Egypt

Egypt is one of the world's great ancient empires, and has an amazing share of world heritage sites. To go along with it's amazing share of world class sites, Egypt has an ample share of the scams we have encountered. At the end of this blog we'll write about some of the scams we encountered here.

It's difficult to capture the immensity of the pyramids, but it was a surreal experience to walk and ride in our shaded horse carriage around them.

After a long day of site-seeing and being relentlessly scammed, we took pause in the cool of the sunset to take a quiet felucca sailboat ride on Cairo's Nile River.



After Cairo, we took the overnight train to Luxor, where we were amazed at the size and style of the Luxor Temple and surrounding monuments. Walking around the sites in Luxor felt even more surreal than the pyramids as they exceeded expectations. The sun was fairly intense here as you may notice in our expressions.


This walkway of Sphynx's was magnificent! It's Rusty's favorite new animal, replacing the Liger (half tiger, half lion).


Rusty wants to know who's head is bigger? He didn't like Kelsi's answer.

The detailed Egyptian hieroglyphics were stunning:


As we were bicycling in the countryside around Luxor, we came upon this monument, the Colossi of Memnon. It was fun to be biking among so many sites.



We liked the look of this one-donkey-power rig... they got it just right considering the rise in gas prices!

The Land of Baksheesh

Egypt has a few policies promoted by the government that can be a little financially adverse to touristic foreigners. The Egyptian authorities charge foreigners 10-20 times the local price for everything. Although we are accustomed to being charged a 2-3 times higher, "tourist price" by private parties and for some museum entrances, we have never been to a country where even government transportation services charge foreigners more. For a ferry boat ride that would have cost an Egyptian about $7-8, the fee for foreigners was $70. For a train ride that would cost an Egyptian about $10, the fee was $60. This attitude of charging tourists ample fees starts with authorities and extends through may parts of the Egyptian society. The result is that some Egyptians working with tourists ask for money for any little thing they do. The bribe or tip (depending on the situation) is called "Baksheesh."

Baksheesh is requested for anything and everything. In one case, Rusty asked a police officer at the train station to point him toward the bathroom, thinking that an officer on duty was a safe way to avoid the baksheesh request. After walking Rusty 30 feet to the bathroom, the officer asked for baksheesh. Similarly, if a bus driver grabs your bag and lifts it 18 inches into the cargo hull of a bus before you can stop him from doing it, he will ask for the usual luggage charge along with baksheesh of about $1.

Even in bathrooms, "paper towel servers" wait to serve and request baksheesh.   On one occasion, Rusty opted to use the electric air dryer, but the moment he looked away as he was drying his hands, the young boy serving paper towels dashed in and threw a paper towel over Rusty's hands! He gave Rusty a triumphant look and extended his hand, saying "Baksheesh!?" Although the baksheesh was laughed off by Rusty, the boy does get points for his swagger.

The baksheesh is very prominent around the pyramids. If the wrong person gets ahold of your camera to take a picture of you, you won't get the camera back without some hefty baksheesh. If a guide points to a site before you notice it on your own, he'll ask for baksheesh. In some places where photography is forbidden, you are even required to turn your camera into the local guards. Although they receive a salary, the guards ask baksheesh in exchange for return of your camera (we noticed that this did not apply to locals).

We tired of hearing requests for "baksheesh"dozens of times per day for every little thing. Like us, many tourists also become unwilling to continually pay baksheesh.  Because of this, some of the Egyptian tourism workers will devise ways of parting tourists with their money. In one situation, we were told by an animal driver/guide that the pyramids are not entirely accessible without a guide and animal transportation. The guide represented to us that we needed to ride a short distance to see his manager to get the price for the animal service. He got us 4 feet off the ground (camels are really tall) and took us about 10 feet before stopping and demanding a substantial price for the ride. He probably figured we'd rather pay than try to climb down, but he didn't know that we'd already been smartened up a bit in India.  We climbed down.

While we weren't robbed or pick-pocketed in Egypt (many tourists are), we lost a decent amount of money by petty dishonesty. We later realized that on several occasions when we didn't know the correct price of transportation, the government employee at the ticketing counter had charged us many times the regular fare price and pocketed the difference.  In our travels we have encountered numerous scams, but nowhere have they been so ubiquitous as in Egypt.

In the end, there were many very nice people who helped us without thought for money.  Also, Egypt is home to the pyramids so she can get away with quite a bit - people are still going to come visit.