafeteria middle school dances in the  mid 90's [nobody asked me to dance then and husband didn't ask me to dance now].

We did participate in “Egyptian” night where we all dressed up in jilbabs and ate Egyptian food which I couldn’t really distinguish from Lebanese food. We ate quickly and were able to avoid the rest of Egyptian night involving wrapping people up in toilet paper, an activity I’m sure is practiced by all Egyptians. We weren’t however, able to avoid the photographer who made us do Egyptian poses. We passed on the 20 euro resulting photo.

Visits:

Visits were not included so we figured this was where they made their money, but I was thinking, this is Egypt how much could it be? In the end we spent a total of 210 euros per person on visits: 120 euros for the standard visits (10 visits) and splurged for two extra visits: Valley of the Kings for 30 euros and Abu Simbel for an outrageous 90 euros (apparently due to the fact that we had to be escorted by a convoy).

Visits included air conditioned transport, price of admission, and tour guide. When cross referenced with my lonely planet guide, we probably paid about 3 to 4 times what we would have paid had we done it by ourselves.

*Tipping (*Egyptian norm):

I had read that tipping is a part of daily life in Egypt but we didn’t really have this problem as 54 euros were extracted from us when we arrived at the airport to cover tips for the entire trip. We unfortunately had to explain this to the people who requested tips anyways. You can only say “Sorry we already paid the agency” so many times to a guy with holes in his shoes before you start to feel like an asshole.

There are no beggars in Egypt; people simply provide services you don’t ask for (jumping into your picture, putting a scarf on your head) and then asking for a tip afterwards. In a country so poor and the tourist industry in steep decline, competition was fierce and we were getting solicited left and right. Having already experienced similar situations in Asia I tried to keep a smile on my face while remaining firm but after a while anyone can get weary.

*Security (*Egyptian norm)

The main reason we went with an organized tour is because we felt it would be safer. There were security guards with guns but by the clumsy way the guns were handled I wondered to myself if it wasn’t just some country boy who’s mother tipped his way into a uniform and paycheck. There were metal detectors but it didn’t seem to bother anyone if it went off. Maybe instead of checking for weapons they were checking for the presence of enough change for tips and you were banned if the detector didn't go off?

All in all we paid about 275 euros pp which isn’t bad considering you get to cruise along the Nile River and have all your needs taken care of for you except personal hygiene. 

Wouldn't be so bad if it didn't remind me a little of a old person's home.

egypt

So husband and I managed to sneak in 2 weeks vaca for a honeymoon despite the fact that I had taken off almost 3 weeks for the wedding and husband just started work (thank you French benefits system). It was the first time I had ever taken time off without knowing where I was going.


I wanted to go on safari in Africa but unfortunately this proved very expensive and we had just paid the bill for our wedding amidst French tax season (le ouch). Maldives was reasonable but I could probably only stare at beautiful waters for one week and not two. Greece seemed a good compromise but dodgy due to the euro zone crisis. Busy at work and suffering still from organization fatigue from the wedding husband and I decided we would just wait till something interesting came up on lastminute.com.

My plan actually was to really wait till the last minute to get something amazing at like a fraction of the cost. But turns out I’m not that kind of person who can wait one week before the date of departure before booking a trip so at the one month mark when I saw a deal to add a one week cruise on the Nile on to one week all inclusive resort at the red sea for 1 euro more, we booked.

Relieved to finally have a destination for my vacation, I woke up the next day to the news of anti-American protestors attacking U.S. diplomatic compounds in Libya and Egypt resulting in the death of the U.S. ambassador in Libya along with 4 other Americans due to an obscure low budget YouTube video mocking the Muslim prophet. Angry mobs with signs like “Death to Americans” plastered across the news.

Thinking perhaps that we should cancel, husband made the point that I didn’t exact look “American” and that we would be coming from France and not the United States. I agreed to wait and see and registered Egypt in my STEP program account.

The next day I got a warning message from the department of state for... wait for it...  France.  Yes not a peep from the Egypt listserv but apparently French Muslims were getting rowdy (to the department of state'se credit, there were demonstrations at the U.S. embassy in Paris the next day).

About a week later French magazine Charlie Hebdo published cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed enraging Muslims worldwide.  Now was definitely not the time to be French American newly-weds in Egypt.

We had to decide what to do. I checked the department of state website on travel warnings. If you put a red dot on regions that are off limits, the map of northern Africa/middle east resembled the last 10 seconds of a game of sink your battleship: Libya – travel warning. Sudan – travel warnings. Israel – travel warnings. Sinai – travel warnings. Rest of Egypt – exercise caution.

We went anyways. Life is a risk.