Luxor, Aswan

The internet is not what one would call reliable in southern Egypt, which is probably just as well, but I should probably write something about the last several days before it turns into a novel.

I might as well write this in a stream of consciousness style since I have dozens of disparate notes about noteworthy events in the last few days.

I flew from Cairo to Luxor for $55 usd. The train ride was something like 12+ hours for about $20, or $50 for a sleeper car, so I preferred to save the time. I had the nicest cab driver ever on the way to the airport who not only gave me a fair price, but with whom I had a great and genuinely pleasant conversation half in arabic and half in english after which he said something super nice about being really happy to meet me. Interactions such as these are worth mentioning since they are rare.

I met a Malaysian guy in the airport on his way to Eritrea for work. We spoke Chinese. I thought he had an insanely high voice until I met this Japanese guy at my current hotel who sounds like Michael Jackson in his prime. Which reminds me, a shopkeeper I spoke with last night went out of his way to bring up Michael Jackson and the anniversary of his death, almost in the same sentence as 9/11. Also, in the Egypt Air office in Aswan they were playing Michael Jackson's greatest hits, but I was the only one singing along to "Say, say, say." The new terminal at Cairo airport was really clean, and really empty, though my flight was pretty full.

Arriving in Luxor was comical. Upon leaving the airport, the cab drivers and hotel hustlers descend upon you like vultures. One guy suggested 200 English pounds for a ride to town. The fair price for foreigners is 50 Egyptian Pounds, which is about 18 USD. This is about a 15 minute ride mind you. So I listened to outrageous prices for a few minutes, then gave up and called my Couchsurfer friend Paola who runs a hotel in town and sent her husband to come pick me up for free. Paola is a Colombian woman who moved to Luxor, married an Egyptian guy, and now runs his hotel with him. She was super nice to me, gave me great prices on the room and on the tours I did, and I was really glad I stayed there. It ended up being 3 nights.

Luxor was actually not as brutal in terms of hassling as I had been led to believe. Maybe because I was prepared for the worst, it didn't bother me as much, but while there I felt more relaxed and able to fend off aggressive salesmen than I did in any other city I have been in, including Aswan. A little bit of Arabic was all it took and I got rid of them pretty easily. Luxor is much smaller than Cairo or Alexandria. It's kind of a dusty town with a big bazaar running through the middle of it. Maybe it's the heat and maybe it's Ramadan, but even walking through the bazaar wasn't that bad. Sure, every 10 feet somebody would say "hey buddy hey buddy hey buddy hello hello hello excuse me where you from america! very good! obama!" or something like this, but they at least don't follow you down the street. I would say only 1 out of 10 follow you down the street. That being said, along the water in Luxor they are pretty hardcore. These guys are all trying to sell boat rides. Everybody pretty much approaches you like they're your friend and want to know you. They shake your hand and hold on so you can't get away. They engage you in some conversation using between 1 and 3 facts they know about your country. For some reason when talking to Americans, they always say "Alaska!" or "I have friend in California!" or things like this. There must be some kind of tout phrasebook, which incidentally is something I would actually spend money on unlike the rest of the crap they are selling.

So the first day in Luxor I went on a tour with 14 other people in a van to see the Valley of Kings, Hatshepshut's temple, and the Valley of Queens. Uploading pictures will have to wait, the internet connections here barely load the websites. I met a bunch of interesting people on that trip, but my favorite was the Chinese girl from Sichuan who is traveling for 2 years by herself. She had just come from 3 weeks in Sudan, and before that was in southern and eastern Africa by herself as well. I think she's been on the road for close to a year already. I met a nice Indian couple from England who also were well over a year and had been all around the world. Another Chinese couple were taking a break from working in the Sudan and had come up to Southern Egypt for a bit. The tomb sites are in the hillsides, and you pretty much descend into tombs of varying depth where you can bas-reliefs and carvings and occasionally sarcophagi. The reliefs are sometimes very colorful and though it was short and we only went in a few tombs, it was 1000 degrees so nobody minded and overall it was a nice tour that spared me the hassle of arguing about prices. They do position the souvenir bazaar area by the exit so you have to walk through, but as I said before, in Luxor it just wasn't that hard to breeze through.

The next day I woke up at 4:45am, was picked up at the hotel, taken to a boat where I had tea waiting for the other guests to arrive, crossed the Nile on the boat, was taken by van to a landing site where I watched a bunch of guys inflate a hot air balloon, which I then got into and flew up over Luxor. This was probably one of the highlights of my trip and I'm really glad I did it. You get beautiful views of the tomb sites and temples, of the Nile, and of the east and west banks of Luxor, the latter of which is filled with farming villages and fields of mostly sugarcane and bananas. In the distance are mountains and desert. That night, Paola invited me to her in-laws house on the west bank for iftar, and I sat in a room with the men while she sat in another room with the women, and we ate on the floor with our hands while the mosquitos ate mostly me. Paola's husband has 10 brothers so it was mostly them with whom I sat. There were children running everywhere and a lot of women in the other room. I was told by one of the kids that 20+ people live in the house, and that everyone in the village is related to each other, though how that works I don't know. It was certainly authentic, although I frankly felt a little uncomfortable not being able to communicate well and being the one infidel, though they were all very nice.

A number of people will ask me if I am Muslim in general. These are usually random people on the street, or shopkeepers. It is usually the question after where are you from and what is your name. I always feel weird saying no since I don't know what they then think. Like, oh, you're not Muslim, I guess you're going to hell so good luck with that or whatever.

This is weird. So there is apparently a sex "industry" in Luxor which I read about in my book, but it is not foreign men and local women, it is older foreign women and young local men. Had I not read about it, I wouldn't have noticed, but I did in fact see a bunch of older homely women running around with 20something men. Apparently the men get the women to buy them things til the money runs out, it's not exactly a prostitution type situation though apparently that exists too.

There are no garbage cans in Luxor at all. I don't think I saw a single one. In Cairo at least they have a few token receptacles lying around that nobody uses, but in Luxor they don't even bother. I seriously had to carry trash around with me until I get back to the hotel.

I don't recall if I mentioned it, but there is apparently an Egyptian law that every driver must honk at least 6 times for every 20 feet they drive. I probably get it more since every taxi driver will repeatedly honk and slow down and drive alongside me and yell 5 times if I want a taxi in the opposite direction that I'm going, even if I'm not looking or making eye contact or have already gestured twice that I'm not interested or said in both English and Arabic, "No thank you, I'm walking, I don't want a taxi." But it's not just me, a guy will be driving down the road with no traffic and no people in the way or anything and he will honk 3-4 times for fun. I am not exaggeration. If anything I am understating.

During the day, people pretty much just lay around. I talked to Paola about living in Egypt and at that particular moment she was dealing with an employee problem and explained to me that the aspiration of Egyptian men is to smoke, drink tea, and sleep and that they are used to living in the desert so there is dust and dirt everywhere and they don't mind living in it. She said this creates a lot of problems getting them to work in a hotel for tourists who expect a slightly higher level of cleanliness since she will ask someone who works for her to clean something, and he will say he did, but there is grime and filth everywhere that he just can't see. As I was paying my bill, there was a shouting match about how said employee had been sleeping on the couch in the lobby with his feet up and smoking. She seemed to me on the edge of losing it, and I don't blame her, I've been here for 2 weeks and I'm losing it, she's been here for 2 years.

This also reminded me of another place I was where there were many insects and cockroaches and nobody seemed to mind or notice even. I remember an old Mario Joyner routine where he talked about visiting relatives in the ghetto and how there would be cockroaches falling from the ceiling and landing on you and everyone that lived there just didn't even seem to notice. That being said, the biggest insect I have seen was still the scarab I saw in the desert which although large, was very slow moving and didn't concern me overly. Although come to think of it, Joey the American couchsurfer in Cairo showed me a picture of an enormous spider they have in Jordan, so maybe I shouldn't jinx anything.

So anyway, Luxor's last day was spent visiting Karnak, a ridiculously enormous temple complex that was in use for 1300 years and constantly modified and added on to by many different kings. The Great Hypostyle Hall was my favorite room, filled with dozens of enormous columns each inscribed with large reliefs and heiroglypics. The scale of the room was overwhelming and I'd actually put this on par with the pyramids as far as amazing Egyptian monuments to see when visiting this place.

My last night in Luxor I made my way to a restaurant I'd read about and had a snack the day before, and upon arriving I spotted a couple who I'd seen the night before so I suggested we sit together and we ended up eating dinner together and then going up on the roof of their hotel adjacent to the restaurant to drink tea and smoke sheesha. The roof terraces I have seen in several hotels provide a fantastic escape from the chaos below and I was glad to have run into these guys since due to summer and Ramadan I still have encountered surprisingly few travelers when not on tours. These guys were from London and I think they had the right idea. They spent a few days in Cairo and Luxor, then they were heading straight to Hurghada, a beach resort where they will spend the next days. I would have never thought 10 days on a beach would be desirable until I tried to travel independently in Egypt.

So now I'm in Aswan. I arrived last night and while taking a walk along the Corniche during iftar and enjoying the quiet streets without any touts, 3 guys outside of what I later learned was an officer's club asked me for a cigarette, and then took the pack from me. Then they asked me for money. I said no money and give me back my cigarettes, which they eventually did though not before they took 5 for themselves. I was upset by this since up until now people might hassle, but this is the first time someone actually took something from me without asking. There were no cops around cause of iftar, and I didn't find out until later that I could've gone in and talked to the officer in charge and probably sort it out. It was kind of a bummer and really the final straw for me. Although Aswan is scenic and they have a nice market street which is less hassle and cleaner than Luxor's, people still call out to me and try to sell me tours on boats or spices or whatever over and over. I have pretty much run out of patience for it. At least after dealing with those guys, I was walking back and told a shopkeeper about it and he was really nice about it and when I told him I wanted to get food before I did anything else, he recommended a good place around the corner where after having what will probably be my last koshary in Egypt, I felt better. I then went back around the corner and sat with that guy for about a half an hour who didn't try to sell me anything, just asked about the US and we talked about our lives. His name was George.

Today I arranged a cheap ride to the ferry terminal through the hotel so I can visit Philae Temple, supposedly one of the nicer sites to see. Somehow in the next 24 hours I will try to find a low-hassle way to take a Felucca (traditional Egyptian boat) ride on the Nile so I can do that before I leave, but then tomorrow night I bought a plane ticket straight to Tel Aviv (well, a connection in Cairo) but I'm really done here and excited to go back to a place where I don't have to haggle over what is a fair price for a bottle of water (hint, it's less than 20 egyptian pounds) and where I can walk down the street without having people try to guess my nationality and shake my hand every 30 seconds. I will spend the next 10 days or so in Israel I think though doing what I have no idea, since I haven't read any of the book yet. After that I will go to Jordan to meet my old friend Aimee Fraulo who is flying into Amman on the 20th and we will go from there down to Petra and travel around a bit. I suspect until she arrives I will spend most of my time in Jerusalem, a city I'd like to stay in for a while and get to know well and which I anticipate enjoying a lot. I am also looking forward to restaurants being open during the day since Ramadan has made lunch a challenge for the last few weeks, though that will be over in a few days so Israel or Jordan should be equally easy.

I met a couple from Hong Kong, I'm meeting them in an hour to go to Philae. Tonight I may have to get koshary again at the same place just so I can get my fill until I manage to find it in New York.