aric with an a

‘Egyptians are horrendous.’ - this was told to me, in varying adjectives, by more than a few people.

a guy in Laos who rode his bike from London being the first,

the girls in the hotel when I first checked into Cairo being the latest.

and a good 5-6 in between.

I didn’t want to believe it,

who does?

but then, after a few days here, think I have it figured out.

[we consider ourselves so wise, don't we, us traveled? how annoying.]

70% of Egyptians are nice.

30% are not.

of those 30%, 28% work in the tourism sector.

and 90% of them are horrendous.

you will most likely only meet 15% outside of this genre.

meaning that, yes - the majority of Egyptians are horrendous.

I mean - bad.

on more than one occasion I’ve had to stop walking so that the man chasing me did,

grab his arm in a nice, but forceful way,

look him in the eye and say

‘I said no - go away’.

on more than one occasion.

I only had to do that once in a few months traveling around India.

and if you’re a girl, forgetabout traveling here solo.

as I’ve heard 5 stories already that would scare you as they did me.

so, somehow, find a way to get off that regular Cairo-Aswan-Luxor-Cairo trek.

find someone in the 70% to show you an Egypt[ian] most won’t see.

’cause they’re incredibly warm people, nice people, kind people…

just not the ones who benefit from your ‘baksheesh’.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 05:43 and is filed under people, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.