Blog like an Egyptian

I never know whether to write these journal entries as a rundown of each day or just the highlights of the time that's passed since I last wrote. From now on, I'm going to claim that the purpose of this blog/journal is for me to be able to look back on the details of these obscenely decadent days, and in the future to smile to myself. To that end I'm going to try and include a summary of each individual day and to mention the highs, the lows, and everything that's fit for publishing... and even some of that which is not.

I purchased a one-way ticket to Cairo and set off early on Tuesday the 9th from SFO. There were delays and a lot of running to get on departing connections but I (and even my luggage) made it to Cairo at 5:00 on Wednesday night. I took a bus downtown and caught a cab to the 'Australia Hostel' with was certainly not affiliated with any Australians as far as I could tell but was clean, cheap ($9 per night), and had plenty of people to talk to. I tried my first Egyptian meal at an upscale looking Koshery next door to the hostel. Koshery is what the locals consider fast food and they only serve one dish... its a heaping plate of small noodles, rice, and fried lentils/chickpeas mixed together with a bowl of tomato pasta sauce to pour over top. Not bad, very filling, and a good value at $1.50. I went to my room afterward, met my soon to be more important friend Jowen Yeo, and crashed in a fit of jet lag and mental exhaustion.

The next day I business to take care of. I was our of visa pages in my passport and needed to visit the US embassy to obtain more. To that end, I wrote down the address and had a friendly worker at the hostel (Mustafa) translate it into Arabic and caught a cab to that part of town. Unfortunately the address that I had written and subsequently translated was incorrect because it didn't include the correct neighborhood name so my goose chase began. I set off at 8 and had until 11am before the embassy closed to US citizen business. After the cab dropped me off and signaled that my destination was somewhere, blocks ahead, cut off from him by construction I started walking and asked dozens of people where I should be going. The address was ambiguous because the simple street/number combination is insufficient here... there are many streets that share the same names, most are not lined up straight, and its really necessary to include nearly landmarks to position by. After searching in vain for 45 minutes and circling an area a smartly dressed young man named Hassan took pity on me and made it his mission to help me in any way possible. He walked with me an hour and a half asking various people where the address is referring to and after we ended up calling the embassy and getting a better address he rode across town on the metro with me and waited outside the building for 45 minutes for me to line up and complete the paperwork to get the pages. That was a Thursday and I was told that I could pick it up again on Sunday. Disappointing, but hey, I've got the time. Afterward I had lunch with Hassan and he insisted on paying, and he paid for several cokes along the way that he wrestled me me out of buying for him. We were having fun trying to understand each other and we shared our stories.

He's a 19 year old electrical engineering student, teaching math to highschoolers, and hoping to go to university in America some day. You see, he needs to become successful so as to win the hand of the girl that he likes. She's 18 and likes him too but in Egypt dating is kind of complicated for devout Muslims like my friend Hassan. They text furiously but cannot spend too much time together since she is escorted most places and they can only really be together when married. To get married he must have money, a flat in a good part of town, and must ask the parents for approval. He says that it will take him 6 years to get to that point and currently a 31 year old man is trying to get her parents approval as well. She says that she will wait for Hassan but the parents don't care for this plan. Who knows how this will turn out. More commonly, young Muslims will date but will never meet each others families until they are ready to marry. He told me many of the virtues of Islam and tried to consistently give to every beggar we passed and explained how Muhammad got his start. He also insisted halfway through the day that we should walk arm in arm as friends in Egypt do, and what could I do but indulge him? Wish I had a picture of that.

After lunch we visited the Egyptian Museum of Cairo and found it a bit dull. We retired to my hostel to play a couple songs on ukulele and he went home to sleep. Next on the list was getting a train ticket to Aswan for a few days later. I went to the station with a charismatic Irishman from the hostel, Gerard, and he convinced me that I should instead go to Luxor with him and Jowen and to return to Cairo later to get the passport. That seemed easy enough so that very night the three of us set off on an overnight train, picked up two more friends at the train station (Chilean-David and English-Rachel), and we played cards and drank non alcoholic beer late into the night. Alcohol is hard to come by in Muslim countries and honestly we only bought that beer because the drink cart went by, we got excited and bought 10, and then returned what we could after realizing our mistake. We got to know our local Coptic Christian cabin mates and they showed us their cross tattoos that they all get at 5 years old, shared their whole roast chickens, and sang some songs. Good times.

After the night on those very uncomfortable train seats we arrived in Luxor, a smaller town of maybe a million half way up Egypt's part of the Nile river. Cairo was a huge metropolis of 20 million and was a fairly impressive and interesting urban center. Luxor is a walking town and we hiked to the Bob Marley hostel where price negotiations failed and we opted instead for the Princess Hotel were we got a shared room for $4 per night per person. Bob Marley wanted $6 but we know someone who stayed there for $3. Spent the afternoon relaxing, drinking, found a crying french girl at an ATM and helped her get money from her family at Western Union, and sampled the local sheesha (hookah tobacco). Late in the afternoon Jowen, David, Rachel, and I took a cab to Karnak, said to be the greatest temple in all of Egypt, and the largest religious structure in the entire world. It was truly awesome, and the main hall with its papyrus shaped columns dwarfed my imagination. In its day the room would get a meter of water from the flooding of the Nile to complete its swamp theme. We spent the rest of the night getting to know each other and running up our bar tab on the roof of the hostel.

The next day (Saturday the 13th) we set off early to see the Valley of the Kings which has a very strict no cameras policy for no good reason. First we stopped at the Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut where picture were allowed and it was hot as hell at over 104F. Our only relief was the minibus's AC the the cool of the crypts in the Valley of the Kings. The original paint still adorns the walls of the crypts and they colors have hardly faded at all due to their inorganic ingredients. The tombs were spectacular and the variety and scale of the hieroglyphs and illustrations impressed me very much. The rest of the day was spent purchasing a ticket back to Cairo, and trying to fend off the crippling heat of the afternoon with beer and hummus.

As I write this it's now Sunday afternoon and I'm at an internet cafe. Three of my group set off by bus to reach Dahab on the coast of the Red Sea for cooler weather and diving instruction. They plan to arrive on Monday afternoon and I'm going to meet up with them there on Monday or Tuesday. My other companion, Jowen, is flying there tomorrow. Tonight I'll take the sleeper train to Cairo and see the Pyramids in the morning, or possibly after I pick up my passport. Wish me speed in my journey.