Around the World: Cairo et Ale

February 22, 1992

"Le gateau, mettre le glaçage blanc sur le gâteau."  I'm having a dream, telling someone to put white icing on a cake.  I don't know why I'm speaking French in my sleep.

After a leisurely start to the morning, and of course, another shower, I head down to the hotel lobby for breakfast.  The waiter is a jolly man who greets me in a different language every time he passes my table.  The front desk returns my passport, complete with the required registration.  I stop by the Ministry of Tourism / Police for a map and to verify that this registration process was required and complete.  An officer takes my passport to check and when he sees all the stamps, he calls over his co-workers, who find it very interesting. All is on the up and up.

With much assistance, I find my way to the Cairo Museum.  All the street signs are in Arabic, although the name of some streets are in the alphabet I am familiar with.  As I don't know any Arabic, I find speaking French is the best way to get directions.  Unfortunately, the French I speak when I'm awake is not as good as it is while I'm sleeping.

Photo by Ronald Homer.

The Museum is packed with an amazing amount of excavated items.  The King Tut exhibit only had 300 pieces of the 5,000 piece collection on display.  The rest of it, ironically, is currently in Toronto.  Tut's tomb is one of the least decorated because he was so young when he became king and reigned for such a short time.

There is so much more to I want to see, but admiring the exhibits is difficult in the crowded museum.  It's frustrating to find something intriguing, worth spending the time to appreciate, only to be practically carried away from it in the mob that wants to move on to the next display.

Exploring Cairo, I find a shoe store and trade in my grime-of-India-ridden converse, for a pair of tartan runners for $3.  On the way back to the hotel, I find a restaurant bearing the Wimpy's logo, but in different colours.  This is the strangest fast-food place I've ever been in.  There's no queuing at the counter.  Here you sit at a table and someone brings a menu.  A "burger" is served on two plates.  One contains a small beef patty, a wiener, potato chips and an egg done over easy.  The second plate has a hamburger bun.  I'm not quite sure how this all fits together. I decide to order two, in case I get it wrong the first time.  With a soft drink, the entire meal costs $3.  Apparently it's a three dollar kind of day.

In a large cul de sac of little shops, I bought an ankh charm for my necklace, a small statue of Nefertiti and some silver rings.  One shop had beautiful fabrics.  The owner of the shop invited me in for mint tea.  We talked about all sorts of topics, none of which involved the sale of goods, and I decided on a large, black, finely crocheted shawl.

It didn't take long to figure out that there are two prices for almost everything, one for Egyptians and one for tourists.  It's no secret, either, as it's posted quite clearly for everyone to see.  As a tourist, almost everything costs twice as much as the locals pay.  I suppose it's true the saying, membership has it's privileges.

Egyptian market.
Photo courtesy of TrekEarth.

Just down the street from the hotel is a restaurant with a bar.  People watching with a pint of Stella is both relaxing and refreshing.  Just a few doors from the bar is a pastry shop, well stocked with delicious treats.  I've been out on the streets of Cairo all day, and no one has pinched my butt.  Best of all, when I return to the hotel, I'm still clean! 

Sabina found the hotel and is desperate for a shower.  I recognize the sighs and sounds of relief coming from the bathroom.  I imagine it will be a while before I see her again.

• ¤ •

"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have."

~Frederick Keonig

Around the World: Welcome to Cairo

February 21, 1992

I discovered the airport coach to Delhi International Airport.  While I am waiting for the bus to arrive, I hear the same familiar voice that has become a stay of comic relief through my last days in India.

"Can you spare 5 rupees?"  I don't know what this guy's purpose in India is, but he always seems to appear when my last bit of patience is teetering on the edge of the shredder.  In a few hours, I'll have no use for Indian rupees and to be honest, I kind of admire his persistence.

"Here," I say, handing him a 20 rupee bill, "It's all I have left."  He thanks me with a blessing of peace and safe travels before leaving.  In a way, he is India anthropomorphized.  Brightly coloured, distracting, respectful, unrelenting, sincere, annoying, introspective, unpredictable, benevolent, bizarre, and for the most part, harmless.

Shortly after the bus was loaded and driving toward the airport, I look out the window to see Delhi and India for the last time and find the bus is being followed by naked man riding a large white horse.  What strikes me as odd is the fact that I don't find this spectacle at all strange.  This is India.  Strange is what she does best, and she does it very well.

The public area of the airport has the typical covering of perma-grime on everything.  It doesn't matter how often surfaces are treated with soapy water, they remain permanently dirty.  Much like the state I am in currently.  I wonder if I'll ever be clean again.  Nothing to do but try to stay awake until 3:30 am, when I can check in.

Once through security, the condition of the airport changes dramatically.  Surfaces are sparkling and reflective.  After scrubbing my hands to a tolerable state of sanitary, I bought a samosa and the largest coffee I could find.  I sat down on a very comfortable padded bench to eat my snack, and promptly fell asleep.

I am stirred into a disoriented state of consciousness by a sari-clad airport employee shaking my shoulder, calling me by name.  When I acknowledge that she has indeed found who she was looking for, she says in a panicked tone, "You're flight is leaving!"

Now I remember what I was doing!  I grab my bag and run after the woman.  She hurries me through security and to the plane.  Despite my late arrival, the stewardesses are exceptionally kind to me.  In Muscat, Oman, the passengers are led down a portable staircase, across the taxiway and up another staircase to another plane bound for Bahrain.  I got to see the inside of the airport in Bahrain before boarding the flight to Cairo.

Whew!

While in the queue for immigration, I am told I need a Visa to enter Egypt by a plain clothed man approaching various people in line.  He asks for $15USD and hands me a red postage-type stamp to put in my passport.  The immigration official stamps it and welcomes me to Egypt.  Outside the airport, I find a taxi and ask the driver if he knows where the New Moon Hotel is.

"Oh yes, I know it well." I said a little prayer, and got in the car. 

The driving is very civilized, and true to his word, the driver knew exactly where he was going.  On arrival, the driver opens the door for me and helps me with my backpack to the lobby of the hotel.  When I complete the check in process, the hotel clerk asks me for my passport.  It is law, he explains, to register all tourists with the police.  It will be returned to me tomorrow morning.  Skeptical, I hand the clerk my passport.  I already have a photocopy in my money belt and the address of the Canadian Embassy, should it not be back in my hands tomorrow morning.

The hotel clerk leads me to the elevator, the kind where you have to shut the door yourself and hold the button until you arrive.  Deja-vu.  This elevator is very familiar.

On the second floor, he shoves the elevator door open, revealing a dark hallway.  Only one light in the distance flickers with the intermittent buzz of flowing current.  This isn't going to end well.

He guides me down the hallway to my room.  Oh, no... oh good lord, no.  He opens the door.  I close my eyes, expecting the disappointing sight of a concrete slab, covered by a thin white mattress.  Bravely, I peek out of one eye.  Inside, it's dark.

The urge to turn and run is overwhelming, but I muster up enough bravery to actually see the room before I panic. This is so much like Bombay.  Too much like Bombay.  Please don't let anything scatter, wriggle or move when...

... the light turns on.

I gasp so loudly, it startles the clerk.  "Is everything okay?"  He doesn't realize that this room is the equivalent of paradise.

The room is huge!  Tastefully decorated like grandmother's bedroom.  The queen-size beds require a running leap to get into!  The clerk pulls back the curtain to reveal french doors that lead to a balcony, overlooking a sun drenched, city view of Cairo.

The room is absolutely perfect, but what I want most of all is in the bathroom.  The massive shower is well stocked with towels.  The second the hotel clerk leaves the room, I turn on the shower and step into the stall, fully clothed.  Wonderful, blistering hot water falls from the over-sized shower head.  The water going down the drain is black.

Happiness consumes me and I cannot control the overwhelming urge to sing.

• ¤ •

"I'm singin' in the rain, 

Just singin' in the rain,
What a glorious feeling, 

I'm happy again....
...I have a smile on my face.
I'll walk down the lane, 

With a happy refrain
Just singin', singin' in the rain."

~Singing In The Rain, lyrics by Arthur Freed

Around the World: Hangin' in Delhi

February 19, 1992

It's late in the morning and I am quite lost in the maze of Connaught Place searching for the Emirates Air office to pick up my ticket to Cairo.  Along the way, several men greet me with one word. "Change?"

"Change" is an invitation to visit a nearby shop where one can exchange traveler cheques or foreign cash into rupees for a better rate than the bank offers.  I was able to get 36 rupees for each $1USD in a shop that sold bags.  Last night, while gathered on the balcony back at Sunny's, my fellow backpackers held a contest.  The winner had the guidebook to India with the oldest publishing date.  Comparing information on places to stay, we remarked that this must be an easy book to republish, as only the prices differ from edition to edition.  We agree that although there is no shortage of people in Delhi talking about change, nothing in India actually changes.  It just gets more expensive.

Lost in the maze of Connaught Place, I hear a familiar voice.  "Can you spare 5 rupees?"  It's the same drug-dazed Westerner again.  Who is this guy and why is he following me?

Connaught Place is disorienting enough, without being on constant alert for the unwanted groping on my backside.  It quickly gets irritating, chasing and chastising ignorant men who sample what they have no business touching.  I finally find Emirates Air and pick up my ticket.  My flight departs at 6:45 am on the 21st for Cairo!

New Delhi

Delhi is almost pleasant and very modern.  New Delhi is full of skyscrapers and noticeably absent of cows.  There's a sense of order to some degree.  Snake charmers wait for curious tourists approach them, for example, and I've grown somewhat accustomed to the sensory assault of colour, smell, noise and dust.  I am working up the courage to have a cold shower in a dark stall on a chilly day.

Some of my hotel mates have invited me out for pizza.  On the way back to Sunny's, Marcus, from Germany brings us all to a place he discovered that sells ice cream.  Ice cream!  Along the way, several offers are declined to shine my converse and put soles on Marcus' sandals.

Old Delhi, is very much like the India I have come to expect.  Crowded, chaotic, cows.   After our ice cream treat, we head into the old part of Delhi for dinner.  I'm not really sure what I'm eating.  It includes rice, vegetables and some mysterious substance that might be meat.  The meal is served on a large leaf and eaten in traditional Indian form, scooping what I can hold between the digits of my right hand.  It is considered very rude and unclean to touch food with your left hand, as this appendage is used for post digestive activities.  The meal is followed by a cup of chai from a nearby street vendor.

Delhi's old city

Back at Sunny's, the grade on the balcony is gradually increasing.  Jorn, from Denmark and Sabina, from Switzerland have discovered a shop that sells chocolate and share a selection of small blocks of fudge with everyone.  Sabina mentions that she will be leaving for Cairo, arriving the day after I do and we are making plans to meet at a place called the New Moon Hotel.

The conversation turns to this morning's shower experience.  Icy cold water in a small dark closet.  Hopefully, either tomorrow's temperature or the water will be warmer.  Seems an awfully unpleasant experience, only to be covered in grimy dust immediately after.

• ¤ •

"Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind."

~Seneca