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So I can't really do Cairo justice. We only have exactly one day (7am-7am) in Cairo and part of the morning is spent recovering from the overnight bus from Dahab. I don't take many pictures. Maybe it's a shame, maybe it was all for the best, but maybe I'll just use this as an excuse to only write about 2 topics: the disappointment that are the Pyramids and an extremely creepy Belly-Dancing experience.
I'll save the fun stuff for last and first give a quick rant about the Pyramids. As the last standing wonder of the ancient world, you expect this site to be one of those see-it-and-drop-your-jaw in awe type of sites. Think maybe Great Wall or Petra type of reaction. Well not so much for me. First of all just the sheer number of tourists is sickening, but Petra had that as well, no? Then you have all the people selling crap, and all the people saying no - same as in Petra. But Petra didn't have paved roads with giant tour buses riding all around right alongside the Treasury. It didn't have kids tricking you into paying for drinks when you reached the Monastery. Petra didn't have
choruses of horns honking, people yelling, and I didn't want to leave after 30 minutes. After some hard-trekking around you could really lose yourself in some remote corner of Petra. At the Pyramids the only thing you are losing is a 20 dollar bill, and maybe some lung capacity from the car exhausts. You may imagine the Pyramids to be in some far-off area in the desert, but actually they are right there next to stores and shops, just gated from the rest of the city. The Great Pyramid is accessed on a schedule and only 150 people (or something near that) are allowed in at once. Because we couldn't fathom waiting another 3 hours, we decided to skip entering the Great Pyramid and entered the second pyramid. WARNING: DON'T DO IT. In simple terms, it sucks. I flash my Hong Kong ID card as a student card and pay 3 USD (don't know how much for an adult) and get the great privilege of walking down some rickety wooden boards through a few low tunnels to come out in a single room with nothing in it. I mean it had a stone coffin but that is it. Then you
turn around and head back through the stale, humid, air to sweat your balls off only to come back out to the blasting sun and 3 dollar waters. And these tunnels aren't cool like the tunnels of Ho Chi Minh, but they are just nasty smelling halls of torturous exercise. I mean I feel like the pyramids themselves are pretty interesting, but the way the whole site is set up really cheapens the experience. It could have been much better managed and controlled, but in the end it comes out with more of an amusement park/zoo feel.
Also, one small detail that really becomes obvious when you get there is that Cairo is really, really hot. And the Middle East has been hot, yes. But Cairo does it in a different way. It does not cool off at all at night like the other desert cities, you still get sticky and hot walking. The taxi's don't use A/C which means you are drenched after sitting in horrible afternoon traffic, but also you reek of petrol, and you have lost 70% of your hearing from the horns. And this is only end of June... I can't wait to hear how
Giza Pyramids
you know i had to take this pictureTucker and Reilly fared in Luxor.
OK, I'm done being a bitchy traveler.
Switching gears to story-time. This is the story of two innocent Asian-Americans siblings looking to have a good night out on their last night of travel in the Middle East. All they want to do is relax, have a few drinks, and be entertained, preferably by some form of nightlife that is culturally interesting. Walking around the markets in the afternoon we meet Ali, an middle-aged Egyptian French professor who is in Cairo for the summer teaching Francais before heading back to Paris where he lives in a couple weeks. Ali is a very very nice man, and actually extremely French in nature just the way he spoke and smiled and got excited about showing us his city. He almost giggled and spoke his English with a slight lisp and heavily French-accented. We bond over our French connection and soon Ali has taken us under his wing, showing us the little nooks and crannies not told of in the guide books. Steve finally buys a sheesha and Ali takes us to his favorite teahouse to drink and smoke. He takes us to the tops of
the minarets for sunset and helps us find some tasty koseri. By nightfall he asked us what we were planning to do with our nights and recommended we take a felucca out on the Nile. Silly me, I wanted to have a drink and relax watching some real belly-dancing. Ali hesitates and quickly recovers, saying something about it not starting til very late past midnight, but no worries we can go. We agree to meet at 11:30 at our hotel where we can walk to Sheherazade (which was also endorsed by the Lonely Planet).
11:30 rolls around and no Ali. 11:50 and we decide to head to Sheherazade by ourselves anyways. Walking along the way we ponder why Ali may have stood us up. He certainly seemed very eager to show us around, helped us out, genuinely seemed to like us. I start to wonder how belly-dancing is perceived in Cairo. Surely it is just as we knew it to be - a respected art, right? Or maybe it was something with a dirtier undertone? Scantily clad ladies writhing to sexy, sensual music. The real stuff only starts past midnight similar to what we know as a strip club.
Are belly-dancing joints equivalent to our strip clubs in the US?? Was Ali, a cheerful, lighthearted and funny little French professor, a little creeped out by the prospect of having to accompany us in this unwholesome atmosphere?
Who knows. I wanted to see some belly-dancing and if it's in the Lonely Planet it really can't be too dodgy. We finally come to the place and don't see the entrance under the sign. Instead of a normal entrance we see a dude smoking sitting in a chair, and he points to a staircase on the right which we wander up. Another dude comes out and demands we pay cover. We pay cover, even after I tell him that in my country ladies never have to pay cover. Didn't work. I confirm they have belly-dancers and we enter. The venue is actually advertised as a "nightclub" but walking in, we see that perhaps a nightclub in Egypt isn't quite the same as a nightclub in London or NY. Picture tall ceilings with lots of gaudy decoration on the structures. One large stage dominates the front of the room, and another comes out into a round platform in the middle of a
room of tables with chairs, think strip club but without the poles. These stages are lined with cheap gold cloth, think cruise-ship entertainment. At the end of the runway sits a 4-man band playing extremely loud Middle Eastern music, think snake-charmer with synthesizers and tambourines. Around the room there are only about 5 other customers. One man sits behind us by himself, a small group of 2 sit on the other side of the stage, and two more tables of single men. All middle-aged to old men, all smoking, all looking bored.
I want to be right next to the action so we take a seat at the end of the runway to the circular platform. The other tables look at us, we are so totally out of place. Waiters rush up to ask us what we would like to drink. They don't stock hard alcohol, so I get a tea and my brother orders a Fanta. A waiter comes back with a large water and starts pouring for us, I try to tell them we didn't order it and eventually they say "is OK, no problem." They also place a tissue-box on our table. We wait around sipping
our beverages, nervously glancing at the other strangely empty tables. I suppose this is Saturday night, which is really like a Monday night I guess for Egypt. But still. 12:30 rolls around and I start asking if there will be a belly-dancer coming out because as interesting and atmospheric the 4-man band is on stage, my eardrums are kind of strung-out by now and the man singing on stage is absolutely hands-down horrible. A little while later we see a girl come in the doors with something like a slave/body guard trailing after her. Is this the belly-dancer?? I guess they just called her in.
We wait awhile longer and honestly I am getting less and less excited about this. Finally the dancer comes out. She must be something like my age, rather curvy but not fat. She wears a get-up totally unlike what I imagined, her white pants are actually separated down the thighs and held together by rings over the hips. Very slutty, even for a belly-dancer I think. She wears an ill-fitting push up bra speckled with way too many crystals and sequins. Her arms and her midsection though are covered with a nude sheer layer
of whatever it is tights are made of. I can see some of her belly cellulite through it. It's like a costume for bad Middle-Eastern porno. And finally, she starts dancing.
The dancing is nice, but not overly impressive. Not quite Shakira although I think her style has been much adapted for mass consumption. It is obvious she doesn't really want to be there, she checks her watch while dancing and she isn't totally into it. But she is still good, and she makes constant eye-contact with me. She smiles a lot, tries to bring me on stage but I decide I got in enough promiscuous troubles in Syria. It isn't til Steve leans over and tells me to look around that I realize the other tables are now empty, and the men previously occupying them are now standing along the walls etc. Turns out we are the only real customers at this place. One of the guys sitting actually had started singing on stage with the dancer - I think he was the manager. He continually pushes her towards me, she gets down on the ground and proceeds to dance right in my face. Is this a Middle-Eastern
lap dance? She continues to smile at me, Steve then tells me that she hadn't once looked at him in the eye yet. The men all along the walls watch us, the band watches us, the manager is singing while staring at me, and the dancer dances. The manager man is thin, bent over, and has a very dirty aura about him. He has very beady eyes which focus surprisingly hard on me.
This is all starting to really creep me out. It is obvious that they called the dancer in at 1am just for us, and we now have a staff of like 12 people serving only us. I realize now that I really have no idea how these places work. I wonder if I am supposed to be tipping the dancer, or if this was really more just a show. I wonder if these places have rooms in the back where you go with the dancers to "sperm", as they call it here? I wonder if the manager and the dancer think I am a lesbian? I wonder if I should feel bad about bringing my little brother to see a maybe seedier side of Cairo. And
there I sit alone in the middle of a large domed hall in Cairo, exotic music blaring, little brother to my left, dancer gyrating to my right, a leering creepo manager behind her, surrounded by staring and expecting old men staff/connected parties along the walls. I think it's time for the check, please.
After half an hour of dancing, I ask my brother to signal for the check. He makes eye contact with the waiter and give the universal sign for "check please I want to get the fuck out of here." 10 minutes pass, no check. It's not like they are busy with other tables. I continue to squirm awkwardly at the private show from the smiling dancer, and I tell him to ask for it again. The waiter comes over and I tell him we will be leaving soon, we do leave for the airport in 4 hours. At this he huffs up and tells us not yet, they have another very beautiful dancer coming in next. "What time?" 1:30. 'Too late, we must leave, really." Please stay, you come to Egypt to see beautiful belly-dancing. ... Well, that's true. I hesitate and tell Steve let's just stay for another 10 min of the next dancer. He rolls his eyes at me and asks, "WHY??" I insist, but then about 10 minutes of more awkward sitting there I decide my little brother has a point. "Check, please." No... "YES." We get up and go to the bar at the back to actually retrieve our check. They take another 10 minutes to get it together. How can this be? We only had a Fanta and a tea.
They obviously were trying to keep us there as long as possible at 2am. We start worrying that something will go wrong and for some reason we get stuck there, or held captive, or get kidnapped by the equivalent of the Egyptian mafia or something. I am pretty glad I wasn't doing this by myself. We are ready to throw down a 10'er and just leave, but we only have large bills. Finally the check comes out and hilariously they have charged us 2 USD for each of the Fanta, the Lipton tea, the water, the TISSUE BOX, plus random "travel charges" and some bogus tax. I try to tell the manager we didn't even order the water, they said we drank it. I try ask the manager, what the hell is the tissue box for? We didn't eat anything. We didn't even touch it! He says it is required for every table. Whatever, at this point we just really want to GET THE FUCK OUT so we pay and haul ass. I wish I had some pictures to show, but adjusting F stops and exposures was the last thing on my mind here. Also I feel that snapping pictures of the dancer would have only encouraged the staff and made me look more like an excited lesbian.
2+ hours later, too many Egyptian pounds poorer, and one more creepy experience under our belts, we breathe the sweet petrol-laced street air of Cairo, free in the streets. Steve takes the tissue box out of spite.
My mother is going to kill me when she reads this one.
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Crazy Canucks
Matt
Great Blogs
Amy, Great blogs - keep them up as I'm planning my next trip to parts of the Middle East. Although done Egypt, never to be done again!