Book recommendation

In Egypt, Samar recommended to us a novel-- The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al Aswany. Jacqueline was completely absorbed by it while we were in Egypt, and I'm just starting it now. It's a very popular, very controversial novel that paints contemporary Cairo in a bleak light. The movie version (recently released) will have to go on our Netflix queue when we get back.

Why Egypt reminds me of the 70’s

No matter where we go in Egypt, I think of what it must have been like to happen upon these ruins 150 years ago. Riding camels in the desert to the pyramids, taking tea in the shade of the Sphinx—no touts, no plastic scarab beetles or fake papyrus scrolls—just you and your small group, your guide, and some cantankerous, cranky camels. You would have had more time then, time to explore; to burn the image of the temple in your mind, to ponder how many men have lived and died during the time these monuments have stood.

But there is another period of time that I keep thinking about here in Egypt. The seventies. What is it about the seventies? Well, the King Tut exhibit was traveling throughout the world—it was a big deal. Omar Sharif, one of the most famous Egyptians ever, was very dashing, and very seventies. What about the movie Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor? Sixties, I know, but there’s something very seventies about Liz. Remember that disco song, “Midnight at the Oasis”—disco is very seventies. Keith was just reminding me of the Steve Martin bit and the King Tut song (he’s got a few years on me). When was Steve Martin an SNL guest host all the time? I think it was the SEVENTIES. All of these Sound & Light shows have lasers. When were lasers really new? Why, the seventies of course!







And, we passed by this weird funky seventies structure while cruising the Nile; it would make a perfect hideout for some sleazy seventies Bond villain!

Egyptian snacks

Pleasant surprise: Chicken-flavored potato chips are really good.

Disappointment: Cumin-flavored pretzels taste just like regular pretzels.

Also I should note that every Egyptian wine-- red, rose, or white-- tastes like cooking sherry (and the beer is a little underwhelming here too. Not a big nation of drinkers).

Esna

One of the stranger moments on the trip so far: it’s our second day of three on our brilliantly tacky monster-sized Nile cruiser, and we have to queue up among six other tourist boats to use the lock on our way to Luxor. It’s Ramadan, it’s dusk, we’re temporarily tied up to the dock at Esna, and most of us are sitting around on the top deck, looking right over at the street scenes of Esna, watching goats, mule-carts, and scooters pass by, watching ourselves being watched from the streets and crumbling buildings. The call to prayer emanates from three different mosques that seem equidistant from us; they are each staggered by a few seconds, so the sound loudly reverberates over us, ghostly as the sun sets. In a brilliant Fellini-esque juxtaposition, three young Asian women (possibly Korean?) are loudly laughing, shrieking and splashing in the pool, oblivious in the special way Asian tourists can be, taking snapshots of each other, and noticing the call to prayer only long enough to laugh and mockingly imitate the muezzin’s intonations.

I would stare at the giggling water-nymphs, and look back at the crumbling buildings on the shore, imagining robed men on the rooftops, assembling rocket launchers to rain fire down upon all of us disrespectful infidels.

It *is* just a river in Egypt!

We are in the midst of the second of two cruise experiences in Egypt. Currently, we have been herded on a Nile ship (the Crown Emperor) that is like a low-budget, floating, shabby Vegas hotel—- a Vegas hotel that is close to four mosques during Ramadan (I am listening to four independent call to prayers right now, each one started at a slightly different time, so there is a weird echo and discordance to the whole affair). We also happen to be one of the few Americans on this particular ship, which isn’t necessarily bad, but due to the high concentration of Japanese, Taiwanese, and Germans on board, we feel strangely isolated. The upside is that the female taiwanese tourists have no problem with floating in the pool while loudly making fun of the call to prayer (by imitating the warbling ‘Allah Ackbarrrrrrrrrrrrrr’). Inappropriate? Yes. Amusing given the piousness of Muslim men and the overall treatment of women in this part of the world? Yes.

Cruising on the Nile in modern times has absolutely NONE of the romanticized experiences that one would expect. Green and blue Astroturf lines the top deck, a crush of bodies (our boat, one of the largest, is designed to accommodate approximately 250 people) wait expectantly at the dining room doors until the gates are opened, and then, like cattle, rush to get plates and heap tasteless (and questionably prepared?) buffet food on top.

I have taken to quietly moo-ing in line while waiting for the unsatisfying feeding frenzy to commence. Keith and I actually skipped two meals in order to regain an appetite, just to have it satisfied by the weight of the food, and not the taste.

One can look past the Astroturf to see the banks of the Nile streaming slowly past. Fisherman in traditional feluccas cast their nets, laughing children jump into the Nile, white and gray ibises land in marshy areas here and there. There are brave souls in rowboats that try to cross the water-freeway that is the Nile, (like a high stakes, waterlogged Frogger). These risk-takers are discouraged, but not thwarted, by the blaring horns of the cruise ships that chug three abreast down the river. Gone are the quiet days of gliding in small vessels, accompanied by thoughtful and well-read folks who self-selected based on the tremendous expense of visiting a place like Egypt. Now, Egypt is the low-budget travelers dream come true—lots of bland meals, guided excursions, and favorable exchange rates make North Africa the Mexico of Europe.

Perhaps this typical Egyptian-tourist experience would not have been so depressing if we had done the Nile before our Lake Nasser trip. The M.S.Eugenie is a revelation as compared to those “other” cruises, not only in regards to the size of the ship, but specifically because of the isolation experienced cruising the world’s largest artificial lake.





We began in Aswan, (the site of the great dam, constructed to stop the predictable seasonal flooding of the Nile banks) and continued for four days down to our final destination, Abu Simbel, the great temple of Ramses II. Each room had a private deck with chairs, allowing us both privacy and utility, (we spent an entire morning washing clothes out in our tiny sink, and conveniently used the light housing on the deck ceiling to support hangers with drippy shirts and the like).



We passed two boats in four days. It was hot—really hot. Like when you have been cooking a chicken in the oven for an hour, and stick your face in to baste it--hot. But we had an air-conditioned room a foot away, and found it easy to hose off in the shower, run outside to the deck, and let the evaporation cool us. Days of cruising were interspersed with quick (1.5 to 2 hour) excursions to shore, where we clamored into the 30-seater motor boat that dangled from the stern, jumped off onto shore, and saw a large sampling of the various UNESCO salvaged (i.e. saved from the dam-generated flood waters) Nubian temples. We saw scorpions, poisonous snakes, and alligators—none in the wild, but kept in empty water bottles by the local Bedouin in order to extract some baksheesh (cash in the form of a tip) from the tourists, in exchange for a picture with the fear-inducing specimens.

On the third day, we approached Abu Simbel, from the water. As we got closer, everyone scampered around the deck, free cocktails were passed about (non-alcoholic, of course, for this is predominantly a Muslim country), and to really cater to the audience, Carmina Burana (a la “The Omen”) blasted from the loudspeakers as these massive figures came into view...

Pedestrians

Upon successfully crossing a wide boulevard in Alexandria, I'm inspired to post a brief Adam Sachs passage about Cairo pedestrians--
"...In Stockholm, they look both ways, judge the distance and speed of the approaching Volvos, and formulate a rational decision about when it is safe to cross. In Madrid, they look with disdain and cross with bravado, taking back what some bastard would deny them. In Cairo, they look inside the onrushing cars to read the soul of the drivers. They wade into traffic as though it were a refreshing mountain stream. They are drawn to brush against and bond with the swerving, swarming tons of steel the way people at aquatic theme parks are drawn to brush against and bond with the trained dolphins...."

Pictures Coming-honest

Hey everyone-we have had non-existent internet service due to our boat trips. Right now we are sitting in an internet cafe in Luxor to check on things-expect lots of content in the next few days-as long as we have internet access in Jordan-we have been taking tons of pictures and writting as well. Miss you and we love reading your comments-thanks.

40

...hmmm, not bad as far as birthdays go. Admired Ramses' dessicated corpse in the Egyptian Museum Mummy Room; contemplated Tutankhamun's coffin nails; walked barefoot through the Muhammad Ali Mosque; stared at the Cairo skyline from the Citadel walls; sat in the Ben Ezra Synagogue; drank turkish coffee, socialized and smoked water pipes in the Souq.










We'll hopefully post something a little more detailed later. We didn't have much in the way of web connections in Cairo... we're in Alexandria at the moment; Jacqueline's doing much better with her cold but I think we're still a little ragged from the time change etc...Thanks everyone, for your posted comments & well-wishes!

Arabic translation

We’ve been picking up some rudimentary Arabic—nothing that impressive, just your basic pleasantries like thank you (shokran), please (min fadlak), sorry (aasef), hello (as-salaam alaykum), okay (mashi), let’s go! (yalabina!)…

Laa shokran (no thanks) is proving the most useful phrase to know, given the large number of touts that descend upon us at any tourist site. Samar told us to use halas!! ("end it!") if someone is especially pushy, but we haven’t had to drop the h-bomb yet.



Most of our practicing, though, involves numbers. Western numerals are, technically, of Arabic origin, but they look different enough in Arabic to be confusing. The trickier ones are 3 (actually 4) and 0 (actually 5). Zeros are designated by a dot. Samar and our driver have been happily quizzing us, competing to see how quickly we can read off license plates, receipts, phone numbers etc.

Getting around in a strange place

We generally like to avoid group tours—I’m always the guy who wanders off or tries to duck out of things—but traveling within Egypt is very difficult for outsiders if you’re not at least affiliated with some guide or company. The many tour companies and guides here are heavily regulated by the government. The government has been concerned about tourist safety since a number of terrorist attacks occurred on tourist sites in the nineties; they try to put on a show of monitoring and tracking visitors, offering security guards, escorts and endless rows of metal detectors (We’re convinced very few of these metal detectors actually work, and to be honest, teenagers with automatic weapons and ill-fitting uniforms don’t exactly inspire confidence).

We hooked up with a tour company recommended to us by Travel Betty (thanks Tracy!) called Egypt 7000. Happily, we aren’t in any ‘group’ situation, Egypt 7000 have been driving us around and helping us with scheduling, reservations and logistics… Mohammed (more on him later) met us at the airport, made sure we checked in to our hotel, and has been great making sure we don’t get lost among Cairo’s teeming streets. It’s quite a relief to have their help; otherwise we’d completely exhaust ourselves, and we don’t want to burn out so early in the trip…

Mena House

For our first few nights in Cairo we arranged to stay at Mena House; we wanted to see the famous old Giza hotel in the shadow of the pyramids. It’s been an iconic Egyptian destination since the 19th century, and is evocative of the days of the ‘grand tour’. It’s been the location of a variety of political summits, the romantic backdrop to several old films, and has hosted plenty of people over the years, from Winston Churchill to Barbara Bush. The hotel itself has been pretty well preserved and modernized. It’s tacky in a charming sort of way, ornate with gilt and marble; it has a strong institutional scent of soap, jasmine and cigarette smoke that reminds us of Turkey.

Culturally, Egypt may be the most “foreign” place we’ve been. Turkey is practically Greek by comparison, and we’ve always been reasonably comfortable in our various travels to places like China, Japan, Thailand & Cambodia—Asia feels familiar to us after years of living, working and socializing in a predominantly Asian city like San Francisco.