I’m aware that Ian has just blogged, but so as not to be unduly influenced, I haven’t read his entry. I apologize if we say all the same things. However, you can at least count on me for accuracy regarding any facts or figures duplicated in both entries; I am not so prone to exaggeration as my dear husband.
Our book goes on at some length about the influence of tipping, or baksheesh, in Egyptian culture. It leads you to believe that you will be plagued all day every day with not-so-subtle demands for cash for all sorts of mildly helpful things like opening a door or answering a question. Until today we had hardly encountered these requests and I thought maybe the whole baksheesh thing had been overblown. However, until today we hadn’t really entered the main tourist trail. How things changed when we visited the only remaining ancient wonder of the world.
Today we went to Giza, site of the famous pyramids and sphinx, and Saqqara, site of some other pyramids. Today was one big exercise in avoiding getting ripped off and not trusting any information that anyone gave us. It was really quite annoying.
The day started with us hiring a taxi off the street for the day to take us to the various sites and wait for us while we looked. Ian made quick work of that because there was a guy standing right outside our hotel trying to rustle up taxi business. The book gave us a guideline of a fair price and the guy agreed to the top end of that range (200 pounds for the day, which is about 28 Euros). He took us to Giza and the fun started when he pulled up next to a place where we could “look at a map” and something about a horse. We immediately realized that the scams were beginning and asked to just go to the ticket booth, but some guy who spoke much better English than our driver was on at us about how far it was and how we would have to walk with our children, blah blah blah. I must confess that I was almost drawn in by the idea of taking a horse and carriage around all the pyramids and not having to walk at all, but luckily we managed to fight them off and proceeded with caution to the ticket booth. By this point we weren’t at all confident that it was the real ticket booth, but it did provide a ticket with a hologram seal, so we were good to go.
We went in and looked at the sphinx and then headed up the hill to the pyramids. On the way, we had many offers for vastly cheaper horse carts / camels / donkeys / what have you. We would clearly have been insane to have gone with the guy down in the parking lot.
On the way up the hill to the pyramids, many many men approached us with the camel rides or extremely crappy souvenirs and delivered their usual opening line “where are you from?” To which we replied “Holland” while continuing to walk along. Then comes the standard “Ah! Allemachtig prachtig!” or, perhaps “allemachtig prachtig tachtig!”, which translate to almighty gorgeous and almighty gorgeous eighty, respectively. We responded with a smile that weakened with repetition and continued along. Most people didn’t try much harder than that, probably realizing that the quality of their goods was such that only one in one thousand people would bite and that the ones who will bite will make themselves immediately apparent. Kind of like the Nigerian “I am the widow of a very bad rich man and I need your help getting my money out of my corrupt country” e-mail scam. However there are a couple of incidents that stand out in my memory.
We were contemplating going into one of the pyramids, but were running short on time. So as we stood outside the entrance debating it, a guy approached us, asked us where we were from, gave us an allemachtig prachtig, and began stuffing our arms full of goods. He began with me, shoving a headscarf into the crack of my arm somewhere that it basically would stick without me grabbing it. He asked Ian if he could buy me for one million camels because I was so beautiful (perhaps our most dedicated readers will recall that this same line was used on us many moons ago at a camel market in Al Ain in the UAE, if I recall the city name correctly). I tried to give the headscarf back but he wouldn’t take it, saying “no, it is a gift, no money, because I love the Holland people!” Then he stuck one on my head and told me that I looked like a queen. Hmm. Anyway, we started walking away. I kept trying to thrust the headscarf back to him, only to be greeted with his “because I love the Holland people!” line. As we continued to walk, he kept digging into his bag of goodies for gifts for the children and thrust a little pyramid statue at Ian. We kept saying no thank you and he finally, after what felt like forever, gave up. I handed him the scarf back and he said to Ian “give me the pyramid” and that was finally it. Sheesh.
As we walked along, several of the tourist police gestured to their camels to tell us to take a picture of them, only to then ask us to baksheesh him once we had. We chose to take one guy’s picture seated on his camel and gave him the stately sum of 1 pound, but then continued to see others who would gesture to their camels and say “it’s okay, (and pointing to the badge on his arm) police.” Of course, if we had taken a picture of the camel, we would definitely have been hit up for baksheesh.
Finally, at Saqqara, there was a guy with a donkey who basically abducted Eloïse and stuck her on his donkey. Ian was a bit ahead of us at this time and I told the guy that I didn’t even have a camera. Of course he said the usual “no money!” while putting her on there and telling me to take a picture. If you know Eloïse, you’ll know that she wasn’t at all keen on this plan and was looking extremely suspicious and reaching out to me to take her off the donkey. Ian finally took the picture because we just weren’t going to get away from this one without a fight, and baksheeshed him lightly.
Ironically, lots of people want to take Eloïse’s picture. They all think she’s the bee’s knees. Our day in Saqqara ended with an Egyptian woman approaching me, asking me where I was from (she seemed to nice, but my heart sank at that question) and then very politely asking to take Eloïse’s picture. Of course I said to go right ahead and she and every member of her party posed in turns with Eloïse, who is not sure what to think about all these pictures. In most of them she looks quite suspicious and has her fingers in her mouth (or nose). After she kissed Eloïse, thanked us profusely, and walked away, I commented to Ian that we should have demanded some baksheesh.