March 15, 2009 (Sunday)
Early evening
I'm leaving Cairo this evening for Luxor on an overpriced (and overrated) sleeping train (but I've got a seat ticket!).
Two full days spent in this hectic Egyptian capital are never enough to get to know even a tiny bit of it, let alone to describe all of its unbelievable but sadly true characteristics. I'll just comment some of my biggest impressions here in a nutshell (For something similar, see Chronicles of Mod: Eleven Truth I Found out about Norway).
1. Cairo traffic system and driving etiquettes are irrepairably dreadful.
Everything that finds itself in the streets of Cairo automatically falls into the endlessly frenzied traffic circus. Compared to this city, crossing streets in Bangkok is blissfully easier. Most Bangkokians are natural at crossing streets thanks to our innate instinct, but right here in this country, our skills are no use since the real professional road-crossers are the Egyptians!
Horn-honking is inevitable when driving. Drivers don't have to justify their cause, they feel free to do so when ... they feel like to! I suppose this is also something innate, everytime I took a careful look at drivers, I saw one of their hands readily placed at the horn, ready to press at all time. Red Alert! The result? They all ended up distributing their share of noises in the already deafening streets from ... ehhh ... dawn till midnight.
If you are looking for some real, exciting urban adventure, go to Cairo and ... cross the streets!
2. Foreign tourists are rarely seen on the streets as opposed to other so-called touristic countries.
I spent half an hour today sitting at Midan Tahrir (Square) observing all the rush-hour street craziness and, surprisingly, found only a small number of European-looking tourists passing by. The rest was Egyptian locals walking or running here and there, living their normal lives and doing their normal routines (BTW, the moment was magical, the city centre seemed so alive and cheerful, I LOVE that).
As a Thai-Chinese, I consider myself superficially unfit in this social context in terms of physical appearance. So I ignored all the Lonely-Planet-type advices of trying not to be obvious as a tourist. Some say not to wear/use things that may scream "tourist!" such as camera or other gadgets. I, on the contrary, had my Nikon D90 around my neck 70 % of the time. The result? I was (unproudly) in the limelight all the time amongst local people who were staring at me constantly. I could eventually turn the initial uneasiness boiling inside into a blissful ignorance and went on. It was a bit harder than in Spain. But at least here you don't have to worry much about being mugged though, it's practically safe even if everybody knows you are a tourist (correct me if I am mistaken).
3. Look out for touts!
In touristic areas where hygiene, technology and modern facilities are within near reach, there still roams a plague of annoying and persistent touts who try to sell you every thing from toothpicks to warships (well, this idiom is literally translated from what we frequently say in Thai).
They will all approach you as friendly conversation starters and end up trying to lure you to a souvenir shop, hotel or restaurant. My firt impression was that ... wow! I was spoiled and pampered! I loved that! But then ... after getting into such conversation for the 6th time, I started to see the light and, well, I couldn't deny that I was fed up, if not to say HATE.
On the bright side, only few rarely got angry or agressive when rejected. Most of them took my negative responses very well and let me go (but had I ever be back around there again, they would repeat the same lines like a video tape!).
Not that all locals do that for financial purpose. I met a kind young girl in her teenage in a bus to downtown on my first day. I was evidently alien to the place and couldn't stop fidgeting and poking my head around. The girl, disturbed by my unneccessary uneasiness, asked me where my destination was and if she could be of any help (it turned out that she had to got out before me and, obviously, couldn't show me where exactly is my stop). She DID have that look of a concerned person wanting to lend a hand on someone in need, I was truly impressed.
I was also (VERY) frequently approached by small kids (practically EVERYWHERE, hehe). They all did the same thing; first looking at me, then attempting to come by while pretending to do something else irrelevant, and if our eyes met, which is most of the time, they would, with brightest smiles ever, ask "What's your name?", "Where are you from?", "Are you Chinese/Japanese?", "How old are you?", "I speak English!", "My name is ... and you?", etc.
At Saladin Citadel, I was asked by a small boy to spell "Enormous", "Comfortable" and some other words for him. He said it was part of his homework. Lucky him that he bumped into me for the task since English pronunciation is always one of my greatest forte ever (heheh). I do hope that he got 10 out of 10 for that homework.
I initially believed that, apart from curiosity or eagerness to learn English, those kids were probably told by their parents to do so in order to practice and make use of it in their future career as touts as they grow up (Yep, call me a pesimist and I won't deny it). However, I was introduced a different point of view (The kid just did it out of pure curiosity) when, very fortunately, I had a chance to have a very long and culturally interesting chat with an intellectual Egyptian university student late in my trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment