Egypt through a Tourist’s Eyes

Today is an “At Sea Day” which means I am sitting on a lounge chair on Deck 5, watching the indigo water of the Mediterranean peacefully roll by as we head north towards a stunning Greek island. After a long night’s sleep, I remain grateful that Egypt is behind us.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Egypt. I had heard stories from two female friends who said it was a difficult place to visit as a woman, especially a blonde woman. But then I also have a friend who traveled the world with her husband and a backpack about 4 years ago who absolutely fell in love with Egypt to the point that they returned a second time during their travels before heading back home. She isn’t blonde so I had hopes that maybe me and my dark brown hair might find Egypt as captivating as she did.

Nope. Not even close. You couldn’t pay me to go back to Egypt. I am hard-pressed to think of anyplace I have visited that I enjoyed less. And that includes Acapulco. We chatted last night with some fellow passengers who have visited India. They said Egypt is way worse than where they toured in India. From what I’ve seen and heard about India, that’s quite a remarkable piece of information.

I really wanted to like Egypt. But all the assaults on my senses made it very difficult. As we traveled around Alexandria the first day, I hoped maybe we were just seeing the poorest parts of the city, that the rest of Alexandria and the capital Cairo would offer a more hopeful, lively energy. Instead, after two days of looking out bus windows and surviving the pyramids, I think my first impression is unfortunately what Egypt is: sad and ugly.

The cities and the countryside were literally strewed with immense amounts of trash. There were big dumpsters here and there on the streets, but they looked like they had been full for months, probably longer. In the streets, on the gutters, on the sidewalks, in the canals, along the highways…everywhere was trash, often in piles taller than cars. Many buildings looked inhabitable and yet, judging from the laundry hanging outside, many people lived in them. Piles of large rocks and huge potholes comprised the “sidewalks.” The water looked filthy. A canal through Cairo, which the locals regard as their beach, was disgusting. The local authorities agree and are several years into a project to cement over the top of the canal to force people to stop using it as an area to dump their garbage, clean their livestock, wash their dishes and clothes, and frolic with their children on the weekends. We were told not to drink the local water and to use hand sanitizer after washing our hands while off ship. I don’t even want to discuss the bathroom situation.

Aside from the environment, though, what made me especially sad were the people. They looked so lethargic and like they were simply existing, without hope or motivation. There wasn’t any sense of energy or movement, the desperation of the vendors aside. One image from yesterday is still with me. I saw a middle-aged man in a tan traditional gown sitting in some dirt on the side of a busy street in Cairo, surrounded by rocks and trash, reading the newspaper. He wasn’t homeless, he was just relaxing and catching up on the day’s news….while sitting in dirt and rocks and trash. There were hookah bars within feet of him, but he appeared to want to be alone in the shade so he decided some dirt and trash was good enough. I just don’t understand. And as much as I love to travel and see different cultures, I think there are just some things that I will never understand with my first world eyes, American-steeped philosophies, and undeniably blessed life. And through that lens, Egypt is confounding.

Sadly, most of my interactions with Egyptians were with people who wanted me to buy something from them. They were all rather pushy and very off-putting and horrible ambassadors for Egypt’s tourism ministry. Our tour guide, though, was a lovely woman. And the bus driver was very generous with his bottle of hand sanitizer. But in terms of getting to know the locals, the two of them were about the extent of it. I know my friend who fell in love with Egypt had a chance to really get to know some people whom she now considers lifelong friends. So perhaps that is the key to appreciating Egypt: getting to know Egyptians as people and not as desperate dollar seekers. Unfortunately, I will never find out.

I had a lot of time on the bus the past few days, so I kept some notes of things I noticed as we traveled around.

-- Alexandria had a distinct smell but Cairo did not. Alexandria smelled like industrial smoke. Not wood, not incense, not metal like bad brakes. Just a constant smell of something unnatural burning.

-- Egyptian men are not afraid to make and maintain eye contact. Egyptian women rarely hold a gaze for very long. The intensity of the men’s eye contact felt a bit intimidating to me and I found myself relying on my sunglasses to avoid it. However, the sunglasses also allowed me to observe the men making eye contact with others on our bus. It was a fascinatingly subtle way for them to quickly achieve some power in the brief interactions.

-- Egyptians eat pigeons like we eat chicken. There are pigeon houses all over the countryside that look like big cement beehives. Judging from cages I saw in windows, many people in the cities raise their meals in their homes.

-- Egyptians do not have to pay taxes on their homes until the homes are finished. So almost every home is in some state of construction, whether it is exposed rebar or half-painted walls or broken windows.

-- According to our tour guide, the biggest industries in Egypt are (in order): tourism; the Suez Canal; oil and gas; cotton; and fruits and vegetables.

-- I saw the following while riding down the freeway: trucks filled with tomatoes, trucks filled with bananas; trucks filled with grapes; trucks filled with sheep; trucks filled with goats; trucks filled with people; an over-tuned semi-truck with nobody tending to it; a horse standing up in the back of a pick-up truck; a woman and her child begging in the middle of the highway; cars going the wrong direction on the highway; a young boy sitting on the tail gate of a truck; a group of men sitting on top a large bundle stacked high in a truck; a woman in a bus with a box of three live ducks on her lap; and people walking, riding bikes, or riding in tuc tucs on the highway.

And when I say I saw a truck filled with goats, for example, I mean there were so many goats and they were smushed in the back of the truck so tightly, all I could see was heads and backs, no sides or feet. It looked like a truck filled with fluffy goat fur.

-- Outside of Cairo, to the north, is a complex of hi-tech and telecommunications companies. It was new and shiny and its many windows gleamed in the hot sun. It looked like a campus of any number of hi-tech companies in Silicon Valley. No wonder: Microsoft, Intel, and Oracle were three of the most prominent buildings in the complex. New housing and shopping centers were being built up around the complex, with one area named “Mountain View” – the name of a town at the heart of California’s Silicon Valley. As our tour guide explained what was happening, with companies moving to the outskirts of town and then cheaper houses and amenities moving out to support them, it became clear that the concept of “suburbs” is a brand new one in Egypt. Oh, and the name of this hi-tech complex? “Smart Village” with an English pronunciation.

-- The Egyptians are very much looking forward to June 30 (just a few weeks away) because they have planned a revolution in Cairo that day to force their current president out. This nugget was just dropped casually into touring commentary by our guide: “And on your left is where our revolution will take place…” OK, that’s a little exaggerated but not by much.

The plan is to surround the President’s house and stay there until he leaves both the house and his position of power. Both the police and the military have promised that they will support the people this time and that the protesters will be safe from any force. Once the President leaves, the military will take control of the government until a new president is elected. When that happens, it will be the first free Egyptian election in 30 years since President Mubarak was elected.

As you might imagine, there were many questions from the busload of Americans and Canadians about this process and sequence of events. The Egyptian tour guide understood that we had questions but seemed to have a difficult time understanding why we had a hard time figuring out this “throw the guy out by force and then have an election later” approach. I asked why June 30 was so special. Apparently it is the 2 year mark of the current president being in charge. It wasn’t clear if choosing that date for the revolution is symbolic or if there is some national policy that you can’t have a coup for at least 2 years. I’m only half joking. I’m just still trying to understand the idea of having a planned, well-advertised revolution. And I am grateful we will be safely back at home well before June 30. I will be watching world news, though, with new interest.


Our visit to Egypt was intense, in ways I didn’t anticipate. I have visited third world countries before and enjoyed them (Vietnam was amazing), so I’m not ready to chalk up my distaste for Egypt to simply being a pampered American. But I know that is part of it, as I sit here on a cruise ship sipping tea and being responsible for little more than getting to my tour bus on time. And I know that what I saw of Egypt was entirely through the eyes of a tourist. But as its biggest and most important industry, I fear for Egypt’s future if what they present to their visitors is so utterly unappealing. We’ll see what June 30th’s revolution brings.