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Cairo and Luxor


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You probably spent the whole time telling the locals Salah isn't a player.    

I've got a video of me and some random boy singing Castle on the Hill in the cafe of the big Muslim park.     

Okay....
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(felt our visit deserves a better review, so I have edited this post👍)

Been now.......3 days in Cairo. Then got the train down to luxor for a week and then train back to Cairo.

Brilliant.

If you have always wanted to visit, all I can say is just go......forget the western media.  The terrorism threat is imo totally overplayed. It felt completely safe. Certainly as safe walking about as any UK or US city.  As one Egyptian said to me...."we are a nation of 80 million...we have a few thousand bad people, who are scaring everyone away. How big is your country...how many bad people live their?" It did probably help we we were travelling independently and therefore not part of the  whole tourist bus circus. But.....I cannot emphasize enough that the vast majority of folk were great.

Yes, you do get pestered. The people are poor and the lack of tourists, tourism being a big part of their economy, means the folk are on their arses just now and have been for a few years. They are just trying to earn a living, but it could get tiring. I found being polite didn't work, but a firm "f@ck off" done the trick.

Tipping for everything is in the culture in Egypt. Everyone from the caleche driver to the tomb guards in the valley of the king's will look for baksheesh. I kept some small change notes in ma top pocket for this. Five pound Egyptian was the standard small tip. It's about about 20p in GBP so u will not break the bank. The Egyptians are workers. They always try to provide a service to earn their tip. 5 pound Egyptian will have the tomb guard pointing out and explaining an obscure hyroglyph, or the taxi driver carry your luggage into the hotel.

The vast majority of Egyptians are super friendly.  As stated, we travelled independently, used trains, the metro in Cairo, buses, uber and taxis. You do stick out, especially now when there are so few Westerners visiting Egyt.....but not once did I feel in anyway uncomfortable or threatened. Ordinary folk went out of their way to help us when we needed it, from making sure we got on the right train (funnily enough all numbering is in Arabic) to making sure we didn't miss anything important at the Egyptian museum or pyramids.

For anyone visiting Cairo an absolute must is the roof top bar at the Nile Zamelek hotel. I would not stay at the hotel as it's  a dump, but the bar is quality. Sitting 10 stories above the Nile sipping cold beer and puffing on a big Sheesha as the sun sets. You can't get much better.

Edited by git-intae-thum
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I contracted the worst bout of travellers vomiting and diarrhoea I’ve ever experienced in Luxor. I can’t hear the name of the place without thinking of it.

Liquid production aside, it and Cairo are both cracking cities, filled with history and energy. There’s some good tips already on the thread. Just to add I got an overnight train between the two, which was very cheap (and the baksheesh I paid for a private sleeper compartment was totally worth it).

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On 03/11/2019 at 22:41, paul-r-cfc said:

We were looking at a G Adventures tour of Egypt in April. Initially we were struggling to see any flights into Cairo! As a history geek, it's somewhere I need to see. Would love to do Petra as well if it was feasible in the same trip.

Done a few G Adventure tours (not Egypt) and found them to be pretty good. 

Our guide for our Cambodia trip about 5years ago just won Wanderlust travel magazine best tour guide for 2019 (2,000 guides entered it). 

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Done a few G Adventure tours (not Egypt) and found them to be pretty good. 
Our guide for our Cambodia trip about 5years ago just won Wanderlust travel magazine best tour guide for 2019 (2,000 guides entered it). 
Yeah, I've done the Indochina one and Central America with them. Couldn't have went better.
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We usually mix our trips, independent/solo stuff for short city breaks but small group tours for longer.  I would love to do a long tour (6 months) but just not possible. 

I find the like of G Adventures and others perfect for a couple of weeks as takes a lot of the hassle out of it and you see a lot in that timescale where I doubt we would see quite as much if we had to organise it all ourselves.

Only time I have self organised trips was when I had time.  Done a few road trips in America when if we had a day or two off in 8 weeks then it was no big deal.  If you do that in two weeks I somehow think I would regret it.

We flew to Budapest recently and did it AirBnB style for a few days then flew on to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia for 15 days, living with locals etc with a Georgian tour company. We had never heard of them and all the reviews for their tours were just a few days tours.  Decided the price was so good we would take a chance...they were brilliant.  Probably one of the best tours have ever done. 

In last 5 years we have done tours in Cambodia/Thailand, Turkey, India, Africa (3 weeks basic camping while traveling in a truck) China (which included a 25hr train journey in open bunks), Sri Lanka, Nepal and Morocco.  Out of that only Turkey could be considered "posh" as it was 4 and 5 star but only cost £350 for 9 day touring (we bookended it with stays in Istanbul.

It certainly pays to look around.

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On 11/11/2019 at 23:02, Adamski said:

I contracted the worst bout of travellers vomiting and diarrhoea I’ve ever experienced in Luxor. I can’t hear the name of the place without thinking of it.

Liquid production aside, it and Cairo are both cracking cities, filled with history and energy. There’s some good tips already on the thread. Just to add I got an overnight train between the two, which was very cheap (and the baksheesh I paid for a private sleeper compartment was totally worth it).

I ingested dodgy rice when staying in Sharm-el-Sheikh when I was around 16/17, got the worst food poisoning I've ever had, was shitting for days even after I returned home. Went quad-biking through the Sinai desert (I don't think it's safe to do that now?) though, so was worth it. 

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On 11/11/2019 at 23:02, Adamski said:

I contracted the worst bout of travellers vomiting and diarrhoea I’ve ever experienced in Luxor. I can’t hear the name of the place without thinking of it.

 

19 hours ago, SweeperDee said:

I ingested dodgy rice when staying in Sharm-el-Sheikh when I was around 16/17, got the worst food poisoning I've ever had, was shitting for days even after I returned home.

Aswan did it for me, dodgy bottle of water. Be careful out there, and check the seal on bottles. Worth spending a little more to eat in posh hotels where they use bottled water for cleaning salads etc, it's still cheap as f**k, or it was when I was there.

Edited by welshbairn
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