Egypt - Cairo - Expensive Pyramids and Tosh, random

I got from the airport on early Sunday morning and Muhammed Ali from the hostel picked me up. He drives an old Puegot. He told me, "Old but strong car." We made it to the hostel without any problems even though the car was pretty old. There are a lot of old cars here in Cairo for sure.

I met up with Jonas and Magnus, two brothers from Sweden, yesterday morning and we headed out to the pyramids. They're staying in the same dorm room as me and we figured we would have more bargaining power with three people. We also put too much faith in the manager at our hostel. He bought us tea and did a nice sales job. Off we went in Ali's "strong car."

Ali dropped us off at a stable outside of the Gisa pyramids and we thoght we negotiated a good deal to ride camels into the pyramids. My camel made a lot of noise. It sounded like one of those things in Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back, one of the animals they ride in the snow.

Another guy named Ali was our guide. Riding the camels is kinda rough. I was bouncing up and down in the saddle as the guides made the camels run. I think they enjoyed seeing the Westerners struggle to stay on the camels. We rode right up to the pyramids. It was a bit surreal always hearing about these pyramids and finally seeing them. They are quite massive.

We even went into one. We had to crouch as we walked down about 30 meters and then up about 20 meters more through a tunnel in the pyramid. It was extremely hot and I kept on hitting my head on the ceiling. There was absolutely nothing inside the pyramid because they took everything to the Egyptian museum for preservation.

After seeing the big 3 pyramids we went to the Sphinx. It's much smaller than I initially thought and we weren't able to get too close. Then, that's when the trouble began with our guide because he asked us for a tip. I gave him 20 pounds. He said it wasn't enough so I gave 50 and then he wanted even more. I said no. And then I told him that I was already being very generous because it was a 20% tip and that I was only a student. He could tell that I was pretty upset. I even told him that I was unhappy with how things had turned. He didn't ask me for more money but hit up my Swede companions.

On the ride back to the hostel, we realized that we had overpaid to go see the pyramids by doing some more research in our Lonely Planet. We weren't too happy about that and were upset that we placed too much trust in our hostel manager. We then vowed to haggle much more.

Last night, we went to restaurant to grab a beer and Tosh, a fellow student from Michigan, walked in randomly. He had just gotten into town and checked into a hotel near the restaurant. He and a girl he was traveling with randomly chose the restaurant. Very small world. Tosh's friend went to bed early and we all headed out for one more beer. It was roughly midnight and the streets were packed. Everyone was out shopping because the temperature is much, much cooler at night.

Mangus found this bar listed in the lonely planet. We were the only Westerners in there and they were very happy to have us. They bought beer over and a water pipe. Then, they quickly hit us up for tips. The one lady kept on telling Magnus and me, "Remember Selwa tips." Selwa was her name. There was also some live entertainment there with a keyboard player and a pretty bad singer. He sung loudly in Arabic. After one beer, we got out of there, left a little tip and headed home.

Today, I headed to the Egyptian museum with the Swedes. Lots of Egyptian artifacts there. The highlights were the royal mummies (where we saw Ramses the Great) and a gold mask for Tutenkamen. This was placed over his mummified head so that his soul would recognize him in the afterworld. Quite impressive.