I've fallen seriously behind in my posts. My most recent post was nearly two months ago, and even that ancient update was itself narrating events that had happened over a month before. I still enjoy updating this thing, I think I just hate the idea of working through my backlog of scribbles and notes. It's difficult to write with any sort of regularity about things that happened months ago. So, I've decided to resolve the issue as elegantly (and effortlessly) as possible - by skipping the past three or four months and jumping back to the future.
So here we are, again in now.
We're back in Brooklyn. I can finally say "we" because Ms. Chadha has left London to stay with me in New York for good. The long slog to the Foreign Service continues. My security clearance is still pending. My case manager from Diplomatic Security submitted my file sometime in mid-April, and shortly after that, I entered a special hell called "adjudications," where I've burned ever since. Operating under the logic that only a difficult decision could possibly take this long, I've started to believe that this is probably a bad sign.
Oh well, nothing really to do about it. I can't imagine what fatal information Diplomatic Security could have uncovered, so I'm hoping it's just a function of checking up on my frequent globe-trekking (Ms. C has dragged me to some 35 countries over the last five years). There's also always the possibility that Ms. C's nationality is the concern - she's not American, she's a Kiwi, and my country in understandably suspicious of a nation that would field a soccer team that neither won nor lost a single game in the World Cup. How un-American is that?
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Convoy to Abu Simbel
Fifteen minutes before we were scheduled to leave, the hotel gave us our wake up call. We climbed into our clothes and stumbled out into the lobby where we joined a handful of equally bleary-eyed guests. We were given a boxed lunch before being led to a spacious minibus. Given the length of the ride, I was pleased to only be sharing the bus with a few other people. Besides our small group, it seemed that the only others making the trip were four Korean tourists who, coincidentally, we had actually already met around a campfire in the White Desert the week before.
Unfortunately, this was only the second of a long series of stops. The empty seats quickly disappeared as we pulled into random alleyways and sidestreets, gathering one or two more tourists each stop. Soon, every seat was filled, but that didn’t stop our imaginative driver from creating more. Our bus had foldaway seats hidden everywhere – under other seats; on the floor; behind ingeniously disguised panels in the bus' walls. If the vehicle hadn’t already been horribly crowded, it might have actually been fun to guess from where the next seat was miraculously going to appear. In the circumstances, however, what had looked like a bargain when we booked was beginning to look even more like a steal, only we had become the victims.
"Well, at LE70 each, that's only about $5.00 each, not too bad for seven hours of transport," I said optimistically.
"It's more like £10.00 sterling, which is what you'd pay for a full-size seat on a National Express bus in England," replied Ms. Chadha with better math and brutal realism.
Awkwardly folded into a seat further down my row was an enormously tall German (he was 7'2", which according to Ms. C. would have made him the tallest man in New Zealand). At the first stop, he asked the only slightly less enormous Korean passenger who sat in relative comfort by the door if he wouldn't mind trading places. Unsurprisingly, the Korean passenger wasn't interested. “But my legs are very long, it would be more comfortable," pleaded the German. The Korean guy thought for a second before defensively replying "I will stay because otherwise I have the same problem." I prepared to watch what would certainly be the tallest smackdown I had ever seen, maybe the tallest ever! I confess to being a little disappointed that nothing came of it.
We settled into our seats, some more happily than others, and waited for the rest of the convoy to gather. Fifty minutes later, it had, and one by one we pulled onto the road to Abu Simbel. I don’t often imagine convoys, but when I do, I imagine something impressive - the word evokes military supply lines, long-haul truckers, ships dodging submarines in the Atlantic. Minibus convoys, on the other hand, are absurd. A lone minibus look vaguely ridiculous, five dozen of them in a row look supremely so. The safety advantages weren’t clear either: attacking a lone bus requires a certain amount of timing and precision. Hitting a chain of buses that is scheduled to pass at a certain time, on the other hand, must be an attractive target for even the laziest, most clumsy terrorist. In any event, the convoy had broken apart within the first twenty kilometres. The only effect the convoy seemed to have was to bring down property values in the neighbourhood where it gathered. What a nasty surprise it must have been for the locals. Imagine: your first night in your new home and you’re woken up by the sounds of forty or fifty minibuses idling outside your window. What would you do when you realized that this was going to happen to you every night for the rest of your life?
Abu Simbel itself is an extraordinary site well worth the three hour drive (especially if you do it in an adult-size bus). The four collosi of Ramses II outside the temple are familiar enough – as a child one of my favorite issues of National Geographic was an article on the relocation of the monument to higher ground as the rising water behind the Aswan dam threatened to innundate it. What I hadn’t known was that the interior of the temple was so extensive. It’s incredible both for the quality of the original work and for its level of preservation. I’d recommend heading straight for the temple interior when you arrive. Most tourists will be stuck listening to their guides’ background lectures just in front of the temple, so even in the middle of such a large crowd, you can steal fifteen minutes of peace inside the temple if you hurry.
There’s plenty of time later to enjoy the exterior views of the temple, where the crowd milling around below only accentuates the size of the monument. The colossal quartet of Ramses II were built to scowl at travellers from the Nubian kingdoms to the south, impressing upon them the power and terror of Pharaonic Egypt. It’s still effective today, though now the monument is set in an artificial mountain overlooking an artificial lake, and the modern oppressors of the Nubians have reverted to more barbaric ways of demonstrating their power.
The hour-and-a-half given to see the site seems like more than enough time, but before long the roar of a thousand minibuses told us that the convoy was reforming. We settled back into our seats and tried to get comfortable as the convoy, united for now, began the long trip back to Aswan.
Unfortunately, this was only the second of a long series of stops. The empty seats quickly disappeared as we pulled into random alleyways and sidestreets, gathering one or two more tourists each stop. Soon, every seat was filled, but that didn’t stop our imaginative driver from creating more. Our bus had foldaway seats hidden everywhere – under other seats; on the floor; behind ingeniously disguised panels in the bus' walls. If the vehicle hadn’t already been horribly crowded, it might have actually been fun to guess from where the next seat was miraculously going to appear. In the circumstances, however, what had looked like a bargain when we booked was beginning to look even more like a steal, only we had become the victims."Well, at LE70 each, that's only about $5.00 each, not too bad for seven hours of transport," I said optimistically.
"It's more like £10.00 sterling, which is what you'd pay for a full-size seat on a National Express bus in England," replied Ms. Chadha with better math and brutal realism.
Awkwardly folded into a seat further down my row was an enormously tall German (he was 7'2", which according to Ms. C. would have made him the tallest man in New Zealand). At the first stop, he asked the only slightly less enormous Korean passenger who sat in relative comfort by the door if he wouldn't mind trading places. Unsurprisingly, the Korean passenger wasn't interested. “But my legs are very long, it would be more comfortable," pleaded the German. The Korean guy thought for a second before defensively replying "I will stay because otherwise I have the same problem." I prepared to watch what would certainly be the tallest smackdown I had ever seen, maybe the tallest ever! I confess to being a little disappointed that nothing came of it.
We settled into our seats, some more happily than others, and waited for the rest of the convoy to gather. Fifty minutes later, it had, and one by one we pulled onto the road to Abu Simbel. I don’t often imagine convoys, but when I do, I imagine something impressive - the word evokes military supply lines, long-haul truckers, ships dodging submarines in the Atlantic. Minibus convoys, on the other hand, are absurd. A lone minibus look vaguely ridiculous, five dozen of them in a row look supremely so. The safety advantages weren’t clear either: attacking a lone bus requires a certain amount of timing and precision. Hitting a chain of buses that is scheduled to pass at a certain time, on the other hand, must be an attractive target for even the laziest, most clumsy terrorist. In any event, the convoy had broken apart within the first twenty kilometres. The only effect the convoy seemed to have was to bring down property values in the neighbourhood where it gathered. What a nasty surprise it must have been for the locals. Imagine: your first night in your new home and you’re woken up by the sounds of forty or fifty minibuses idling outside your window. What would you do when you realized that this was going to happen to you every night for the rest of your life?Abu Simbel itself is an extraordinary site well worth the three hour drive (especially if you do it in an adult-size bus). The four collosi of Ramses II outside the temple are familiar enough – as a child one of my favorite issues of National Geographic was an article on the relocation of the monument to higher ground as the rising water behind the Aswan dam threatened to innundate it. What I hadn’t known was that the interior of the temple was so extensive. It’s incredible both for the quality of the original work and for its level of preservation. I’d recommend heading straight for the temple interior when you arrive. Most tourists will be stuck listening to their guides’ background lectures just in front of the temple, so even in the middle of such a large crowd, you can steal fifteen minutes of peace inside the temple if you hurry.
There’s plenty of time later to enjoy the exterior views of the temple, where the crowd milling around below only accentuates the size of the monument. The colossal quartet of Ramses II were built to scowl at travellers from the Nubian kingdoms to the south, impressing upon them the power and terror of Pharaonic Egypt. It’s still effective today, though now the monument is set in an artificial mountain overlooking an artificial lake, and the modern oppressors of the Nubians have reverted to more barbaric ways of demonstrating their power.
The hour-and-a-half given to see the site seems like more than enough time, but before long the roar of a thousand minibuses told us that the convoy was reforming. We settled back into our seats and tried to get comfortable as the convoy, united for now, began the long trip back to Aswan.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Down in Upper Egypt
EgyptAir offered us a choice of three afternoon flights, all of which were scheduled to leave within ten minutes of each other. For several hours on either side of this small handful of departures, nothing left at all. Flying planes in a convoy might have seemed strange to me once. Fortunately, I've stopped trying to understand these things and, instead of puzzling over the logic and worrying about the waste, I now just sip my mini can of Pepsi* and enjoy the extra space in my choice of one of three available planes, none of which was even one-third full.
The only disadvantage of a near-empty plane is that it suffers more from the effects of the hoht afternoon air rising off the baking desert beneath us. The same rules of atmospheric thermodynamics that allows birds to gracefully wheel in ever-higher arcs over the desert floor also apply to 747s, but there isn't anything graceful about our flight, which lurches clumsily through the air. I would never have described myself as someone who’s afraid of flying, but I’m going to start avoiding these Saharan flights. They’re nasty.
The Aswan airport is tiny and, on a Sunday, was completely empty. This didn’t mean that I could make it to the bathroom unobserved by the staff, however. As soon as I left the stall, a newly-arrived attendant handed me a paper towel and I handed him back a one-pound note. I could see right away from the polite-but-disgusted look on his face that I had made a mistake. I realized that I’d used my left hand to pass him his baksheesh. This must have been particularly revolting given where I’d just been. I do really try to not make these mistakes, but I’ve found that there’s a difference between knowing the proper etiquette and having the presence of mind to always observe it. This is why whenever I’ve had the opportunity to eat with anyone local, I literally sit on my left hand.
The taxi cartel at Aswan International is unusually disciplined, and my price negotiations weren't impressing anyone, including Ms. Chadha. When my generous counter-offer of LE50 was refused en-masse by the rank of drivers, I was left without any other plan except to sit there until someone crumbled. Someone did, but it was no surprise when that someone was me. Unless you’re a masochist or on a very tight budget, book a hotel transfer.
I’d read that Aswan’s souq was the best outside of Cairo, and since I was still in the market for a backgammon board, we decided to give shopping a try before anything else. Aswan’s municipal government had completely refurbished the market several years ago. Gone are the narrow, twisting streets with shops and vendors of every sort all haphazardly heaped together. Now the uniformly sized shops sit in neat rows on newly paved streets. It feels like you’re in an exotic version of a suburban shopping mall, though admittedly one with a more interesting food court. The main disadvantage is that in these “improved” open streets, the shopkeepers can see you from thirty meters away, and so have time to position themselves as inconveniently as possible – usually with the aim of separating you from whomever you’re walking with. The shopkeepers recognize that it's easier for a group of people to ignore them and have adjusted their strategy accordingly. In Aswan, you have to fight to stay together.
Overall, shopping in any souq is definitely a more pleasant experience when there's actually something you want to buy. However, after seeing thirty versions of the same backgammon board, we gave up and went back to the hotel. I still have hope that I’ll find what I’m looking when we’re back in Cairo. If anyone has any suggestions, please send them my way. I'm probably going to end up getting one on eBay, which would be pretty lame after having lived all of this time in North Africa.
We stayed at the Keylany Hotel, which is a few streets off the Corniche. This means that you lose the river view, but it’s quieter, cleaner, and I’m not sure that the price can be beat. It is a shame about the view, though. When I’d thought about the Nile, the scene from the Corniche is what I’d imagined: a ribbon of blue between dun colored cliffs and mountains of sand, thick stands of palms gathered on either side. It was beautiful and the rooftop of the Keylany would have been the perfect place to take it in – it’s been tastefully decorated with wicker and hundreds of fairy lights** (which looked better than I make it sound).
We decided to have a quick drink before calling it an early night (we had a 2:50 A.M. wake-up call to look forward to), but instead managed to get caught in a conversation with a roof full of backpackers. Trying to extricate yourself from a tipsy pair of chatty South Africans isn't easy, but I felt like I was up to it after an afternoon of practice in Aswan’s markets. Instead of letting myself be suckered into listening to an evening of stories even more exaggerated than mine, I followed my fail-safe souq escape tactics: I smiled, didn’t let them get between Ms. Chadha and me, went for a quick exit while ignoring the usual mix of pleas and insults, and hoped we got away without offending anyone too much. I think I’m getting good at this.
*Pepsi is killing Coke in the Egyptian cola wars. I have no idea why. It's very disheartning.
** I've always just called them "Christmas lights", but that doesn't seem to fit here. I've adopted Ms. C's terminology.
The only disadvantage of a near-empty plane is that it suffers more from the effects of the hoht afternoon air rising off the baking desert beneath us. The same rules of atmospheric thermodynamics that allows birds to gracefully wheel in ever-higher arcs over the desert floor also apply to 747s, but there isn't anything graceful about our flight, which lurches clumsily through the air. I would never have described myself as someone who’s afraid of flying, but I’m going to start avoiding these Saharan flights. They’re nasty.
The Aswan airport is tiny and, on a Sunday, was completely empty. This didn’t mean that I could make it to the bathroom unobserved by the staff, however. As soon as I left the stall, a newly-arrived attendant handed me a paper towel and I handed him back a one-pound note. I could see right away from the polite-but-disgusted look on his face that I had made a mistake. I realized that I’d used my left hand to pass him his baksheesh. This must have been particularly revolting given where I’d just been. I do really try to not make these mistakes, but I’ve found that there’s a difference between knowing the proper etiquette and having the presence of mind to always observe it. This is why whenever I’ve had the opportunity to eat with anyone local, I literally sit on my left hand.
The taxi cartel at Aswan International is unusually disciplined, and my price negotiations weren't impressing anyone, including Ms. Chadha. When my generous counter-offer of LE50 was refused en-masse by the rank of drivers, I was left without any other plan except to sit there until someone crumbled. Someone did, but it was no surprise when that someone was me. Unless you’re a masochist or on a very tight budget, book a hotel transfer.
I’d read that Aswan’s souq was the best outside of Cairo, and since I was still in the market for a backgammon board, we decided to give shopping a try before anything else. Aswan’s municipal government had completely refurbished the market several years ago. Gone are the narrow, twisting streets with shops and vendors of every sort all haphazardly heaped together. Now the uniformly sized shops sit in neat rows on newly paved streets. It feels like you’re in an exotic version of a suburban shopping mall, though admittedly one with a more interesting food court. The main disadvantage is that in these “improved” open streets, the shopkeepers can see you from thirty meters away, and so have time to position themselves as inconveniently as possible – usually with the aim of separating you from whomever you’re walking with. The shopkeepers recognize that it's easier for a group of people to ignore them and have adjusted their strategy accordingly. In Aswan, you have to fight to stay together.
Overall, shopping in any souq is definitely a more pleasant experience when there's actually something you want to buy. However, after seeing thirty versions of the same backgammon board, we gave up and went back to the hotel. I still have hope that I’ll find what I’m looking when we’re back in Cairo. If anyone has any suggestions, please send them my way. I'm probably going to end up getting one on eBay, which would be pretty lame after having lived all of this time in North Africa.We stayed at the Keylany Hotel, which is a few streets off the Corniche. This means that you lose the river view, but it’s quieter, cleaner, and I’m not sure that the price can be beat. It is a shame about the view, though. When I’d thought about the Nile, the scene from the Corniche is what I’d imagined: a ribbon of blue between dun colored cliffs and mountains of sand, thick stands of palms gathered on either side. It was beautiful and the rooftop of the Keylany would have been the perfect place to take it in – it’s been tastefully decorated with wicker and hundreds of fairy lights** (which looked better than I make it sound).
We decided to have a quick drink before calling it an early night (we had a 2:50 A.M. wake-up call to look forward to), but instead managed to get caught in a conversation with a roof full of backpackers. Trying to extricate yourself from a tipsy pair of chatty South Africans isn't easy, but I felt like I was up to it after an afternoon of practice in Aswan’s markets. Instead of letting myself be suckered into listening to an evening of stories even more exaggerated than mine, I followed my fail-safe souq escape tactics: I smiled, didn’t let them get between Ms. Chadha and me, went for a quick exit while ignoring the usual mix of pleas and insults, and hoped we got away without offending anyone too much. I think I’m getting good at this.
*Pepsi is killing Coke in the Egyptian cola wars. I have no idea why. It's very disheartning.
** I've always just called them "Christmas lights", but that doesn't seem to fit here. I've adopted Ms. C's terminology.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
A Little Eire in Egypt
My original plan for getting to Upper Egypt involved taking the Abela Sleeper Train from Cairo to Aswan. It sounded romantic in a neo-colonial sort of way and offered the added advantage of being cheap. Exercising an abundance of caution, I visited the reservation office at Ramses Station a full month before my expected travel date, only to be told by a puzzled clerk (who had probably never planned anything a month ahead in his life) that I couldn’t reserve a seat more than two in advance. I returned two weeks later as instructed, and found that the train was completely booked. My advice for anyone interested in travelling on the sleeper train: skip trying to decipher the conflicting instructions of the confused Abela staff. Instruct a local travel agency to get the tickets for you instead.
In the end, we had to fly, but trading a twelve hour train ride for a one-and-a-half hour flight did at least give us an extra night in Cairo. We used it to have dinner with a couple of my old ILI roommates, one of whom convinced me to try Egypt’s most schizophrenic dish: a bowl of Molokheya. I wanted to write “Egypt’s most revolting dish,” but that’s not quite fair, because it actually tastes fine. What’s revolting is the texture, which botanists describe with the appropriately disgusting word “mucilaginous.” Molokheya is the Egyptian term for Jew’s Mallow, which as near as I can tell, has no more politically correct name. When cooked, the stuff turns to slime – a clear, thick slime with the consistency of saliva...after a night of heavy drinking...when you have a sinus infection.
I washed it down with half a bottle of Omar Khayam, which as noted before, has the useful property of acting as a general anaesthetic in situations like this. This time it also had the unfortunate side-effect of causing me to suggest to Ms. C. that we should go to Harry’s Pub for a couple post-dinner drinks in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. I blame the Omar Khayam, because in sober circumstances I dislike St. Patrick’s day and I hate Harry’s Pub. I can’t imagine a situation where I'd like either of them better when combined.
Harry’s is a faux Irish pub attached to the Marriot Hotel in Zamalek (or maybe it’s the Sheraton – I can never remember, which has irritated more than one cab driver). Harry’s is popular with older (mostly English) ex-pats, local alcoholics, itinerant students, and prostitutes. Unfortunately, this is more or less the exact same demographic that is attracted to St. Patrick’s day, which doubled the potential obnoxiousness of the crowd. Luckily for us, in my enthusiasm I had failed to notice that we’d already missed the holiday, which was the day before.*
St. Patrick’s day may have passed, but there was still one night left for the Irish band that the hotel had flown in from Dublin for a four-night stand. The crowd, many of whom were probably still nursing hangovers cultivated the night before, was more subdued too. Everyone’s enthusiasm had been dampened just to the point where an old crank like me could enjoy himself, and enjoy myself I did. Probably as a consequence of my father’s collection of Dubliners cassettes, I love traditional Irish music. I was delighted anytime they pulled out one of the classics. They have so much energy to them that half the time I don’t realize how ridiculously depressing the lyrics are, which reminds me of a few of my favorite lines from G. K. Chesteron:
Very true, G.K., very true. We didn’t hear anything as conspicuously mournful as “Danny Boy,” but even the upbeat, sing-along numbers like “Whisky in the Jar,” and “Irish Rover,” (which are about a double-crossing lover and the annihilation of a ship’s crew, respectively) are actually quite sad. Some of the poignancy of bleak Irish songs is relieved, however, by the recognition that nobody living in whatever Irish backwater is the subject of a song like “Dirty Old Town” has it nearly as bad as the dozens of poor Sudanese and sub-Saharan prostitutes who frequent places like Harry’s. You would have to take Ireland’s gloomiest songwriter off his anti-depressants for months before he could write a song that could even come close to capturing how terrible that job must be.
We settled the bill just as the band started on to a series of Journey covers. It was definitely the right time to leave Harry's and probably also a good time to leave Cairo for a while, too. I’ve found that a good rule of thumb is that by the time a person starts frequenting fake Irish pubs (which exist everywhere on earth), either they’ve run out of ideas to explore or the town has run out of options to offer. In either case, it was a good time to take to the road for a bit, or, as the Irish appear to say: “mush-a ring dum-a do dum-a da, wack fall the daddy-o.”
*St. Patrick's Day was a month ago, which shows just how many posts behind I actually am on this thing. They're all there, they just need typing.
In the end, we had to fly, but trading a twelve hour train ride for a one-and-a-half hour flight did at least give us an extra night in Cairo. We used it to have dinner with a couple of my old ILI roommates, one of whom convinced me to try Egypt’s most schizophrenic dish: a bowl of Molokheya. I wanted to write “Egypt’s most revolting dish,” but that’s not quite fair, because it actually tastes fine. What’s revolting is the texture, which botanists describe with the appropriately disgusting word “mucilaginous.” Molokheya is the Egyptian term for Jew’s Mallow, which as near as I can tell, has no more politically correct name. When cooked, the stuff turns to slime – a clear, thick slime with the consistency of saliva...after a night of heavy drinking...when you have a sinus infection.
I washed it down with half a bottle of Omar Khayam, which as noted before, has the useful property of acting as a general anaesthetic in situations like this. This time it also had the unfortunate side-effect of causing me to suggest to Ms. C. that we should go to Harry’s Pub for a couple post-dinner drinks in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. I blame the Omar Khayam, because in sober circumstances I dislike St. Patrick’s day and I hate Harry’s Pub. I can’t imagine a situation where I'd like either of them better when combined.
Harry’s is a faux Irish pub attached to the Marriot Hotel in Zamalek (or maybe it’s the Sheraton – I can never remember, which has irritated more than one cab driver). Harry’s is popular with older (mostly English) ex-pats, local alcoholics, itinerant students, and prostitutes. Unfortunately, this is more or less the exact same demographic that is attracted to St. Patrick’s day, which doubled the potential obnoxiousness of the crowd. Luckily for us, in my enthusiasm I had failed to notice that we’d already missed the holiday, which was the day before.*
St. Patrick’s day may have passed, but there was still one night left for the Irish band that the hotel had flown in from Dublin for a four-night stand. The crowd, many of whom were probably still nursing hangovers cultivated the night before, was more subdued too. Everyone’s enthusiasm had been dampened just to the point where an old crank like me could enjoy himself, and enjoy myself I did. Probably as a consequence of my father’s collection of Dubliners cassettes, I love traditional Irish music. I was delighted anytime they pulled out one of the classics. They have so much energy to them that half the time I don’t realize how ridiculously depressing the lyrics are, which reminds me of a few of my favorite lines from G. K. Chesteron:
For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad
Very true, G.K., very true. We didn’t hear anything as conspicuously mournful as “Danny Boy,” but even the upbeat, sing-along numbers like “Whisky in the Jar,” and “Irish Rover,” (which are about a double-crossing lover and the annihilation of a ship’s crew, respectively) are actually quite sad. Some of the poignancy of bleak Irish songs is relieved, however, by the recognition that nobody living in whatever Irish backwater is the subject of a song like “Dirty Old Town” has it nearly as bad as the dozens of poor Sudanese and sub-Saharan prostitutes who frequent places like Harry’s. You would have to take Ireland’s gloomiest songwriter off his anti-depressants for months before he could write a song that could even come close to capturing how terrible that job must be.
We settled the bill just as the band started on to a series of Journey covers. It was definitely the right time to leave Harry's and probably also a good time to leave Cairo for a while, too. I’ve found that a good rule of thumb is that by the time a person starts frequenting fake Irish pubs (which exist everywhere on earth), either they’ve run out of ideas to explore or the town has run out of options to offer. In either case, it was a good time to take to the road for a bit, or, as the Irish appear to say: “mush-a ring dum-a do dum-a da, wack fall the daddy-o.”
*St. Patrick's Day was a month ago, which shows just how many posts behind I actually am on this thing. They're all there, they just need typing.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Cairo and the Egyptian Museum
The next morning, we drove almost directly back to Cairo from the White Desert – I say almost, because we took a few off-road detours to avoid the police checkpoints scattered along the route. I asked Waleed and Hamid about this, but they just laughed and muttered something about the highway being bad for the jeep. 
The main road that we exited was without question the best we’d had and the stony, shattered trail we used instead was one of the worst, but I shared our guides’ distrust of the police and didn’t ask any more questions. Besides, driving across the desert to avoid the law made me feel like I was part of the Monkey Wrench Gang.
We returned to the Windsor Hotel, which for the money has the nicest hotel bar in Cairo. The quality of the rooms, on the other hand, is less predictable. Some of them (ours) were simple affairs, while others (not ours) looked amazingly comfortable. I couldn’t see any significant price differences, so I suspect that what’s required for an upgrade is a bit of baksheesh. This meant that Ms. C. had to forego a large room with a bath for one with a tiny shower and a chair that collapsed the first time I sat on it. Four months in North Africa and I still don’t have any idea how this baksheesh thing is done.
The room did at least have a nice balcony overlooking the coffee and tea shops surrounding the Windsor. This meant that we could see (without being seen) the mobs of unemployed men who frequent these places – smoking sheeshas, drinking tea, leering and now and then shouting something moderately filthy at Ms. Chadha. This was the biggest difference between wandering around Cairo alone and travelling with a partner – the unwanted attention of Egyptian men.
A surprising number of Egyptian men have the sexual maturity of teenage boys, with whom they share a great deal in common: both groups are sexually frustrated, neither have any idea what to do when confronted with a woman, and neither have any better use of their time other than demonstrating the first two of these commonalities over and over again. It is very obnoxious and is far worse than in any other North African or Middle Eastern city I have visited.
It’s the kind of thing that, if you can’t find a way to adjust to or avoid, can spoil your trip. Not Ms. Chadha, though. We were soon on the streets again and I was able to demonstrate to Ms. C’s satisfaction that kushari truly is the king of cheap street foods. It seems she and her workmates had read my earlier post on the subject and couldn’t believe that something of that description could possibly taste good. I’m happy to confirm to the employees of the Insolvency Service that she agrees that it’s great.
Our time in Cairo was limited, so we decided to spend the bulk of the day at the Egyptian Museum, which matched every expectation of it. The collection is massive and amazing, but it looks like it was collected by an eccentric English gentleman who put everything on display just as his Alzheimer’s started to set in. Most things aren’t labelled, and what labels exist are often only yellowed cards, typed up in the 19th century either in bad English or bad French. The labels usually describe something completely different from what’s in front of you. Thankfully, most of what you’re looking at is impressive even when you have no idea what it is – in particular, the Tutankhamen artefacts are incredible. Still, if you’re a learner-type, buy a book to tote along. I wish I had.
The main road that we exited was without question the best we’d had and the stony, shattered trail we used instead was one of the worst, but I shared our guides’ distrust of the police and didn’t ask any more questions. Besides, driving across the desert to avoid the law made me feel like I was part of the Monkey Wrench Gang.We returned to the Windsor Hotel, which for the money has the nicest hotel bar in Cairo. The quality of the rooms, on the other hand, is less predictable. Some of them (ours) were simple affairs, while others (not ours) looked amazingly comfortable. I couldn’t see any significant price differences, so I suspect that what’s required for an upgrade is a bit of baksheesh. This meant that Ms. C. had to forego a large room with a bath for one with a tiny shower and a chair that collapsed the first time I sat on it. Four months in North Africa and I still don’t have any idea how this baksheesh thing is done.
The room did at least have a nice balcony overlooking the coffee and tea shops surrounding the Windsor. This meant that we could see (without being seen) the mobs of unemployed men who frequent these places – smoking sheeshas, drinking tea, leering and now and then shouting something moderately filthy at Ms. Chadha. This was the biggest difference between wandering around Cairo alone and travelling with a partner – the unwanted attention of Egyptian men.
A surprising number of Egyptian men have the sexual maturity of teenage boys, with whom they share a great deal in common: both groups are sexually frustrated, neither have any idea what to do when confronted with a woman, and neither have any better use of their time other than demonstrating the first two of these commonalities over and over again. It is very obnoxious and is far worse than in any other North African or Middle Eastern city I have visited.
It’s the kind of thing that, if you can’t find a way to adjust to or avoid, can spoil your trip. Not Ms. Chadha, though. We were soon on the streets again and I was able to demonstrate to Ms. C’s satisfaction that kushari truly is the king of cheap street foods. It seems she and her workmates had read my earlier post on the subject and couldn’t believe that something of that description could possibly taste good. I’m happy to confirm to the employees of the Insolvency Service that she agrees that it’s great.Our time in Cairo was limited, so we decided to spend the bulk of the day at the Egyptian Museum, which matched every expectation of it. The collection is massive and amazing, but it looks like it was collected by an eccentric English gentleman who put everything on display just as his Alzheimer’s started to set in. Most things aren’t labelled, and what labels exist are often only yellowed cards, typed up in the 19th century either in bad English or bad French. The labels usually describe something completely different from what’s in front of you. Thankfully, most of what you’re looking at is impressive even when you have no idea what it is – in particular, the Tutankhamen artefacts are incredible. Still, if you’re a learner-type, buy a book to tote along. I wish I had.
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