24 July 2008: If you are in Cairo, the must-do is definitely the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum.  It is home to the most extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities in the world. It has 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display, the remainder in storerooms.

The pink Egyptian Museum behind.

Not only does it house the world’s largest collection of Pharaonic antiquities, it also houses the many treasures of King Tutankhamen, and many interesting statues. It gives you a good idea of how ancient Egyptians live their lives. There’s burial items, ancient jewelery, and even the mummies of many famous Pharaohs. We has to pay a separate entry fee to go see their mummies which are housed in two rooms. We saw the well-mummified bodies of  Pharaoh Ramses II and III, Amenhotep, and also a female mummy whose identity cannot be confirmed, but based on some clues, could be the body of Queen Hatshepsut.

The Metro

In Downtown

Egyptians smoking Shisha, a water pipe which operates by water filtration and indirect heat. It is used for smoking tobacco. Shisha cafes and restaurants are very common in the Middle East.

According to a World Health Organization advisory, a typical one-hour session of shisha smoking exposes the user to 100 to 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled from a single cigarette.

In a perfume oil shop.

Cairo has lots of shops selling papyrus paintings and perfume oils. We had an interesting experience in this particular perfume oil shop in the back streets of downtown Cairo. The shop proprietor saw us looking at perfume bottles outside of his shop, so he invited us into his shop, which is a small room. All 4 walls are covered in mirrors and rows and rows of perfume oil. Once we were inside, he closed the door behind us, and we were comfortably seated in the sofa. The scents and mirrors in this room transported us into another place and time. He handed out a list of perfume oils, and explained to us some of their scents. Some of the most unique ones were the famous lotus flower, papyrus or jasmine oil, the first two being the national flowers of Upper and Lower Egypt. These oils are 100% natural oils without alcohol to dilute them.

Jars of oil were passed to us, and we tried the different oils on our arm. When we first refused to buy any of his oils, he and his partner became quite aggressive - a complete change from his initially friendly manner. After some negotiation, we got the prices down to more reasonable levels, and got them to include for free some colorful perfume bottles.

If you don’t wish to buy them, just leave the shop and don’t feel pressured or scared by them. But if you like them and are willing to buy them at reasonable prices, bargain with them.

Our tip: The bargaining tactic is to slash the seller’s price far lower and then after they reply you with a price higher than your first price, you reduce your price even lower than the previous offer. Go lower and lower, and then eventually reach a deal. If it is still not to your liking, just walk away!

Note the perfume oil jars and empty colorful perfume bottles.

Streets near our hotel. Donkeys, cars, bicycles and people share the road space. We even saw a group of kids playing soccer right on this street, in the middle of moving cars and donkeys. Unbelievable.

When you walk down the streets of Cairo, you will be approached by Egyptians asking for ‘Baksheesh‘, which is like tips. Yes, strangers will ask you for ‘tipping’ just like that! At tourist attractions, you will come across Egyptians hanging around and trying to do some small favors for you so that they can get baksheesh from you. When you use public toilets, the cleaners will expect baksheesh from you.

23 July 2008: Egypt needs some getting used to.

We hadn’t been to Egypt before, and from what we heard, many travelers have a love-hate attitude towards this country in North Africa. Crossing the roads here is a very perilous activity. There’s hardly any traffic lights for pedestrians to cross the road; people drive crazily with no regard to traffic rules! Locals cross the roads at any point they like; buses stop suddenly to pick up passengers from anywhere along their route.

It’s so chaotic you won’t believe it till you are there. To get to downtown of Cairo, we had to cross dash with fear across so many wide roads that were congested with cars and buses. Running for life has real meaning here. Even a local told us the traffic rule in Egypt is that there are no rules. Drivers are aggressive; roads are overcrowded and you are almost certain to hear honking every second of every minute.

Cairo is an extremely polluted city. Besides exhaust fumes from decade-old cars and buses, there is so much sand and dirt in the air. This sand comes from the desert which pretty much surrounds Cairo. It’s HOT there, with temperature ranging between 40-45 degC. We were told that it hadn’t rained even once in the city for the past year! At the end of each day, we found sand in our hair and our skin felt very dry and sandy. Tip: Don’t go out without a bottle of water in your bag. It can be difficult to find bottled water even in downtown.

People smoke everywhere. Even in our hotel room (which is non-smoking), there would be wafts of cigarette smoke coming in through the room ventilation from other rooms.

Still, we couldn’t wait to see the Great Pyramids.

Cairo has a population of about 12 million people, and is the most populous city in Africa.

A road sign near our hotel

Our first day in Cairo

The distinctive pink building of the Cairo Museum is behind

Motorised felucca line the banks of the famous Nile River

We chose a traditional sailing felucca to ‘cruise’ along the Nile river. It turned out to be a really slow, directionless ride instead of a ‘cruise’ as there wasn’t any wind that afternoon to propel our felucca.

A floating restaurant behind

That’s the guy who sailed our felucca. He spoke almost no English.

The Nile is the longest river in the world. The Egyptian civilization has depended on this river since ancient times, and nearly all the cultural and historical sites are found along the banks of Nile.

The Cairo Tower is a free-standing concrete TV tower in Cairo. It stands in the Zamalek district on Gezira Island in the Nile River, in the city centre. At 187 meters, it is 43 meters higher than the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Trying a hand in sailing the felucca

Where’s the wind???