Egypt - Part 12: I'm Back!!!

From my twitter post when the plane landed: "It's good to be back! Can't wait till they let us off this plane. I want to breath some fresh new york air!"



To sum up this trip: It was a once in a lifetime experience (read: I don't ever want to go back).

This has been THE most stressful and chaotic trip I have taken.
Don't get me wrong, the sites were amazing.
It was the atmosphere. The cities smell like exhaust fume, there seems to be dust everywhere and everything out in the open has a layer of grimy on it.
There's a small bunch of bad seeds that cast a bad reflection on the general population.
I've never been so looking-over-my-back jumpy, it almost feels like everyone's trying to sell you something and rip you off while doing it. The constant demand of "bakesh" (tips) gets tiring (example: the bathroom attendant wanted tips for toilet paper and stall unlocking / sunny side: at least there IS toilet paper and an empty stall). While the haggling is exhilarating at times, it gets annoying when all you want to do is take a taxi back to the hotel after a long day.
Last but not least (maybe), the number one cause of stress: the lack of traffic lights. The cities we visited are metropolitans, not rural areas. There are NO traffic lights - it's likes playing chicken non stop: switching lanes (if there's a remote chance of fitting, they'll go for it), crossing intersections (they just cross, even with traffic going through the intersection), letting pedestrians pass (still amazed at how we didn't see any accidents). It almost seem like there's a honking language.



Things I did enjoy...
The sites - you have to be there to see it, feel it. Pictures don't do it justice.
The juice stands - love the fresh sugar cane juice, fresh mango juice, fresh orange juice and the price - dirt cheap.
Smoking sheesha (Hooka or water pipe) - pretty relaxing, really feels like vacation for those 3 coals worth of time.
Alexandria - huge difference coming from Luxor, about 30 degrees of difference and an equal amount in the niceness of people.
As much as "bakesh" (tips) sucked, it came in handy at times: our guide paid the cops off so we could climb the pyramids, I bribed a "guardian" to get my camera back after taking videos in a tomb that had a no photo sign outside, another "guardian" let us take videos going into the pyramid in hopes of getting some bakesh.

more to come...