Welcome to Alaska!

Hi all, I have returned to Cairo from the Western Desert, and am heading my way to the Sinai Peninsula today. As I said last time I wrote, there were a few other things I felt like writing (bear with me, as this serves partially as a journal for myself as well). So hear are a few thoughts:

On Food:
- I have become addicted to felafel (which I had always dismissed as vegetarian hippy garbage) and dates (which I always assumed just sucked)
- I just ate some of the most glorious rice pudding with some sort of cake and frilly hairy crispy stuff on top of it. It made up for the baba ghanoush that I had at lunch that I believe was mashed up soggy cigarette butts rather than eggplant

On Fashion:
-In Siwa, the women take the full cover-up regalia to new heights by wearing black sheets pulled over their face that don't even have eye holes. They literally look like moving tents shambling along the streets, and they're actually quite scary looking when you encounter them in an alley at night.
-young males wear an excessive amount of hair gel and perfume
-apparently 30-50 years ago very few females wore headscarves. This is just a recent semi-fashion/semi-religious shift that has come with a more conservative government. Furthermore, even though the majority of females (Christians as well as Muslims, take note!) wear headscarves, I feel that they are finding ways to express their 'feminity' through other measures which work within the socially construed boundaries of Egyptian culture today in order to be a bit 'flashy'. For example, most headscarves are quite bright and fashionable; some are patterned, some are frilly and lacey, others shiny. Furthermore, girls wear a lot of makeup, especially to emphasize their eyes, even those wearing the full veil that leaves only the eyes visible. Also, even though bare arms and legs are pretty much a no-go, girls still wear mini-skirts over top of jeans or leggings, and some wear big tall boots. To me it seems that rather than being religiously oppressed in terms of fashion (and one girl I met emphasized very strongly to me that these fashions are based on traditions rather that Muslim doctrine), females are exhibiting a fair bit of agency in terms of how they present themselves.
-all that said, I have to say, religious reasons, traditions, whatever, lets be practical: its bloody hot here, its damn tough to be walking around in pants and sweatshirt all the time. and a lot of these people are rocking big jackets on top of that.

On Cairo:
-its insane.
-I have never seen such traffic and crowdedness compared to this. Beijing disappointed me in its unexpected quietness. Istanbul, which I had long considered to be absolutely nuts, pales in comparison.
-Last time I was in Cairo, I went to al-Horreyya and met up with some people that I had met there during my initial visits, and they took me to 2 insane house parties, one of which was in a penthouse suite on top of a 13 storey building with a rooftop pool and patio overlooking the Nile. It was crazy.
-I went to the main cemetery of the city, which not only has some wicked old crypts and ancient mosques, but there is also a population of about 50 000 people living within the cemetery. Very cool.

On the Desert:
-last time I wrote I was in Bahariyya Oasis. From there I went with the Canadian newspaper editing couple on an overnight camping trip into the desert. We went through the black desert, which is black, and the white desert, which is white. Both looked like a Dr. Seuss setting with some absolutely crazy rock formations... and all throughout the desert there is exposed limestone with shells and fossilized fish... which is pretty surreal to stumble upon in the driest place on easth hundreds of km from the ocean. I really wanted to know how long ago this was the ocean floor, but the only explantaion we could get from our driver was that it was from the time of the Great Flood.
-I think that Bahariyya, being so isolated way out in the desert, and with a relatively small population, has a fair amount of in-breeding. I'm just speculating, but I met a lot of Forrest Gump-type characters out there...

On good egyptians/bad egyptians:
-on one overnight bus I sat beside a guy who said his dream was to work for NASA but he didnt do well enough on the gov't standardized test and they put him into economics, and he now sells concrete. He bought me a coke and when he left he told me "you do not have a friend in Egypt, but now you have a brother", which I thought was pretty wicked.
-In Bahariyya, everyone wants to sell you a tour into the black and white desert. The majority of vehicles in town are landscruisers bought on loan from anxious youngsters who figured they could cash in on taking tourists out 4x4ing in the desert. However, as many tourists as Egypt sees, I dont think there are enough for the amount of Land Cruisers in Bahariyya. Therefore competition is incredibly fierce for getting tourists to take the tour. When we arrived we had a young lad immediately grab us out of our vehicle and take us to his reasonably priced hotel. However, he immediately started pushing the tour. We told him we would go and ask around to do some price comparing. He said ok, let him know. He also said he had to meet someone coming into town at the bus station. So we went into town, firstly to find a beer, since Doug (the ex-Province editor) was nearly dying from the dry town of Siwa. We sat on the street at a restaurant, only to notice that our little hotel man had followed us, and was watching us not so subtely. Trying to shake him, we settled in for a few beers, but the kid would not leave. He then sat down and tried to push us some more, but we told him to go away. So he went across the street, and sat watching us. When we got up to leave, he followed us, so we went into another cafe to shake him. Or so we thought. In the cafe we started asking around for drivers, and arranged to meet one at an appointed time, across the city. So we did. As we were talking with this very down-to-earth driver, I looked past him and noticed that our little man was just lurking right behind --- he had followed us all the way across town! He then said something to the other drivers, which we had translated to us as "these are my clients, they are taking my tour. don't take business from me." We got angry and told him to fuck off, and as we were leaving, he drove up to us in his vehicle... not to apologize or anything like that, but to push his tour again! Saying that he could finally give us a better price! Doug straight up started yelling at him, and we went back to the hotel and told them we were leaving in the morning. He said he needed to know where we were going, so he could 'tell the tourist police', but we told him it was none of his business. The next day we switched hotels, and we didnt know it, but apparently the little wanker followed us, called the owner of our new hotel, and demanded comission! The whole thing left a sour taste in our mouths and left us wanting to pound the kid.
-On my last day in Bahariyya I went to a hot spring, where a bathing lady was yelling at a bunch of young men, and a small group of other men were washing prayer rugs in the spring. The lady, who was egyptian, explained the confusing scene: she had changed into her swimming clothes, and the young guys had seen her change --- which to the sexually repressed young egyptian male is probably the highlight of his life so far, regardless of the fact that the lady was pushing 60 and not attractive in the least. She had yelled at them, and gone on to bathe. But then the young men went to steal her clothes, so she rushed into the reed changing hut, which was also doubling as a temporary mosque, and had got sand all over of the prayer rugs. This got everyone really fired up, and they were giving the lady a hell of a time (though she seemed pretty good at keeping her own and firing off the arabic insults as well). "If these people are so religious and care so much about their stupid prayer-rugs", she said, "why don't they bat an eye when it comes to theft?"
-in this vein, some Egyptian men really are fuckheads. Wandering the bazaar with a female friend allows you to experience the full gauntlet of comments, from "wow!" to "lucky man!" to "wanna have sex?". One time, a dude pinched the girls bum that I was wandering around with, and just darted into an alley. In the metro, I saw a young man do a hit and run boob grab to a fully veiled woman as he was getting off the train. I think they are so sexually repressed that they have to resort to this sort of thing for kicks...

Anyways, I think I have got a fair share of the thoughts that I wanted to share with you down. Hope you enjoyed. Until next time, please keep on keeping in touch. I'm having a good time, but I miss Canada!

Bryn