I don't really have anything clever to call this

Well I arrived in Egypt yesterday. I guess I chose it as one of my few around the horn stops because I'm a history nerd, and what better place to see some unique history. I took a red-eye into Cairo international and don't really know what's going on due to drinking on the plane and not really sleeping. I didn't get an Egyptian Visa at home because I heard they were easy to get at the entry point. I couldn't really get any Egyptian Pounds in Morocco either, so I just decided to show up with a Visa and bank card and hope all went well. Unfortunately, the bank machines at the border were all out of order. I've heard from quite a few travelers that The Egyptians generally aren't that helpful to the tourists but I decided to ask everyone in sight anyway 'cause I was stuck in no-mans-land. Everyone I asked just referred me to someone else or ignored me. Well I was getting impatient with standing around for an hour on the entry point with no one helping so what else could I do but jump the border to get to a bank machine. Smart idea Fowler. I didn't quite make it five steps toward my luggage before I was surrounded by Egyptian guards, five of which knew exactly what was going on since I told them all 30 mins earlier. Apparently they have short memories. I was quickly led off to a room where I was interrogated for about 20 mins until finally some nice lady came in and told the head guard what was going on. No hard feelings apparently because they quickly let me in the country.

An auspicious start to the Egyptian leg of the trip. I hopped in a cab en route to my hotel. Despite telling me that he knew where it was, the cabbie was on the complete wrong end of town. He told me that he was going to go in and ask someone so he pulled the car over. After 5 minutes I started getting suspicious so I went to check on the guy. Apparently he stopped at his house and was eating supper with the family. Wow. Good thing they don't go by the meter here. With my luggage locked in the trunk, I had little choice but to harass the guy into leaving. So I finally got to the hotel and I promptly pass out for an hour or two. Just to show you what state I was in, I set my clock back three hours instead of forwards three hours going from Morocco to Egypt. I woke up at 2pm and was quite disoriented from my slight pass out, but decided to do lunch and drinks with some of the residents of the hotel so that I could get an early passout to be up in good time for Giza the next day. So we went and had a good amount of drinks when I started telling an Egyptian that it was 3PM. You can imagine how I fared in this 15 minute discussion. "No sir, it's dark out, it's 9PM". Touché.

I got up early today wanting to put the comedy of errors that was May 25th behind me. I jetted on out to Giza to see the sites. Wow, is Cairo ever a populous city. People everywhere. Most people here put the number between 18 and 20 million people with the most dense living conditions in the world. Crazy huge city. And the air here is awful. Not Bangkok oppressive awful, but much dirtier. Anyway, strangely enough, The Giza Pyramids and Sphinx is smack in the middle of the Suburbs of Cairo. Almost like a buffer to the desert.

At The Pyramids, you get harassed like no other place in the world I've been. Every group of white people seems to have five locals riding camels, with a few children selling postcards in tow. No one takes no for an answer. Your only recourse is to go in somewhere with paid admission, which is pretty much everywhere. So anyway, to the sites! I got to jump in the two bigger of the three pyramids and the passageways were quite small. Get a real sense of history in there with little light, dripping water and old weathered rocks everywhere. They wouldn't let me climb the things on the outside though. Boo. The Spinx was very cool, but much smaller than I expected. I guess you can't expect anything very huge that's over 4500 years old, but still very impressive.

After seeing Giza, I jumped into a cab and made for the city. My cab was cut off horribly (the norm here) and my driver took offense. So much so that he decided to tell the guy off. As he stopped in front of the other car on the highway, he turns and tells me he's sorry. Sorry to the point that he gets out and punches the other cabbie in the face. Now, I don't really know what fighting etiquette with a cabbie is, but I pretty much just sat there while I watched him get pummeled. I saw no reason to be the third man in. The major arteries around Cairo are 3-4 stories high, so here I am, sunburnt and tired, sitting in an empty cab with a bloody driver. He tells me that I have to drive him to the hospital. I decide that I would crash within 45 seconds of driving in downtown Cairo so I decline and take my chances that I'll find an off ramp soon. Tomorrow, I take the bus to the Egypt Museum.

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