I planned a trip to Eritrea and Djibouti. On the way there I would have a 24-hour or so layover in Cairo. I was delighted. I hadn’t been to Cairo since 1995. Even more excited because when asked what my favourite country is, a question that is impossible to answer, my standard response is Egypt. I loved Egypt I travelled from to Cairo, Aswan, Suez, Sharm El-Sheikh, and Dahab in ‘95. I loved everything that I saw and did. So I was thrilled to be going back, even if just for a short visit.
(Right about here, I would normally provide a link back to the previous posts that I had done about my past trip to Egypt. But I was there in 1995. This was before blogs and international ATMs, digital cameras, Google maps, text messages and GPS. I think that is part of the reason that Egypt is one of my favourite trips ever, because it was all done solo and without all these modern day conveniences. I really had to figure it out as I went. And it was an amazing adventure.)
Returning to 2024, Egypt and Canada were having some sort of a row, so they had done away, temporarily, with the e-visa and visa-on-arrival systems and I had to spend nearly $300 CDN sending my passport away to the embassy for a more traditional visa. But I had it in place and was ready to breeze through immigration. Which I did.
Arrival and my Night in Cairo – Things go a bit wrong
I landed late. Hopped in a taxi and went to my hotel downtown. The Eileen Hotel. By the time I got to the hotel it was about 11:30 at night. I should have just gone to bed because I had a full day of sightseeing that I wanted to do, and I was already tired from having flown from Vancouver to London to Cairo, but as the taxi zipped through the city and I saw all the people out at cafes smoking shisha and lights on the buildings, I thought “I should go out for just a little while.” And so I did – and here’s where things started to go wrong, as they did repeatedly on this trip.
I didn’t have any Egyptian pounds. I had American dollars and some Euros. But since many things were closed I didn’t see a place to change money, so I went to an ATM. A proper ATM at a bank. I inserted my card, tried to take out money, and the machine would not return my card. It gave me an error message. And when it became apparent that my card was not coming out, I started to panic a bit. This was my only source of getting cash. Yes, I had cash on me, but I was going to two other countries that were primarily cash-based economies, and I needed that money to pay for things like hotels and tours and food. If I couldn’t get some extra cash, I was going to be in a bad way. Plus, I was tired and not thinking that well.
I waited in the ATM vestibule as person after person came in to use it and discovered it was out of service. I tried to ask for help but most of them didn’t know what I was talking about. Finally, the machine made a loud kerchunk sound and powered down and powered back up again. The next person that came in was able to use the machine no problem, at that point I knew my card was gone.
I was stressed, and I walked back to the hotel and told the guy at the desk what had happened. He said that I should go to the bank in the morning to try to get the card back, but in the meantime, he said, “I’m just getting off my shift why don’t we go out and smoke some shisha?” And he said he would pay.
The next thing I knew I was on the back of his tiny motorcycle flying through the streets of Cairo to the Khan el-Khalili area, where we went to a second-floor rooftop outdoor cafe, and before I knew it I had shisha and juice, and we were watching performers dance and twirl capes above their heads. It was good fun. And they took credit cards, so I paid for everything. (Not that it was much money.)
He dropped me off at the hotel. At this point it was about 2:30 in the morning and I really needed to get to sleep. My alarm was set to go off at 6:00 AM, as I had a lot to do the next day before I would leave for the airport. I fell asleep immediately.
I woke up not long after when the door to my small room flew open and there was a figure, a man, in the doorway. I didn’t even think. I’m not even sure if I was fully awake, I just jumped out of bed, shoved the guy back, and slammed the door in his face. I then opened the door, yelled “fuck you!” and then slammed the door in his face a second time. (I’m not sure that second door opening was really necessary, but I was angry.) I tried to go back to sleep but my heart was beating so fast, and my adrenaline was going, and it was a while before I could fall asleep again. I slept for maybe two hours total.
A New Day in Cairo
The next morning, the hotel apologized profusely and said they had made a mistake and thought the room was empty. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but nevertheless it was an upsetting disruption to my sleep. And that was the second thing that went wrong on this trip. Perhaps more importantly, this was my second night in a row I was not really sleeping.
After breakfast, I did as the hotel worker had suggested, and I went to the bank. His advice to me was to tell them about my card but not to remain calm. He said that I should appear panicked and that I should cry if I could and tell that I needed this card for my trip. I couldn’t bring myself to cry, but I did work myself up into a nice state of anxiety and told him the situation. After about half an hour I had my card back. So, the first problem was resolved thankfully.
With that done, I set out to explore Cairo. It would have been really nice to have visited the new museum but that was way too far away, over at the pyramids, and I didn’t want to spend that much time in traffic, so I just walked around downtown and went for some nice shisha and coffee, and went back to the Khan el-Khalili bazaar and wandered around there, having a cigar and a coffee, I visited a couple of mosques, and then went to the citadel for more mosques and a view over the city.
It was just a quick downtown sightseeing jaunt, but it was terrific. Cairo was wonderful. It didn’t feel quite as foreign and exotic is when I was there 29 years before. I suppose both I and the city have changed. But it had a good energy and lots of interesting things to see and do.
One thing that made it much easier is that rather than spending half my time haggling about taxi prices, I was able to cover long distances in an Uber. Some of the drivers will still try to negotiate a price with you in cash, but if you tell them that you were only paying through the app, that ends that conversation. It made things a lot easier.
Finally, after dinner, I went back to the airport, for a late-night flight to Asmara, Eritrea.
