Arriving in Cairo

I am here experiencing the biggest culture shock in my life. Cairo is the craziest place I've ever been to. I don't even know how to BEGIN to blog about it. There are just so much to say, the smell, the narrow busy streets, the shouting in Arabic, chanting Qur'an, the endless honking, the prayer calling from the mosques 5 times a day, and the infamous scams in any way you can possibly imagine (or not). Riding a taxi in Cairo is an adventure in itself and it starts from the moment you flag one down. Once we hopped in a taxi only to find out the driver doesn't have the slightest idea of where we want to go. we showed him the map, told him the place in English and still nothing. finally he called his friend who can speak English to translate for us! Lessons learned! always ask the hotel to write the Arabic name for you, at least in Cairo. however the next day we hopped in a taxi again, this time with confidence, and showed the driver the destination written in Arabic. guess what? he is illiterate, which, to my surprise, is not uncommon at all here. He had to stop and ask a pedestrian to read it out for him. what can i say? we felt totally defeated! :) There is NO traffic light on most intersections. Even when there is, it doesn't make any difference.They say the traffic lights in Cairo are only for jokes. And crossoing the street is an art of finding human buffer and perfect timing. And my ultimate secret weapon to deal with all the street annoyance is Chinese! many Egyptians are multi-lingual, not necessarily fluent, but enough to scam you with your own language. ha. but as soon as i turn around to speak Chinese in a machine gun manner , even the smoothest talking Egyptian shuts up!
the next day we decided to wait no more and headed to the only remaining of the ancient seven wonders - the Great Pyramid of Giza, as well as Saqqara (the oldest pyramid), and Memphis. we hired a taxi for the day and was grateful for having done that. it saved us much hassles! I won't go into details to describe the places because all the guidebooks can do better. I did decide to pay the outrageous entrance fee to go inside the pyramid. there's really not much to see inside, the steep stairway ends in a very dark and empty room. however, the feeling of climbing ancient stairways inside the pyramid is indescribable!

the day after we visited the Egyptian museum. what a massive and great collection it has! but at the same time, it is also among the poorest organized museum I've ever been to. Five minutes into the museum we decided the only way to make sense out of it is to hire a guide. there's none to very little descriptions to the items exhibited. Of the few that actually has a little bit of descriptions, they are hand-written, more precisely, scribbled, with occasional usage of white-out!Buy a printer!! for Pharaoh's sake!! We saw one empty showcase with nothing more than a piece of paper (obviously torn from a notepad), with a scribble of Arabic. they could at least write in English, so we know it's not a thank-you note left by the thief (as in many Hollywood movies :))! the museum is just amazing and disappointing all at the same time. and what's even more shocking is we saw this 3000 years old mummy lying around in bright light under room temperature. And by room temperature i mean a room without A/C. i am no mummy expert but shouldn't they be carefully preserved in certain condition? which was the case in a separate mummy room which charges twice as much as the entrance fee. (how convenient!)perhaps they don't have enough "VIP" rooms to display all the mummies but that's just a shame. I can only hope that the new Grand Egyptian Museum, which is set to open in 2009, will make much improvement!

Contrary to what this entry might sound like, Cairo is a wonderful and fascinating place. Walking in Cairo is like being in a 24 hour open theatre. there are always things that drop our jaws. A view to a whole different world has definitely being opened to me. i am glad i am here!