Cairo really is amazing, but it is endlessly exhausting as a woman. You can't walk down the street without getting laughed at by other women and stared at or approached by men. We've tried to be respectful and wear long skirts, tunics that cover our and hint of shape in our shoulders, breasts, elbows and asses, and head scarves to cover our hair, but men still call at us salaciously and blow kisses and women still think we're a joke. Other tourists that we see wear tank tops and shorts that befit the hundred-degree weather while we sweat it out like suckers, trying to be respectful and modest in sleeves. It's not worth the effort! I'm surprised by how much I've liked Cairo, but it is truly exhausting to even walk down the street. A walk to lunch becomes a battlefield. You bat off tours on your left trying to sell ankhs and postcards and tours to the pyramids, and lewd men on your right who think that you're automatically lascivious because of your white skin and their impressions of Western women that have been formed by Hollywood movies.
But every time I'm about to write off Cairo to the cat-callers, tours and pushers, Egypt finds a way to surprise me. After a short and frustrating day of errands, a cabdriver bought each of us a strand of jasmine flowers to wear around our necks as a gift. It was such a genuinely sweet move; we were taken totally off-guard.
Yesterday we visited the Citadel, a fortification built in the 12th and 13th century that circles around the most beautiful mosque I have ever seen. Words will not do it any justice. All marble flooring, globe lighting and chandeliers like the ballroom in Beauty and the Beast. I have never seen a place of worship remotely like it. Today we visited the two synagogues that linger in Cairo as the final relics of a 4000-year Jewish history in Egypt. One of them has been restored and lives among a number of Churches and Nunneries in a very touristy part of town. The other is actually around the corner from our hostel, is heavily fortified by fifteen to twenty policemen at all times, and is in a pathetic state. It is kept by donations but receives no visitors. The custodian wears a cross around her neck and doesn't know the first thing about Judaism. (Cutely, she pointed to the Bima and said "this is the Meeba!") The Torah is out on the Bima covered in a sparkly cheap market scarf, and the whole synagogue hasn't been properly dusted in probably a decade. It's a very sad state to see the remnants of the Egyptian Jewry dusty and in disrepair.
This evening we took a brief felucca jaunt around the Nile from one tip of Cairo to the other. It was lovely and relaxing, but we wound up having to fight the felucca captain to pay what we rightfully negotiated. It was rather symbolic of our time in Cairo: a bittersweet mix of lovely experiences and frustrating people.
Tomorrow we take a bus to Eilat to hang out on the Red Sea for a few days!
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Of Pyramids and Men
Today we went to the Pyramids at Giza!
It was rather anticlimactic, to be honest. You're driving down the highway and all of a sudden...BAM! Pyramids! It doesn't make any sense! I suppose I always imagined that you have to trek through the desert to the pyramids, but there they are literally next to homes and cafes.
So we traipsed around the desert a bit and batted off touts like flies. A word of advice for those looking to travel to the pyramids: don't worry about being nice. I've been surprised by how genuinely nice most Egyptians are--they really get an unfair rap as far as global stereotypes go--but the touts and the pyramids are enough to drive a girl insane. They have all kinds of clever tricks to sucker you into paying them for various goods, services and exploitations. They insist that they are employees of the government and that their jobs are to provide tours; they tell you that they're getting married soon and don't want tips, but perhaps a bit of help toward their wedding...? They promise a camel ride for only 10 egyptian pounds (about $1.80) until they get you out to the desert...then demand 50 pounds to return.
The pyramids were quite interesting though. We entered the Great Pyramid (Cheops) and climbed up to the Great Chamber. We had to go in shifts because no cameras were allowed and I wasn't about to leave my camera with the guards there, so Janis and Hillary climbed first while I waited outside. When it was my turn to enter, I climbed straight up and sat around the Great Chamber for a few minutes in thought. When I decided to leave, I noticed a purse on the wall by the exit. You have to stoop to exit, so I stooped and noticed two pairs of feet atop each other moving around the passageway. I totally caught a couple having a quickie in the pyramid.
We stayed around Giza until the evening and paid extra to see the Pyramids Sound and Light Spectacular. We met up with a traveler along the way, a crunchy writer from New York on a quest to find his bliss, and the four of us stayed for the show. It was the silliest thing I have ever attended. With the Sphinx as narrator, you learn random bits and pieces of Egyptian history through a very dated light show set to soaring orchestral music. The Sphinx is voiced by a man who must have been trained as a Shakespearean performer. He offered a very truncated and skewed history of the great Egyptian dynasties, suggesting that the pyramids were built by devout, eager volunteers and not Jewish slaves. Words cannot do justice to the silliness of this spectacular. It was very reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz.
Now a bit on Egyptian men. In the last two and a half days I have been told (always uninvited, of course) by countless Egyptian men that I am too much to handle and men around the world will not want to marry me. This is because I negotiate prices and am outgoing and friendly. The Egyptian guide who took us through passport control warned the Egypt-side driver about me; he was worried that I would "start a revolution" and convince all of the women in our group not to get on the bus. A tour guide who let us sit on his air conditioned bus at the pyramids today told me that men will not marry me because I talk too much. Luckily, I don't think that my love life will suffer terribly if it lacks Egyptian men.
It was rather anticlimactic, to be honest. You're driving down the highway and all of a sudden...BAM! Pyramids! It doesn't make any sense! I suppose I always imagined that you have to trek through the desert to the pyramids, but there they are literally next to homes and cafes.
So we traipsed around the desert a bit and batted off touts like flies. A word of advice for those looking to travel to the pyramids: don't worry about being nice. I've been surprised by how genuinely nice most Egyptians are--they really get an unfair rap as far as global stereotypes go--but the touts and the pyramids are enough to drive a girl insane. They have all kinds of clever tricks to sucker you into paying them for various goods, services and exploitations. They insist that they are employees of the government and that their jobs are to provide tours; they tell you that they're getting married soon and don't want tips, but perhaps a bit of help toward their wedding...? They promise a camel ride for only 10 egyptian pounds (about $1.80) until they get you out to the desert...then demand 50 pounds to return.
The pyramids were quite interesting though. We entered the Great Pyramid (Cheops) and climbed up to the Great Chamber. We had to go in shifts because no cameras were allowed and I wasn't about to leave my camera with the guards there, so Janis and Hillary climbed first while I waited outside. When it was my turn to enter, I climbed straight up and sat around the Great Chamber for a few minutes in thought. When I decided to leave, I noticed a purse on the wall by the exit. You have to stoop to exit, so I stooped and noticed two pairs of feet atop each other moving around the passageway. I totally caught a couple having a quickie in the pyramid.
We stayed around Giza until the evening and paid extra to see the Pyramids Sound and Light Spectacular. We met up with a traveler along the way, a crunchy writer from New York on a quest to find his bliss, and the four of us stayed for the show. It was the silliest thing I have ever attended. With the Sphinx as narrator, you learn random bits and pieces of Egyptian history through a very dated light show set to soaring orchestral music. The Sphinx is voiced by a man who must have been trained as a Shakespearean performer. He offered a very truncated and skewed history of the great Egyptian dynasties, suggesting that the pyramids were built by devout, eager volunteers and not Jewish slaves. Words cannot do justice to the silliness of this spectacular. It was very reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz.
Now a bit on Egyptian men. In the last two and a half days I have been told (always uninvited, of course) by countless Egyptian men that I am too much to handle and men around the world will not want to marry me. This is because I negotiate prices and am outgoing and friendly. The Egyptian guide who took us through passport control warned the Egypt-side driver about me; he was worried that I would "start a revolution" and convince all of the women in our group not to get on the bus. A tour guide who let us sit on his air conditioned bus at the pyramids today told me that men will not marry me because I talk too much. Luckily, I don't think that my love life will suffer terribly if it lacks Egyptian men.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Trip to Cairo
I have been a terrible blogger. All apologies. My Mayanot trip was so exhausting that I had no energy to blog, but suffice it to say the trip was incredible. Some highlights included jeeping in the Golan Heights, Tzfat--one of the most holy cities in the world for Jews--in which we learned about Kabbalah, rafting the Jordan River, spending Shabbat at the Kotel, camel riding in the Negev with local Bedouins, and of course getting caked in mud at the Dead Sea.
Pictures later!
I am currently in Cairo, Egypt, after an exhausting 20-hour trip yesterday from Jerusalem. This post is about that trip:
Janis, Hillary and I paid a tour company to drive us from Jerusalem to Cairo, a 12-hour or so bus tour including time spent crossing the border at Taba in the south. We spent a bit more money than I had wanted to spend but we figured it would ensure that Janis, who holds dual citizenship with Israel, would be able to pass without too many problems, and that we wouldn't have to negotiate taxis from the Egypt side of the border to Cairo, 7 or so hours away. The day's events went as followed (this is almost entirely reproduced from my travel notebook):
8:15 am, we arrived at the central bus depot, which is where the tour company told us to catch our bus. We discover that they meant another bus station somewhat down the road and are told to wait at a nearby gas station for them to pick us up.
8:50 am, a 7-passenger van arrives trying to usher us in. Driver and assistant do not speak English. The gas station attendant helps us ask if this is our "bus" to Cairo and promises we'll be safe.
We worry that we may have been kidnapped when we notice that the bus is driving Eastward toward Tel Aviv and not South to the border. Turns out that we were being driver to the company's Tel Aviv offices to pay in cash.
11 am, back on the road toward Eilat. Our van's A/C doesn't work and the three magnetic board games that we bought to pass our time turn out to be bereft of magnets.
4 pm, arrive in Eilat and discover that the two Chinese passengers and the one Korean girl in our van don't have visas or border fee vouchers from the company. They negotiate on the phone for half an hour with the tour company. The company, it seems, told that them that they could arrange visas at the border and that the border fees were included in their prices just like ours were.
5 pm, After fooling around the duty free shop still waiting on the Chinese and Korean passengers in our van, we cross the passport control. It is like a movie. The officer is sitting behind the counter painting his visa stamp with what smells like rubber cement, a burning cigarette flopping out of his fat mouth. Signs warn "no smoking." He does not know how to process my visa, and the tour company representative instructs him how to do his job.
6 pm, the three asian passengers have officially made it through to Egyptian soil, but the Chinese are not allowed to leave passport control. We should have been on the road two hours ago.
7:30 pm, they decide to release the Chinese couple. Passport control never questioned them or searched their bags, but apparently detained them for nearly 4 hours because sometimes Chinese people enter Egypt to illegally sell things on the street. So they kept our van for four hours to decide, I guess, without any inquiry, whether or not the Chinese couple was trying to sell burned DVDs.
12 am, we stop just beyond the Suez Canal for dinner at a rural restaurant of sorts.
2:30 am, we arrive in Cairo after a twenty hour day.
The moral of this post is: don't book with Mazada Tours in Tel Aviv.
Cairo is wonderful though. We spent the day in the Islamic Quarter haggling for scarves and tunics and climbing minarets and smoking hookah and drinking tea.
Pictures later!
I am currently in Cairo, Egypt, after an exhausting 20-hour trip yesterday from Jerusalem. This post is about that trip:
Janis, Hillary and I paid a tour company to drive us from Jerusalem to Cairo, a 12-hour or so bus tour including time spent crossing the border at Taba in the south. We spent a bit more money than I had wanted to spend but we figured it would ensure that Janis, who holds dual citizenship with Israel, would be able to pass without too many problems, and that we wouldn't have to negotiate taxis from the Egypt side of the border to Cairo, 7 or so hours away. The day's events went as followed (this is almost entirely reproduced from my travel notebook):
8:15 am, we arrived at the central bus depot, which is where the tour company told us to catch our bus. We discover that they meant another bus station somewhat down the road and are told to wait at a nearby gas station for them to pick us up.
8:50 am, a 7-passenger van arrives trying to usher us in. Driver and assistant do not speak English. The gas station attendant helps us ask if this is our "bus" to Cairo and promises we'll be safe.
We worry that we may have been kidnapped when we notice that the bus is driving Eastward toward Tel Aviv and not South to the border. Turns out that we were being driver to the company's Tel Aviv offices to pay in cash.
11 am, back on the road toward Eilat. Our van's A/C doesn't work and the three magnetic board games that we bought to pass our time turn out to be bereft of magnets.
4 pm, arrive in Eilat and discover that the two Chinese passengers and the one Korean girl in our van don't have visas or border fee vouchers from the company. They negotiate on the phone for half an hour with the tour company. The company, it seems, told that them that they could arrange visas at the border and that the border fees were included in their prices just like ours were.
5 pm, After fooling around the duty free shop still waiting on the Chinese and Korean passengers in our van, we cross the passport control. It is like a movie. The officer is sitting behind the counter painting his visa stamp with what smells like rubber cement, a burning cigarette flopping out of his fat mouth. Signs warn "no smoking." He does not know how to process my visa, and the tour company representative instructs him how to do his job.
6 pm, the three asian passengers have officially made it through to Egyptian soil, but the Chinese are not allowed to leave passport control. We should have been on the road two hours ago.
7:30 pm, they decide to release the Chinese couple. Passport control never questioned them or searched their bags, but apparently detained them for nearly 4 hours because sometimes Chinese people enter Egypt to illegally sell things on the street. So they kept our van for four hours to decide, I guess, without any inquiry, whether or not the Chinese couple was trying to sell burned DVDs.
12 am, we stop just beyond the Suez Canal for dinner at a rural restaurant of sorts.
2:30 am, we arrive in Cairo after a twenty hour day.
The moral of this post is: don't book with Mazada Tours in Tel Aviv.
Cairo is wonderful though. We spent the day in the Islamic Quarter haggling for scarves and tunics and climbing minarets and smoking hookah and drinking tea.
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