Taking requests October 6, 2008
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I have a few posts about some of the cool monuments we saw and the stories behind them in mind. But in the mean time, is there anything about Egypt you’re interested in?
I have a few ideas for posts kicking around, but I’m starting to get to the point where I don’t have a ton to write about. So I’m hoping one of my readers out there will come up with something they’re interested in.
Looking Back: Sense of the Moment September 23, 2008
Posted by ducksflytogether in Uncategorized.Tags: alexandria, post-trip
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(First of all, I realize I’ve managed to go two months since my trip ended without blogging about some of the ancient sites we saw. That’s going to change in the next few weeks. Good times!)
This is probably the most difficult entry to write since I came home. It’s not an especially emotional entry or anything like that; instead, it’s actually the most difficult subject to articulate. It’s all about the sense of the moment.
What is the sense of the moment? I cribbed the phrase from one of my favorite sports writers, Bill Simmons. If I remember right, he never explicitly defines it. But one’s “sense of the moment” is their awareness of what’s happening around them and the ability to rise to the occasion. In the context of basketball, having a sense of the moment happens when a really good player realizes what’s at stake and takes the game over, leading his team to victory. Or it’s a baseball player who comes up huge in the big game.
When hanging out with groups in Egypt, I sought out the folks who had a “sense of the moment.” In this context, those were the people who realized, “Hey, we’re on an all-expense-paid trip to Egypt! What do I have to complain about? Let’s have fun.” They were also the most fun to talk to, swap stories with and listen to. They were there for the experience and didn’t let much get in their way. They weren’t obsessed with themselves. They were generally the most easy-going of the bunch.
For instance, the heat was a big one. Some people complained about the heat and were incredibly self-conscious that they were sweating (as if everyone else wasn’t). There were others, like Anthony, who would say something like, “That’s part of the experience! You don’t go to Egypt in March, when it’s 70 degrees! This is the desert!”
I think a lot of that was embodied by the guy who organized our trip and led the tour through its first few days. Sameh would say “No worries” a lot, and that attitude rubbed off on a lot of us. By the end of the trip, I was annoying the other students with my constant mantra of “No worries.” And since I’ve been back, I’ve tried to embody that ideal a little bit more. Instead of worrying about every little detail, I’ll just shrug, say “No worries” and enjoy myself. It works. Most of the time, anyway.
Another example of having a sense of the moment is when we asked what the day’s itinerary was. A lot of people wanted to know where we would be, when and for how long. It was almost as if they needed to be back at the hotel by a certain time. And that’s cool, that’s how they keep their day in order. But for me and some of the others on the trip, it was more like, “Well … whatever. We’ll get to all that other stuff when we get to it.”
I think my favorite example was in Alexandria. Kevin and Anthony were on their balcony shortly before we had to be downstairs at the van to depart for Cairo. I joined them, and we chatted about everything we had seen and done to that point (it had been about a week or so at this point). The whole time, the Mediterranean Sea served as the perfect backdrop. We talked about how you would need to make expensive reservations months in advance for similar views in the states. (I know I’m repeating myself here. Sorry about that.)
We were all a little shell-shocked about everything that had happened to that point: There were all the monuments and ruins. There was the amazing falafel. There was the best seafood dinner I’ve ever had. The pyramids. All of it was amazing, and at that point, it had only been one week! So we just sat back, all agreed that it was an insane week and went from there. It was great.
They had a sense of the moment, and when you’re halfway around the world, those are the people you want to surround yourself with. Shoot, even back home, those are the people I enjoy hanging out with the most. They don’t get caught up in what I refer to as Stupid Shit. That’s a rare quality sometimes.
That’s why you won’t hear me tell very many negative stories about the trip. I made a conscious effort to hang out with people who were having fun. That way, my stories are more along the lines of, “Oh man, this was so awesome!” instead of “I would have changed this or that, or I wouldn’t have done this.” I didn’t buy many souvenirs for myself, so in 5 or 10 years, all I’m really going to have are my photographs and stories. And I’d much rather have fun, kick ass stories than sad tales of what went wrong. Bad shit passes. The good times stick with you.
(By the way, I hope I don’t come off like I’m putting anyone down. That’s not it at all. I’m just saying that there were others who really seemed to relax and enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime trip and all the speed bumps that came with it. Those were the people I enjoyed hanging out with the most.)
Color me curious! September 21, 2008
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No real update at the moment, but my curiosity is getting the best of me. I logged on tonight and saw that 32 people visited this blog yesterday. What confused me was that I hadn’t updated recently, and it’s not like I all of a sudden forced everyone I know to read at once.
So what gives? Who is reading this thing on a regular basis, even when the posts are updated, at best, irregularly?
Looking Back: Two Nights on the Nile September 16, 2008
Posted by ducksflytogether in Uncategorized.Tags: felucca, looking back, nile river
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By the time we boarded our boats for two nights on the Nile River, the trip had already been pretty wild. We had left Cairo on a night train for Aswan, spent a night there and woke up at 3:30 a.m. for a trip to Abu Simbel. After Abu Simbel, we drove 3 hours back to Aswan, got our bags and boarded the feluccas that would be our homes for two nights.
So what is a felucca? I’m glad you asked. It’s a sailboat. The sail is at the front of the boat; behind it is about 15-20 feet for sleeping and chilling. A mat is laid down to keep passengers comfortable, and a canopy is put up about 4-5 feet above the mat to keep the sun out of everyone’s eyes. It’s about 15 feet wide, or just wide enough for two tall people to sleep end-to-end.
Once you get on the boat, it’s big enough to seat about eight people sitting cross-legged with their backpacks. And you sit. Unless you go to the front of the boat, you spend the whole time on the boat sitting down.
Small as it was, the boat was rather pleasant. We were just chilling there, in the shade, on the Nile, on a sailboat. I mean, how is that anything but a recipe for awesomeness?
Our group started out with a game of Apples to Apples, only one of the most fun group games ever. Then there was some reading, journaling, resting and napping when everyone realized, “Hey, this is home for two days. Time to relax.”
I mean, there was nothing to do. No e-mail to check. No sites to see. Nowhere to go. Just … a boat. I took me awhile to decompress, sit back and realax. But once I did, oh what a joy it was to chill with no real worries about time or anything like that.
*I should note here that I actually worried a fair bit about my grandma. I found out the night before she was in the hospital following a heart attack. My mom reassured me that she would be fine, but do you think that stopped me from worrying? Not for a second. And the worrying only got worse once I was powerless to check e-mail, call or anything like that. But I was with a good group who helped put it out of my mind.
Around sundown on the first day, we stopped at a small beach and docked for the night. A few other boats had shown up, and there were groups from New England and Australia. In fact, later that night, they played some kind of drinking game that involved chanting “BLOWJOB!” over and over again. Someone explained it to me, but at the time, I was like, “Wait … what?”
(See that? That was our bathroom both nights we spent on the boat. See, we would dock, and someone would dig a small hole. The ship’s crew covered the hole with a toilet seat sitting on a very small table and put a curtain around it all for privacy. That’s all I’m going to say about that.)
Anyway, shortly before sundown, we went for a walk. We were walking through this forest when we noticed a Nubian farmer riding a donkey behind us. We got to the side of the trail so he could pass, but he declined. Instead, he motioned for us to come with him.
A few seconds later, we were at his farm. He grows bananas and mangoes, and Asho (that was his name) even had a bull. He walked through the farm with us and even looked for some ripe food to give us. Unfortunately, we were just a little early in the season, and he didn’t have anything. He didn’t really know any English beyond “Welcome,” but I was incredibly touched he would invite these random strangers into his farm and offer them food.
*I actually finished this day’s journal entry with the line, “This trip keeps getting more and more surreal.” It’s one thing to go overseas for the first time in your life; it’s quite another thing for that first time to include a walk through a Nubian farm and dinner on the banks of the Nile River. I wish I was a better writer and could use a word other than surreal, but seriously … it was surreal.
The next day, we woke up and set sail once again. It was the halfway mark of the trip, so I spent a lot of the morning writing in my journal, trying to catch up on everything I had seen to that point. (Fun fact: My journal totaled 48 pages at trip’s end.)
Then we stopped at the Kom-Ombo Temple. We were only there about 15 minutes before one of the group members got sick and needed to go to the hospital. So everyone went back to the boats and waited for about three hours (remarkably, we weren’t allowed to swim at this point, even though locals swam in the same water, about 100 yards away).
This was much tougher than it sounds. We ate a really filling lunch, but the rest of the time, we tried to keep cool in the shade. But when the temperature hits 100+ degrees out there, even the shade doesn’t always come through. At one point in the afternoon, I began dipping my towel in the river, ringing it out and draping it around my neck and shirt. That helped a lot.
The sick group member came back okay, and we were off. The only problem was, since we were so far behind, we had to make good time to get to the docking area that night.
Shortly before sundown, the crew took the canopy off the boat, leaving us exposed to the big, wide world around us.
And let me tell you, it was magnificent. The stars have never looked as pure as they did that night. I saw one of the dippers as plain as day. I saw a shooting star. I fell asleep under the stars, on the Nile. It doesn’t get any better than that. We reached our docking area well after dark, and after a quick dinner, it was time for bed. There were no crazy drinking games this night.
The next morning, we woke up, ate breakfast, zig-zagged across the river a few times and met up with a van that was waiting to take us to the next temple. We were back on the mainland.
Looking Back: Summer School September 9, 2008
Posted by ducksflytogether in Uncategorized.Tags: cairo, post-trip, St. John American School
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As a lot of you know, Clark College paid for my trip to Egypt. But the money came with the stipulation that we perform some kind of volunteer work while in Egypt.
The school’s service learning coordinator, who joined us on the trip, got us a gig working with students at St. John American School, a little less than an hour outside of Cairo. After the tour ended and we arrived back in Cairo, we spent about four hours over the span of three days working with students, ranging from first through ninth grades.
Now, I should preface all this by saying that, going into the experience, I wasn’t that excited. It wasn’t anything against the kids, but by the time we got back to Cairo, we had been on a whirlwind trip of the country, waking up early, going to bed late and traveling every couple of days.
We had literally gone from Egypt’s northern border to near its southern border and back, stopping at a ton of temples and monuments in between. So when we got back to Cairo for the volunteer work, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I was more interested in sleeping in and relaxing than chasing kids around school for four hours.
Oh, how I was wrong.
There were about 30 students, in all. It was a little chaotic, because putting that many young kids in one classroom after several weeks away from each other … yeah, that’s a recipe for the kids talking to each other non-stop throughout the whole three-day stretch. But that’s okay, it wasn’t that bad, especially since we broke up into smaller groups.
Another Clark student (Jeff) and I led a group of four students. From left to right, that would be Catherine, Rana, Mina and Nader. (That’s Jeff in the middle.) We dubbed ourselves the Superstars. There was another kid on the first day, but he was gone the next two days. Alas.
Throughout the three days, we played a lot of games (the kind we played at day camp as kids), played cards, chatted about each of our cultures and learned a lot about the school.
Some groups went outside and played basketball or soccer, but I stayed in with most of my group and played cards. I learned a few cool card games and had fun getting to know the other students who came in and played.
There were just so many memories …
One day in there, we wanted to teach the kids an American song, so the service learning coordinator chose “Country Roads” by John Denver. It was cool to sing with the kids and try to get them to sing along.
Of course, it was great to practice English with the students there and learn about life in Egypt. The kids who turned out for the three-day summer camp really had a lot to be proud of; they spoke English really well and definitely held their own in conversation – even the young pups.
Each day, they served us lunch. I don’t remember much of it, but I remember eating some delicious koshary and stuffing myself on falafel. I’m telling you, I miss the food like crazy over there.
I think it was the second day … the lunch time was just about ending, and a group of kids was dancing around. They said something in Arabic, and two of the students ran out of the room like they’d stolen something. They came back with a pair of wooden sticks a few minutes later. Another student hummed a song (I would recognize it if I heard it, but I couldn’t tell you the name), and the two students with sticks put on a mock sword fight, very very slowly.
Then the song ended, and the kid humming shifted into a much faster-paced song, and the two kids broke out of the sword fight and began dancing around. It was really energetic … the kind of thing where you’re in the middle of it, and you think, “Wow, if I was home right now, I’d be either asleep or at work. Instead, I’m watching these Egyptian students dance around and have a great time.” The joy was infectious.
At one point, we played Egyptian Spin the Bottle, which was a bit different than its American counterpart. In the Egyptian version, you spin the bottle and ask a question of whoever it lands on. Some questions asked if the other person had a boyfriend or girlfriend, but one of the students asked me what my favorite part of the trip was.
And I said it was working with the students at the school. Maybe it’s one of those “You had to be there” kind of things, but talking with those kids about their lives, talking about ours, playing with them and laughing with them … those are the things I’ll remember my whole life. Just getting to know other people, learn their stories and hear that they’re about … that’s what life is about.
If I had slept in at the hotel and not done any of the volunteer work, I would have missed out on three of the best days of the trip.
At the end of the three days, there were hugs to be had and E-mail addresses to be exchanged. In all, I became Facebook friends with 19 students and one teacher at the school. I still chat with them and miss them a lot.
Looking Back: Alexandria September 2, 2008
Posted by ducksflytogether in Uncategorized.Tags: alexandria, hotel crillon, post-trip
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Again, my apologies for long delays between updates. I had a cold all weekend; before that, I was busy pretty much every night last week. But the schedule’s clearing up a little bit in the near future, and I’m feeling good. So hopefully this is the last long wait between posts.
In the Ancient Egypt class I took this spring, I learned just a little bit about Alexandria. I knew that Alexander the Great established it the first time around. I knew there was a pretty famous library there, but it had burned down. And that’s about all I knew. With regards to today’s Alexandria, I knew even less.
It turned out to be one of my favorite stops on the trip.
(Again, another apology is due here. The photos here are huge, I know. But in case you wanted to click them for a bigger shot, I uploaded the photos without resizing. If that’s causing headaches or too-slow load times, let me know, and I will upload smaller photos.)
Arrival
After arriving in Cairo and spending 3-4 days there, we took a van north to Alexandria. We were told the trip would take 2-3 hours, when it wound up taking 5 (including a stop at a Coptic Christian montastary, which I will cover in a later post).
No worries, though. We arrived and, before seeing the hotel, grabbed lunch at Mohamed Ahmed Restaurant. Our tour guide told us that he and his friend would drive 2-3 hours to Alexandria just for the falafel. I’m no falafel connoisseur, but I scooped up nearly every piece of available falafel in eyesight. It was a bit of a mish-mash of different foods for lunch, including foul (beans), French fries, falafel, pita bread and scrambled eggs.
(I suppose the American equivalent would be going to T.G.I.Friday’s with friends, ordering one of everything on the appetizer menu and sharing with everyone at the table. But the food at Mohamed Ahmed was way better.)
Bibliotheca Alexandria
Then we went to the Bibliotheca Alexandria. Now, back in its earliest days, Alexandria had the largest library in the world. Every ship captain who came to Alexandria had to turn over his manuscripts so scribes could copy them for the library. Unfortunately, the library burned to the ground, and everything inside was lost forever.
Today, the Bibliotecha Alexandria stands in its place and has room for up to 8 million books. Some of us started out on a tour of the library but, taken aback by the interior architecture, we wandered on our own for awhile. A lot of the architecutre is pretty amazing, too; the holes along the walls are meant to mimic the holes into which the rolled-up manuscripts were placed in the ancient Library of Alexandria.
The hotel
My room wasn’t the best. But other rooms offered picture-perfect views of the Mediterranean Sea, with balconies and wide doors that allowed the wind to cool off even the warmest room. Our final morning in Alexandria, three of us chilled on the balcony overlooking the Mediterranean, talked about the trip and took in the view that would have cost hundreds of dollars in an equivalent American hotel. Here are photos looking to the left and the to the right from one of the nicer rooms:
and
Back to the first night. I sweated through the night while cars honked non-stop until 5 a.m. – one of our tour guides told us that Alexandria’s “busy time” each day lasted from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m., thus ensuring that we woke up every hour or two to honking car horns or the train passing by (there were train tracks less than 500 feet from our room).
And there were shared bathrooms/showers, forcing everyone on the floor to fight over two bathrooms. It was a little weird to sit on the toilet and look straight at the shower, three feet in front of me. But whatever.
But that’s the only bad thing you’ll catch me saying about Alexandria.
Because honestly, the balcony outside my room allowed me to read and take in the sounds of Alexandria. And if I got bored with that, I could always stand up and take in a partially-obscured view of the Mediterranean Sea. So, all things considered, it could have been worse.
(That night, we ate at that seafood restaurant referenced in an earlier post. It was easily the best seafood I’ve had in my life. Good times.)
History
The next day, we took a tour around the city while our guide told us about its history. Basically, the city has been destroyed and built up again three times throughout its history. Ancient Alexandria lies buried under the modern city and in its harbor.
We took a tour of the Catacombs of Kom Al-Shuqafa and the Roman Amphitheater, which was discovered while breaking ground on a government building. It was cool to see these extremely old monuments amidst a much more modern city today.
(It’s especially insane to think about how old Alexandria is, considering that Vancouver just celebrated its 150th anniversary)
The Corniche
Then we took a drive along the Corniche – the road running parallel to the Mediterranean Sea. It was an especially lively section of town, with shops, public beaches and a nice barrier that people sat and relaxed on. After the sun went down, it was almost impossible to find somewhere to sit on this barrier. Whole families relaxed on the barrier together, having a good ol’ time. You definitely don’t see public gatherings like that in Vancouver.
If we had more time, I would have taken a walk along the Corniche; after all, it was easily the coolest area of Alexandria – both in terms of stuff to do and temperature. Along the Mediterranean Sea, a nice breeze keeps things relatively cool and pleasant. But once you’re a few blocks inward, the buildings stop a lot of the wind, and it gets extremely humid. We’re not used to the humidity in the Pacific Northwest, so it was a bit startling.
At the end of the Corniche is the one of the Egyptian Presidential Palaces. On this day, the Egyptian president was actually in Alexandria, so security was tight. We took a back route in, checked it out a bit and found a private beach for swimming (which I mentioned earlier).
Tangent
Here’s where I need to mention how friendly people were to us. After swimming, we went back to the hotel and split up into groups to find food. My group asked a local for a recommendation, and he actually walked us there. Turns out it was the place with good falafel from the day before, but we didn’t mind. But the walk was not just one or two blocks; it was a solid 5-10-minute walk. This wasn’t atypical at all, either. People did this kind of thing for us all the time.
Later that night, I waited for some friends outside the Internet cafe, and a man came up to me, offering all kinds of food recommendations – completely unsolicited. I think that’s awesome. Everywhere we went, I can think of a time when people went out of their way to help us find where we were going or help us with something.
/Tangent
That third day, we chilled a bit and hopped on the van around noon for the trip to Cairo. That night, we would board the overnight train to Aswan.
Looking Back: Amsterdam August 24, 2008
Posted by ducksflytogether in Uncategorized.Tags: amsterdam, post-trip
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I have been a bad blogger lately. It’s been more than a week since my last post; for that, I apologize. It’s been a busy week; I’ve been hanging out with friends most nights, and somewhere in there, I found the time to see Radiohead in concert. Hopefully I’ll be a bit more regular about updating this for the foreseeable future.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
I’m taking a break from Egypt for this post. Instead, I’ll talk about the city where we spent most of our first day: Amsterdam.
We left Portland at 4:10 p.m. Monday and arrived in Amsterdam at 10:30 a.m. (local time) Tuesday. I had slept a little bit on the plane but was ready to go. We had about seven hours to explore Amsterdam before the final leg of the trip to Cairo.
As we began our descent, I looked out the window and saw wind farms out at sea. About that time, I had my first Samwise Gamgee moment: “This is the furthest from home I’ve ever been.” That’s when it hit me that I was in Amsterdam.
(Truth is, from above, it looked a lot like Oregon – lots of greenery, waterways and a few roads. It reminded me of the I-5 corridor in central Oregon, oddly enough. I remember thinking, “Am I really in Amsterdam, or did we turn around while I had dozed off?”)
After getting our passport stamped, we caught the train to Amsterdam Central Station. Right away, the cultural differences smacked me in the face: We took a freaking train into town. The train itself was two stories, with pretty spacious seats and tables for commuters. In Vancouver and even Portland, we just don’t have commuter trains. So there was the first big difference.
We got off the train and hopped on a streetcar en route to the Rijksmuseum. (I should add that the weather was superb. It was maybe 75-80 degrees and clear, much like most July days in Vancouver.) Interestingly enough, I’ve ridden the MAX light rail line but never the actual streetcar in Portland, so this was a new experience, too.
We spent a few minutes in the museum and walked to the Anne Frank Museum. Along the way, we got to see a good slice of Amsterdam. There were canals every which way you look, in addition to a ton of historic buildings bordering them. (I wish I could remember more at this point, and I wish I took more photos. I just remember the city being so much busier than Portland; I was amazed at it all.)
The density surprised me, too. Pretty much every building was at least three or four stories tall, and people were packed tight into the city and along the sidewalks. Then you had walkers, cars, bikers and streetcars sharing essentially the same space on the street. I guess it’s similar to what Portland does with the Pearl District, but this was on such a massive scale … you really had a hard time separating the sidewalk from the street.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the bikes here. They were everywhere. And, unlike Portland, most bike riders seemed to have a decent relationship with car drivers. I think that’s because there are just so many bike riders. It wasn’t three or four people here and there; it was dozens and dozens of people on every street. And it wasn’t unusual to see bike racks with 100+ bikes locked up.
So we walked to the Anne Frank Museum and checked that out. It was really depressing, but also really moving. The museum was well done, with good background information, videos, artifacts and quotes from Anne Frank’s diary on many of the walls. The museum explained why Frank was in hiding, how the Nazis were nearby and the great lengths Frank’s father went to in order to protect her. Then, knowing what happened in spite of his efforts, I was super depressed. But it was still worth my time.
From there, we walked … and walked … and walked to the Red Light District. (Okay, there are several Red Light Districts. We walked to the one people refer to when they talk about THE Red Light District.)
And, yes, it was, um, a titillating experience. (Pardon the word choice.) We walked by a few weed banks (I don’t even understand what a weed bank is) and past what seemed like dozens of nude theaters and adult shops. And of course, there were the prostitutes in the windows, dancing around. We even saw a few women negotiating with possible customers.
It was all very surreal to walk through the Red Light District. We were only there for about 20 minutes — don’t worry, we didn’t do anything bad — but it was enough to get a sense of what makes it such an interesting place for tourists. Name your vice, and it’s probably available somewhere in the Red Light District.
Here’s something I’m curious about: How did the Red Light District become the Red Light District? What I mean is, how did all those places come together in the same district? At some point, did the city’s government move all the sex shops and brothels to that particular section of the city? Did one or two sex shops open a few years ago and hit it big, paving the way for everything else? How did that section of the city become what it is today? I am legitimately curious about this.
At that point, it was back to the train station. We all nodded off on the train ride back, nearly missing our stop at the airport. But we woke up in time, met up with the rest of the group and promptly fell asleep in the airport. Most of us had slept a little bit on the plane, but a lack of sleep and the time change combined to catch up on us in a big way.
After an hour or so, it was off to Cairo.
Looking Back: Random Memories August 16, 2008
Posted by ducksflytogether in Uncategorized.Tags: cairo, felucca, nile river, post-trip, train
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The temperature hit something like 105 degrees today, which made me extremely thankful that my new car has air conditioning. Not sure what I would have done if I was driving my old car around after work tonight.
Anyway, the heat got me thinking back to Egypt. A few random memories tonight.
-We spent two nights on a felucca – an Egyptian sailboat with enough room for about 10 people to sleep – on the Nile River. (I’ll blog about this in-depth later on.) On the second night, the boat’s crew took the cover off the boat so we could stargaze, and I don’t recall ever seeing anything like it. There were no homes, cars or Wal-Marts to light up the night sky. There were stars as far as the eye could see in every which direction.
I made out one of the dippers for the first time in my life. I saw a shooting star for maybe the second time in my life. That’s the kind of thing I’m never going to forget. Nor am I likely to see anything that clearly in Vancouver or Portland. I was in total awe of how clear, close, clustered, bright and beautiful the stars were. There were no trees to obscure the view (which happens when camping). Just stars, everywhere you looked.
-We spent another pair of nights on a night train. It wasn’t anything like “The Darjeeling Limited,” much to my surprise! The cabin was very nice, with two seats (which folded down into bunk beds), a sink and a coat rack. My only complaint was the bed! If I straightened my body out, my head touched one wall, and my feet touched the other. So that wasn’t really comfortable. Then, there were bumps in the night, waking me up and nearly throwing me off the bed.
Other than the bed, the train ride was seriously cool. It was definitely different than anything I’ve ever done before. But you could say that about a lot of things on the trip.
-I really miss walking around Cairo. It would be 9:30 or 10 p.m., and we’d be done with dinner, on the way back to our hotel. We would walk along 26th of July St., which is apparently one of Cairo’s biggest and busiest streets. And there would be stores along each side of the street, selling clothes, toys and all kinds of stuff.
Then there were street vendors, selling books, magazines, DVDs, cassettes and more. And in the middle of it, you’re surrounded by families and couples walking every which way. And of course, cars and cabs are competing for the same lanes in the street.
But you know what I loved about it? No one was rushing to get you out of the way. No one pushed us or made us feel unwelcome as we just kind of gawked at the scene. Merchants would even randomly say, “Welcome to Egypt!” as we walked along.
Just being in that mob, surrounded by all that energy, was amazing. In Vancouver, there’s never anything like that. Go to Vancouver’s busiest street, and it’s packed with cars, but there are no people walking along the sidewalks. If you’d like, you could pretty much have the sidewalk all to yourself. Convenient, sure. But where’s the fun in that?
Looking Back: Lessons Learned August 14, 2008
Posted by ducksflytogether in Uncategorized.Tags: egyptian hustle bug, khan el-khalili, post-trip
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Egypt changed a lot of things for me. I’m more willing to go with the flow (owing to not knowing exactly what was on tap each day) and am open to trying new things (see my previous entry about the seafood dinner). I don’t know if others have noticed anything (if they have, they haven’t said anything), but I’m definitely feeling different than usual. I’m liking it, actually.
And there’s no better example of this than my recent car-buying experience.
Since I was dealing with a dealership, I knew what to expect: high-pressure salesmen, pushy dealers and a healthy dose of haggling.
Sound familiar? Like Khan el-khalili, maybe?
The similarities were too great to ignore. In Khan el-khalili, paying the vendor’s suggested price is ridiculous. At a car dealership, paying the sticker price is ridiculous. In both instances, you deal with a salesmen who’s in it for himself and wanting to get as much out of you as possible. The longer you’re in each place, the more likely the vendor/salesman wants to make a deal; after all, they don’t want to waste a half-hour or more haggling with you and not come to an agreement. And during both haggling processes, you have to drive a hard bargain, or else you’re going to get taken advantage of.
So all those valuable lessons I learned about negotiating in Cairo, I applied to car-buying in Vancouver.
I made an offer and was immediately laughed at. The salesman told me why my offer was silly and that he wouldn’t be able to budge much.
So I gave a little (offering what I was willing to spend, and not a penny more). After some more back-and-forth, we were $300 apart on the car, and the dealer said he couldn’t go any lower.
Just like most Khan- el-khalili merchants couldn’t go any lower on a scarf or other trinket. Yeah, right. I mean, sometimes the merchant CAN’T go any lower. And you use that information for the next vendor. But most of the time, “I can’t go any lower” is code for “I don’t want to go any lower.”
So, in the car dealer’s office, I did what I did in Khan el-khalili: I left. I thanked the man for his time, and he was a bit incredulous I was willing to walk away when we were only $300 apart. But I gave him my business card and said, “If you can do anything for me, give me a call. But thanks for your time.”
I knew something. See, in Khan el-khalili, when a merchant comes down to near your price but not quite there, he’ll wind up meeting your price. I figured the same basic principle would apply to the dealer. So when he told me he couldn’t budge from the price, I busted out the Egyptian Hustle Bug and said, “Well, I guess we don’t have a deal.”
I walked out to my (old) car and was totally ready to walk away. If nothing else, it would be a good experience to apply to the next car I looked at. The first salesmen I dealt with approached me about what went wrong. And I told him I wouldn’t spend another $300. Naturally, he was also a bit shocked I was willing to walk away from the car after test-driving it, getting it checked by my mechanic and coming so close on the price.
But I knew something …
Sure enough, the dealer came out and told me to give him another 15 minutes – he would see what he could do. At that moment, I knew I would drive that new car home.
After a few minutes, he came back with an offer that was almost there, but not quite. In terms of money down, I didn’t want to put down what he was proposing. So I got my hustle on a bit more and pointed out that I would need some small work in the next year – a transmission flush and new timing belt, to be exact. So he could make those fixes, or I wasn’t going to put that much money down.
So he went back inside to run the new numbers by someone else, and when he came out, he said, “You’re a tough customer, you know that?”
Oh yeah, I know. That’s not an accident.
Honestly, if I hadn’t gone to Egypt, I would have paid through the nose for that car. I wouldn’t have blinked when he told me he couldn’t go any lower on the sticker price, since it was already on sale. Maybe I would have asked for $500 off … at the most. And when he would have inevitably said he couldn’t do it, I would have taken him at face value.
But after going through Khan el-khalili and bargaining for all kinds of stuff, I was going to get the best deal possible. I knew it was a risk to offer what I did, and I knew there was a chance I wouldn’t get the car, but I was okay with that.
Just like in Khan el-khalili, you can’t always get what you want at the price you want. But I was willing to take that risk. I’m just glad it paid off.
(And yes, I’m now driving around in a 2004 Honda Civic LX. It gets nearly double the gas mileage of my previous car and hopefully comes with fewer headaches. It’s spacious, quiet, comfortable and fun to drive. It doesn’t have as much get-up-and-go as my old car, but I didn’t need that. It will get me from Point A to Point B just fine.
I haven’t thought of a name for her yet, though. I’m thinking of something Egyptian, maybe.)
(Also, thinking of the good times I had in Khan el-khalili just makes me miss Egypt that much more. Those were good times.)
Looking Back: The Elevator Story August 10, 2008
Posted by ducksflytogether in Uncategorized.Tags: aswan, post-trip
1 comment so far
(I’ve been meaning to post this for nearly a week now. Unfortunately, my computer’s RAM crapped out on me, so my computer was out of commission for a few days.)
I had forgotten about this story until Cindy reminded me about it on MySpace.
We were staying in Aswan and had to meet in the lobby at 3:30 a.m. for our trip south to Abu Simbel. (The temperatures at Abu Simbel, near Egypt’s southern border, get hellish by midday. So most tours are advised to get there early. We also had to meet up with a police escort for the ride there.)
I got onto the first floor elevator. For some reason, the “first floor” was actually two flights up – the actual first floor was the restaurant level. Go figure.
Anyway, it was me, Michelle, Summer and Pat. Each of us was overweight to some degree (I was definitely the heaviest person in the elevator.) Keep that in mind.
We get to the ground level, but instead of stopping gently and the door opening, the elevator falls to the floor with a loud “BANG!!!” And the lights went out. And the elevator stopped. And the door didn’t open. Our collective weight was too much for the elevator, so on our way down, the elevator cried “Uncle!” Great.
Immediately, Summer began worrying. “I hate closed spaces, I’m so claustrophobic, I can’t do this!” she said over and over. Normally, I would have freaked out, too. But this was one of those rare instances when the Matt I Want to Be collided with the Matt I Am.
Michelle was trying to help, but I stood next to the controls, trying to get us out of the elevator. Patiently. And calmly.
I repeated “No worries, no worries, no worries” while fiddling with the buttons. Hitting the “call” button didn’t do anything. Hitting the numbers for the other floors didn’t do anything. Nor did hitting the “Emergency” button. (What a joke!)
My mind immediately jumped to, “Okay, we’re fine. It’s not too warm in here, we all have water, and everyone else is just on the other side of this door. They had to have heard us out there, and they have probably already alerted the staff to a problem with the elevator. We’ll be fine.” I never panicked. Not once. Not for a second.
(By the way, as loud as the elevator crashing was, no one heard it outside.)
But there I was, trying to reassure the others. “No worries,” I said. (Pat was silent during this whole ordeal.)
Then the lights come on, and we begin an ascent. My immediate thought is, “Alright, we’ll get to a floor, and we’ll get out! This is good!” But Michelle kind of pushed me out of the way and began messing with the controls. Later on, I found out it was because her mind turned to, “Oh no, this elevator’s going to the top of the hotel, and it’s going to free-fall, and we’re all going to die.”
But we got to the first (second) floor, and the doors opened. Disaster averted. Three of our group members were waiting outside the door for the elevator, and the four of us nearly pushed each other over to get back onto solid ground. I took the stairs down (surprise!) and had to sit down — by this point, my leg was shaking violently. After the fact, I needed a few deep breaths and a few minutes to compose myself. “Did that really just happen?” I asked.
The whole thing took maybe 30 seconds. A minute, at the most. But here we were, at 3:30 in the morning, stuck in an elevator in a foreign country. It was really scary for a few seconds! And instead of panicking, which I’ve done so many times in my life at the slightest hint of stress, I manned up and kept my cool. It was a good feeling.
I told the hotel staff about the elevator struggles, and maybe they misunderstood me, but the clerk essentially said, “Oh, we’re aware.” Comforting and terrifying at the same time.
I joked with the others that, the further I got from the event, the more exaggerated the story was going to be – after all, it was my story now! In fact, by the trip’s end, I was describing our harrowing free-fall down 36 stories and how I pulled some “Die Hard”-type shit by climbing into the elevator shaft to anyone who would listen.
But the one thing I didn’t exaggerate was that it was one of the scariest moments I can ever recall.
(As for Abu Simbel, it was incredible. More on that in another post, though.)
