What a warm welcome

Yesterday night I was feeling great as I disembarked my plane to Cairo from London. I had just spent the last 25 hours in the lounge or in a business class airplane seat and was feeling very relaxed.

Then as I was walking down the terminal area after stepping foot on Egyptian soil, I started seeing the first people waiting for arrivers. Apparently in Cairo they let the guides wait all the way until the gate where you get off. So by the time I got to the baggage claim area, I had already passed about 200 people.

Immigration was literally 5 windowed booths next to eachother. There was no subdivision for Egyptians and foreigners. Before the booths were little currency exchange shops selling Egyptian visas. This was where I had to pay $15 usd to buy a visa and enter the country with it.

The problem was that they literally wanted usd, euros, egyptian pounds, or british pounds. They wouldn't accept other cash. The ATMs were all on the other side of immigration. I had only a single $20 bill that I had kept in my security pouch for 6 months and so it was a little ragged. When I tried to use it, they said they wouldn't take it because it was slightly torn (very minor, you wouldn't think twice in the us).

I was surprised by that. But I had nothing else to pay with. I couldn't get any money from the ATMs because they were on the other side. I couldn't get to the other side without a visa. I couldn't get a visa because I didn't have the cash. So I walked to a couple foreigners asking them if they'd be willing to switch $20 bills with me, they said no.

I was basically stuck between the immigration booths and my airplane with nowhere to go. I started wondering if I should just call american airlines and just leave the country on the next plane, but then I remembered I couldn't do that, because for some reason, in Cairo the baggage claim is *after* immigration. So my bag was out there on a carousel floating around and I couldn't even get to it!

I asked some guards who were sitting there chatting. They said to try asking again. I asked the exchange offices if they would take Chinese yuan, Hong Kong dollars, Korean won, or Macau mop, because I had some of those left over in my pouch. They all said no. They said they would take Japanese yen but I had none!

I asked a couple more groups of tourists after apologizing to them. I felt like I was supposed to be scamming people because it was such a weird request. Finally a nice british man who happened to have American 20s traded me out for mine and I was able to get my visa. Whew!

I entered through immigration and I was immediately approached by some guy offering to help me get to my hotel. I smelled a scam coming on so I kept avoiding him. He had a badge and sounded official but after what already happened I felt like everything was superficial. The cheapness of the visa, the fact that they only take certain currencies, shows me that this country is poor, and in places like that you can't trust people who approach you in tourist areas.

I found my bag while he was still trying to talk to me. I told him no and walked outside. That guy wanted $19 for a taxi ride. I was approached by another guy who kept trying to convince me that $14 to downtown was a fair price for a taxi. I didn't believe him so I kept rejecting his offer and gave him a lot of shit about not wanting to be scammed. He told me he wasn't scamming me numerous times but I told him just by the mere fact that he's standing there taking all this crap from me shows that the price he's asking from me is worth it to him, and that's why I know $14 is a lot.

I was searching on the internet at that time (using my phone) to figure out what I should really pay, and I saw a couple webpages from 2003 talking about $9. He told me that that price was long time ago and outdated. I laughed. I told him I'd pay $10 and he said no and that $4 more was not that much and that I should pay it. So I told him if $4 is so little to him then he should not accept it and give me a discount. I just gave him crap for about 15 more minutes until he agreed that he would walk in with me to the hostel and let me ask the hostel if $14 was a good price, and if it was, then I could pay him that for the ride.

At that offer, I decided that I felt better about taking his offer, so I let him drive me to my hostel and led me to the front door. This turned out really good, because the hostel was difficult to find. He asked around in arabic to figure out the exact location. After I got in, the hostel manager told me that $14 was a fair price so I paid the driver and he left.

I was pretty happy that I made it into my hostel safely without getting ripped off too bad, especially at 2am when I didn't have many choices. The streets are chaotic right now because of a religious holiday and I'm in one of the busiest areas of town. My dorm bed costs $8 a night. I slept ok. The sheets on the bed were dirty when I was shown my room, so I had them switch it out for me and he was nice enough to do it. Some bread, cheese and butter were included in the price this morning.

I'm going to visit the Egyptian museum today. It's a short walk from here. The hostel manager tells me this morning that the typical taxi from the airport is between $13 and $15 so I did just fine with my bargaining.

Learning from yesterday's experience, I better get some actual us dollars on me at a bank just in case. I probably will also need them in south america too.

I've been reading a lonelyplanet book on egypt this morning and it says to carry all your valuables with you at all times, so I'll have to use my security pouch it seems.