Why you should never take a suitcase to Egypt

Two friends and I took off to Egypt back in 2010 for a quick 10-day trip, and all three of us managed to pack light enough to go carry-on only.  Lynette and Steve had standard carry-on suitcases, and I had a backpack the size of a carry-on suitcase.

I chose to take a backpack solely because I simply prefer the ease of carrying it hands-free when roaming from place to place in a foreign country.  But I realized it had other advantages as soon as we stepped foot outside the Cairo airport.

We were visiting friends that live in Cairo, and they had sent a driver to pick us up. As the driver pulled up to the curb, a hawker appeared out of thin air, grabbed both Lynette’s and Steve’s suitcases in a flash, and had them tucked inside the van with his hand out to demand baksheesh before any of us could blink.  I mean, the driver had barely stepped foot outside the van before the “helper” had accomplished all this.  

But with my backpack securely on my shoulders and fastened and clipped in all manner of places around my middle, this guy wasn’t going to get my backpack into the van unless he picked me up with it.  And considering I probably outweighed this man by a good 20-30 pounds, he surely knew he wasn’t going to be able to pull a fast one on me (and my luggage).  

After a few days in Cairo catching up with our friends, the three of us took a flight to Aswan in the southern part of the country.  We checked in at the domestic terminal in Cairo, again, all of us going carry-on only.  But as we started walking away from the ticketing desk, the airline agent suddenly called us back.  He had decided that Steve and Lynette had to check their suitcases.  Despite protests and serious flaws in his logic as to why they had to all of a sudden be checked, Lynette and Steve had no choice but to check their bags.  

The agent never even so much as glanced at the pack on my back.

Dude, where's my suitcase?

Thankfully, the suitcases were on the luggage belt when we arrived in Aswan.  But so were Lynette’s toiletries... and car keys... and other random items that had fallen out because someone had opened her suitcase and didn’t properly close it.  Nothing was missing - much to her relief, of course - but that was simply yet another reason that I was glad to have a backpack instead of a roller bag.  

And outside the Aswan airport, yet another hawker hustled over to place the suitcases in the trunk of our taxi.  And once again, my backpack stayed securely strapped to my body.  

So you’re going to Egypt?  Go backpack.

I'll get sick for this

I went to Egypt about 6 weeks before the revolution began in January 2011, and I read all the health warnings that are pretty universal for any developing country - don’t drink the water, don’t touch ice cubes with a 10-foot pole, don’t eat any raw fruits or vegetables, etc.  But despite following all these health guidelines, it is still very easy to fall ill, and that is exactly what I did in Egypt.

After 9 full days of running around the country, my traveling companions and I had just one day left in Cairo with our expat friends that live there.  We had grand plans to eat a nice lunch, to go the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, and perhaps hit up another museum.  

I was feeling rather odd after breakfast, and soon my stomach rejected the notion of food completely.  But I was not about to let that stop me.  I rallied after a bit of a rest, and we went out in search of lunch before meeting up with Seth who was going to cab with us to the bazaar.

Once outside, I realized that my energy was simply gone.  Walking at a snail’s pace was all I could muster.  At lunch, my stomach gave me ample warning that food was not a welcome guest.  I took a piece of bread and stuck it in my purse with hopes that my stomach might embrace it later.  We got on the subway to meet Seth in Tahrir Square.  About halfway there, I nearly passed out.  Steve and Lynette shoved me out of the train at the next stop, where I just sat on the platform and attracted more than the usual amount of stares from the locals.  

I regained enough strength to board the next train.  When we reached our stop, It took me a whole 5 minutes to walk up the stairs where Seth was waiting for us.  But I was determined to make it to the Khan.  Well, I was until Seth pulled me aside and said, “It’s easy to get you into the Khan.  But if something happens to you while we’re there, it is not going to be easy to get you back out.”

&*$%.  I gave in.  Seth, Steve, and Lynette hopped in a cab, and I teetered my way back down the stairs to take the train back to the apartment.  Just two stops from my destination, I nearly passed out again.  

I finally made it after getting lost on the walk back, which again, was slow and laborious.  I stayed mostly in bed the rest of the day.  I was scheduled to fly back home late that night.  When it was time to go to the airport, I couldn’t even carry my own backpack down the stairs to the hired car.  How was I going to navigate the chaos of the Cairo airport like this?

Well, somehow I made it to the plane.  The 13 hour flight to JFK was beyond miserable - we hit pockets of turbulence every 15 minutes like clockwork, and the Egyptian man next to me simply couldn’t get over the fact that I didn’t have children and didn’t smoke.  

I was sick for over a week after I made it home.  I actually lost weight over Thanksgiving.  My mother was worried sick and thought that going to Egypt was the worst idea I’d ever had.  But I totally disagree.  As miserable as I was, I would go through it all over again to have the experience that I had on that trip.  In a traveling lifestyle, getting bizarrely sick is inevitable.  There are some precautions that can and should be taken, but they only do so much.  I think it’s worth putting up with to experience other parts of the world, so I’ll continue to travel, and I’ll continue to get sick.  I’ll just pack some extra meds and be as prepared as possible. 

Pass the Pepto, please.

Top 8 bizarre observations about Egypt

I had the great fortune to run off to Egypt and visit some fabulous and gracious friends in Cairo just a few short weeks before the Arab uprising took hold of the country.  I'm sure the country is very different now than it was before rioting and craziness ensued, but I imagine that most of these cultural oddities still exist.

1.  No one has small change that they are willing to give, but you are expected to have small change at all times.  Offering large bills to pay for items or services results in Emmy-worthy drama.

2.  75% of small boats on the Nile have flags erected on a pole.  99.9% of these flags are Rastafarian.  100% the Rastafarian flags are tattered to hell and back.

3.  Vehicles drive without lights after dark in order to save energy.  This is apparently much more important than saving, oh, human lives.

4.  Somewhere in Cairo, someone is driving this:

5.  Every vehicle dash console in Egypt is graced with a fur cover and an ornately-decorated kleenex box.

6. There are two English phrases that every Egyptian knows:  "Where you from?" and "Obamaaaaa!"

7.  Every tourist site and anything that could be remotely interpreted as a tourist site has metal detectors and x-ray machines at the entrance.  Perhaps 40% of these are actually functional.

8.  It sucks to be this camel:

It's a bribe. It's a tip. It's baksheesh!

Tipping is a custom that tends to be present in most cultures in one form or another.  Bribery, while I would rather not call it a custom, is also widely utilized in many cultures.  I would say that there is a fine line between the two, but having been to Egypt, I no longer believe that there is a line that firmly separates the two. Egypt has managed to blend tipping and bribery together in an overwhelmingly fuzzy and sometimes annoying custom and concept called baksheesh.

In the US, we tip for certain services such as being waited on in a restaurant, delivery of pizza or room service, or a bearable taxi ride.  Tips in such instances are expected, but they are usually never demanded.  Not so in Egypt.  The Egyptian expecting baksheesh from you will have absolutely no qualms about telling you to pay up, or pay up more if your offering is deemed insufficient. 

Baksheesh is sometimes forced upon the unsuspecting.  If you let your eyes wander from your bag outside the airport for a split second, some enterprising Egyptian will whisk them away toward either the terminal or your ride, and he will demand payment for carrying them before you even realize your bags are no longer by your feet. 

Baksheesh is also your ticket to getting most anything you want (or just giving in to paying more for what you want).  I went to Egypt with three friends to visit two other friends that were living in Cairo.  Meg, the female half of the dynamic Cairo-dwelling duo, took the three of us to see the pyramids at Giza.  When we asked for both garden-variety entrance tickets as well as tickets to go inside the Great Pyramid, the man at the ticket counter told us that they were sold out of tickets to go into the Great Pyramid.  We three visitors were crushed.  It was 10am and they were already sold out for the day?  Meg was furious.  "This is bullsh#t."  She handed 20 pounds and her diplomatic ID to the guide she'd hired for us.  "Give him these and tell him to give us 3 tickets to get inside the pyramid."  Our guide did as instructed.  The man at the booth looked at Meg's ID.  His eyes bulged out of his head.  He sheepishly handed back both the ID and the money, apologized profusely, and handed us the tickets.  I'd only been in the country for 12 hours, but I learned an important lesson.  In Egypt, "no" never means "no".  It means throw money at the issue until it turns into a "yes".  Or have a diplomatic ID.

We encountered a similarly silly request for baksheesh later in our trip as we wrapped up an amazing sunrise hot air balloon ride over Luxor (which, by the way, is entirely worth the 4:30am wake-up call).  Not knowing anything at all about hot air balloons, we quickly learned that the operator has very little control over where the balloon lands.  We touched down in the backyard of a young couple with two children, who seemed to be as fascinated with this puff of hot air carrying a basket full of white people as the white people were with them.  As soon as we were on the ground, the father came around demanding payment from us all for landing in his field.  Interestingly, he didn't ask the balloon operators for payment - only the people toting cameras and backpacks. 

Welcome back to earth.  Now pay up.

 There are other instances where baksheesh really does score you a deal, though.  Want to see something normally off limits to other tourists?  Offer baksheesh, my friend.  Think that guy at such-and-such tomb is just being annoying?  For a little change, he can probably tell you things about it that you would never find out about on your own.  We went into a tomb in the Valley of the Kings on our own and encountered a man inside that led us around and showed us things on the walls and on the tomb itself that we would have never seen or deciphered.  We were grateful for his knowledge.  Unfortunately for him and to my embarrassment, I was completely out of small change and had nothing at all to give him.  One of the times I actually wanted to give baksheesh, I had none to give.