Honest Thoughts on Traveling in Egypt

We traveled to Egypt for 10 days in January 2019, spending two days in Cairo, four in Luxor, two in Aswan, and our last two in Giza. Our style of travel, while not completely immersed in the local experience, is not sheltered from it either.

We stay in Airbnbs, take trains, eat local food, and for the most part don’t join tours, preferring to do our own research and visit places independently.

No matter your style though, the things I highlight here will be touchpoints for everyone traveling in Egypt.

2 Attacks on Tourists in the Last 6 Months

A few days after we got to Egypt, a roadside bomb exploded in Giza on the main road to the pyramids, blowing up a tour bus heading to the sound and light show that night. Three Vietnamese tourists and a tour guide were killed. The President’s response? “It happens.” A day later, he killed 40 people before a full investigation. Supposedly suspected terrorists, but if you look closely at the footage, at least some were already in prison. The government likely used the attack as an excuse to kill political prisoners.

When we visited Giza a week later, we didn’t notice any (never mind additional) security measures. The ticket office and entrance to the pyramids was as chaotic as could be.

Just a few days ago, another roadside explosion hit a tourist bus in Giza. A lot of people on social media say it’s safe to go to Egypt because nothing bad happened to them. That’s such a small sample size. Two explosions have now taken place in the last 6 months. Both targeted tourist buses.

Egypt in Decay

About a week after the December attack, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Egypt’s President and military dictator, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. In the interview, the 60 Minutes host is grilling Sisi about the violent repression in Egypt since he took power. Sisi denies everything, but he’s visibly sweating. Immediately after, Egyptian officials formally requested 60 Minutes not air the interview, an unprecedented move.

All over the world the standard of living is improving, but Egypt is crumbling. At one time the buildings in Cairo were grand and beautiful, but now they’re caked in dust, the insides in total disrepair.

On our long train ride from Cairo to Luxor, we met an Egyptian civil engineer. Aaron talked with him for four hours. He works 6 days a week. His father is a lawyer and his mother is a teacher. Everyone works, he says, but nobody ever gets ahead. On our return train from Aswan to Cairo, we met a university professor on his way to Cairo to take an English proficiency exam. He’s applying to a Ph.D. program in Canada, intent on leaving Egypt, whatever it takes. He told us about how he spent 3 months in Shanghai, and how nice it was there. We told him the train in India is better than the train we were on. “The train in India is better?” He was so surprised. Yes, much better. There was no ac and people kept smoking in our car. Below are first class seats.

All of this is due to bad governance. No wonder Arab spring took root here. And for a moment it was successful, but now, Egypt has gone back to being a total police state. There’s no freedom of speech. We went to Tarir Square but nobody speaks about the protests that happened here anymore. Journalists have been jailed for being journalists. Watch Bassem Youssef’s documentary, Tickling Giants, an eye-opening exposé on the last ten years.

Cheating and Corruption

Egypt exhausted us more than any other place we’ve been to. The infrastructure is a total mess and corruption is rampant. In fact, in 2018 Egypt’s former anti-corruption chief was jailed for five years after a military court convicted him of insulting the armed forces. 

The cheating and aggressive pushiness in the tourist industry is the worst we’ve ever experienced, with people following you so closely it feels physically threatening. We had to stand firm when people disguised as official ticket collectors told us our train tickets weren’t valid, or hold on tight to our tickets at Giza when people tried to snatch them from us in order to sell them back to us.

Armed police always turned a blind eye because they get a kickback from the scam artists, or worse, they facilitate by questioning you on what country you’re from. They ask this to determine if you’re holding strong currency, like dollars and euros. Once Aaron answered Turkey (the lira had just crashed) and everyone immediately lost interest in us.

Waiters would hand us change in one hand but keep half of it hidden in the other hand, even in nice restaurants. We had to count everything and be ever vigilant. It was mentally draining not to be able to trust anyone.

Disappointing Hospitality and Accommodations

We didn’t experience any kind of warm hospitality to write home about (except for a fellow train passenger who offered me his bottle of water after he drank from it – comically confusing but kind). Most people treated us as if we were only walking wallets. It’s common for Airbnb hosts to double as tour guides, so they can be unhelpful when asked how to get somewhere by yourself.

The accommodations themselves were trying to be nice, but none of them lived up to their favorable reviews. We couldn’t figure out why the reviews were so good. Is it to help out the host?

One of our Airbnbs had small round windows with no glass panes, so just a hole in the wall. Egypt is cold in the winter, so in January this meant our bedroom was freezing at night.

Our Airbnb in Aswan also double booked our apartment on another platform and put us in a room with a dirty shared bathroom instead of the private one we booked, but what could we do at the last minute?

In Luxor, the heating fan was broken in half, but instead of providing an intact one, our Airbnb host propped it up on an ironing board – a total fire hazard.

In Cairo we were downright horrified by our hotel. When we booked, it had a 4.8 star review on Google. Even now, it has a 4.4 star review, but it’s the worst place we’ve ever stayed. It was supposed to be newly renovated, but the men at reception were smoking and the linens hadn’t been changed. The only plausible explanation is that they’re buying fake reviews.

The only accommodation we liked was our hotel in Giza. We were pleasantly surprised that reception was friendly, the rooms were clean, and the breakfast buffet was actually good.

Questionable Archeological Sites

The pyramids were impressive, and Abu Simbel is well preserved and managed, but the archeological sites in Luxor are so reconstructed we really questioned how much of it was original. We walked all the way from downtown Luxor to the Valley of the Kings and Queens and we saw men literally building more “ruins” along the way. Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple is just a modern concrete block.

At Karnak, towards the back, random local men have put up their own gates to certain parts of the temple, telling people they have to pay an extra fee separate from the ticket to enter. A common scam. We just pushed their gates aside but it annoyed us nonetheless that the managers of the site allowed this to go on.

Something that really shocked us was when a shuttle driver at Hepshupset’s temple tossed his empty plastic water bottle out of his cart. Aaron picked up the bottle and threw it back into the driver’s lap.

National Museum or Warehouse?

We’ve never seen a national museum in worse condition. What a shame because it holds such treasures, but so many are covered in dust with little care or curation. I felt like I’d walked into a garage sale.

We read that tour guides have removed many museum labels to force tourists to hire them. Indeed, there were very few informational placards or object labels. We would have been lost had we not watched several documentaries about ancient Egyptian history before going and downloaded an audio guide created by izi.travel.

A Food Desert

Good fruits and vegetables were hard to come by. There were a lot of beans. It seems like Egypt is too poor to import agricultural products from other countries, so you’re limited to what it can grow at home. For example, the famously popular Koshary Abou Tarek in Cairo served up lukewarm pasta with flavorless rice, chickpeas, lentils, canned tomato puree, and garlic juice. It’s Egypt’s favorite street food, but seems like a legacy from an era of rations.

We only found one restaurant we liked – Nile View Restaurant in Luxor, which grows its own vegetables. We tried other places but were quickly disappointed, and ended up eating at Nile View every night for four nights.

For our long train rides, we sustained ourselves on date rollup cookies from the only honest bakery we could find. Vendors walked up and down the train selling hummus, which we were told was a watered down hummus drink, like a hummus smoothie. We were recommended not to try it.

In Aswan, it was particularly hard to find good food, as this region is especially poor.

Small Rewards

There were nice things. The best pitas we’ve ever tasted, made out of whole wheat grown and milled right there, locally. A bustling local economy. Walking through the planting fields. Sunrise over the Nile. We were in awe of Abu Simbel, and the Pyramids at Giza turned out to be a surprisingly fun, hassle-free day.

What Other Traveler Have to Say

Since our trip, we’ve spoken to a few other people who’ve been to Egypt. A family friend went on a weeklong luxury Nile River cruise shortly after us and paid about $4000 for it. That’s enough money to buy a nice tourist experience in almost any part of the world, but even for that kind of money she didn’t like Egypt. She went for the history, but was shocked at how dirty and unkempt the sites were. Aaron’s parents, who went to Egypt in the 90s, described Giza as pyramids on one side and slums on the other. Another long term traveler backpacking through Africa said she would never go back to Egypt. But our friend in Austria loved Egypt for the history.

We Personally Wouldn’t Go Back

We understand Egypt’s pull. For many travelers, including us, it’s a necessary place to visit in one’s lifetime. But when we were there, we couldn’t wait to leave. For the sake of its people, I hope the situation in Egypt improves. Its heritage should be better preserved.

Further Reading

Some months after leaving Egypt, a new book about the country was published, and it happened to be by my favorite journalist, Peter Hessler. Having read his books on China, I know he can be trusted to accurately and intimately render the state of a complicated society.

His latest, The Buried: An Archeology of the Egyptian Revolution, is in incredibly timely read for anyone who hopes to understand Egypt as it is today.

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A post shared by Lu and Aaron (@twopaperboats) on May 23, 2019 at 1:33pm PDT