Daily Expenses: (prices per exchange rate at time of purchase)

• TravelTalk Amazing Egypt Tour $1,174 AUD

• BA Flights Return to Heathrow £384GBP ($730AUD)

• Coffee at Heathrow Airport $12AUD

• Withdrawal of £1500EGP cash ($119.17AUD)

• Dinner at Oasis Hotel £200EGP ($15.30AUD)

Handy Hints:

• Before boarding your flight to Egypt – be sure to get a printed boarding pass (when you hit passport control in Egypt they will take it from you. They did not much appreciate that members of our group were travelling on mobile boarding passes).

• Do not drink the tap water. This means do not put it in your mouth. Don’t wash your toothbrush in it, don’t rinse your mouth out with it. Order drinks and request ‘no ice’ and drink only bottled water. On our tour, it wasn’t until our second night that our guide clarified the specifics of this.

• The hotel bar will charge you 40EGP ($3.05 AUD) for a 1.5L bottle of refrigerated water.

• Check the dates of Ramadan before travelling to Egypt. If you are unsure about working around the local culture during a significant time of worship, avoiding Ramadan is probably not a bad idea. As for us, we had no trouble with Ramadan as Egypt relies so heavily upon tourism, it is perfectly acceptable to eat in a restaurant in front of locals with no trouble at all.****

• You can pay TravelTalk for Optional Activities by card, or with cash in either; the local currency, USD (as listed on price lists) or GBP.

• I was concerned about using my card too much. This was an unnecessary worry as we had no trouble with skimmers or scammers ATMs or with paying by card at places that accepted Visa or Mastercard.

Welcome to Egypt, my literary friends!

The first day of our Egypt trip is off to a slow start! I started writing these notes as I sat on the plane at the gate at Heathrow, so my apologies in advance for some of the ‘tense’ changes. I also had such a long day that I hardly took any pictures, but I promise there are many more coming in the next ‘days’ of this tour!

After a 4.30am wakeup we hit up Heathrow Airport by 6.30am and were promptly boarded and ready to depart for 9.30am. When British Airways Flight BA384 announced a ‘short delay’. Thirty minutes later, we learned that the delay was caused by awaiting the arrival of the catering carts. Almost two hours after our intended departure time, we were in the air, with food to purchase safely on board (or so we thought)*. We learned an hour into our flight that the ‘Buy on Board’ food was never delivered to the aircraft and that we in fact have no access to any food or beverages besides filter coffee, tea and water for the entire flight. Staff were kind about it, handing out the water and snacks while they lasted, however it doesn’t excuse the fact that this is beyond the pale. We sat on the aircraft for two hours waiting for this ‘Buy on Board’ food to be delivered and then found out that all that were supplied were the ‘snack’ options. The aircraft we were on board is the Airbus A321neo which has only three bathrooms for all 200+ passengers, one in the ‘euro traveller’ or ‘business’ space and the others at the rear of the aircraft in ‘economy’. The staff had been wonderful, but after waking up at 4.30am with only a piece of toast and cup of coffee for breakfast, to learn, after sitting boarded for almost 2 hours waiting for the food to be delivered, only to learn nothing was coming, the idea of not eating until we land (at this time due around 5.30pm) was already causing me nausea.

Disembarking the plane an hour and a half late, we descended the escalators immediately out of the gate in Cairo, to the smiling face of a man holding a red and orange sign for TravelTalk. He introduced himself to us and advised how many members of the group we were meeting (given our group of four, we were curious to learn there were 2 others on our flight for our tour also). We had already (by sheer coincidence) found one person traveling with TravelTalk but were under the impression we were on different tours.

After a while our guide returned to us and ushered us over to the gates for passport control. Our quad had purchased our visas ahead of time online via Visit Egypt. Our new friend had opted to pay cash and pick up a visa upon arrival and I have to say, I am so jealous that we were so organised, because the Egypt Visa is a lovely little ½ page sticker that goes in the passport and is far more impressive than the PDF email we received from our online booking. I loved it so much, I am certain I’ll return to Egypt again in the future, just to collect a visa upon arrival! Our guide collected us and ushered us toward the ‘African Passport Holders’ queue, which we questioned (with our Australian and sundry passports between us) before he pushed us once again toward the queue and disappeared to search for the final member who we hadn’t been able to locate. The five of us stood, extremely confused, in the queue with African Passport holders and when we approached the desk, it became apparent that it wasn’t an issue, my paper boarding pass was collected (paper passes were taken and it was clear that the security staff were unimpressed by the mobile boarding passes, and rather put-out over not having a paper boarding pass to collect) and our passports stamped. Only two of our group had their PDF visas checked and the printed visa was stamped.

Our final member was located, and we were walked to a mini bus, where our luggage was loaded and our guide advised us that the driver would take us directly to the Oasis Hotel. In all, the process probably only took 45minutes – 1 hour, to disembark and collect checked luggage.

 The bus ride was about 45 minutes from the airport and the vast city of Cairo expanded before us. We stared out at half-built apartment buildings, and piles of rubble along the side of the motorway, encouraging deep conversations about architecture and the age of the city surrounding us. As we later learned, the rubble was ‘wings’ or segments from apartment buildings which had been demolished to make way for the widening of the motorway. Our guide also explained that the ‘unfinished’ top segments of apartment buildings or flats were because when families expand, they will often add another ‘floor’ to their home to accommodate the new members. There were utterances of delight as the Pyramids came into view for the first time, growing bigger each time we spied them between the buildings.

 The Oasis hotel is a pretty good venue given the price. A couple of bottles of water (500ml) were provided in the room (given that we cannot drink the tap water) there is a pool and many garden courtyards interspersed between the vast number of rooms spread out across the grounds. There is a reliable ATM immediately inside the front door of the lobby, where local Egyptian Pounds can be withdrawn**.

It was after 6pm when we arrived, and so we assumed we had missed the opportunity to join the group attending the ‘Group dinner’ which was the Dinner Cruise with belly dancer and buffet. (This was a little disappointing but also confusing because the paper packet we were given said this would happen the following night.)

Our driver introduced us to Bisho, our ‘on site contact’ at Oasis and essentially the ‘command centre’ for TravelTalk. We were given a small paper pack with;

• an ‘Egypt pocket guide map’

• Optional Activities List with descriptors and prices in USD

• A welcome sheet with details of what to have for ‘registration’ with TravelTalk

• Contact details for our Tour coordinator Bisho and our guide

• An A5 Travel Talk Registration form (which was never collected as far as I know because I still have mine!)

We wondered who else was joining us, as our trip, the ‘Amazing Egypt’ or code EA, was one of four different stacks of booklets on the table. As our information online about the tour said this would occur on the first night (which today was).

In the end, we established (we think!) the groups were;

• Amazing Egypt (10 days inc. Alexandria Visit and 2 nights on the Felucca)

• Felucca Odyssey (9 days, and 2 nights on the Felucca)

• Essential Egypt (9 days, and 2 nights ‘overland’ hotel accommodation)

• Jewels of the Nile (9 days, and 2 nights on a cruise ship on the Nile)

Based on this, it became apparent that our Amazing Egypt group was the ‘long tour’ and there were three other groups ‘joining’ us after Day 1, and that these groups then split up into three categories at the ‘midway’ point at Aswan***:

• Felucca (sleeping on a sailboat for 2 nights)

• Overland (staying in the Aswan hotel for 2 nights)

• Cruise (sleeping in a cruise ship for 2 nights)

 Our experience buying dinner at the Oasis Hotel was a very questionable one, and I don’t know if it was just our bad luck or the fact that we are foreigners, but we struggled to get service as a large group of women with one man. The advice we were given was ‘there are two restaurants, but go to the one outside by the pool’. We had to ask twice for our drinks, (we ordered by 7pm and were still waiting at 8.15pm) and our food was cold when it arrived between 8.30-9pm. It was also hardly edible and given our situation with food/lunch on the plane, we were all starving and thirsty. After all that effort, we essentially still went to bed hungry and a little disappointed. Most of us ended up paying around £200EGP ($15AUD) for a soft drink and dinner dish.

The rooms were of a decent size with king single beds in the twin rooms. Bathrooms were a good size with basic amenities included. We were finally in bed by 10-11pm, with an early start for the trip to Alexandria City the next morning.

See below for *** notes!

*Notes:

*A couple of things to note about the British Airways flight to Egypt ex. Heathrow;

The British Airways flight to Egypt is now (since COVID) considered a short haul ‘European flight’ which makes absolutely no sense to anyone (we learned from the crew as we waited), despite being 5.5hours long. This means that food (besides water 250ml and a ‘snack’ – Tyrell’s chips or a muesli bar) is not supplied. If you don’t fancy paying an arm and a leg for a very limited range of options, I’d highly recommend picking up a sandwich and bottle of drink before boarding.

** For first time travellers, keep this in mind; your home bank will (most often) have better exchange rates than the ones offered in overseas countries. What this means is, when the ATM asks you if you would like to withdraw ‘in local currency’ or in your home currency (the ATM knew mine was AUD and automatically offered me a ‘calculated’ rate including the Egyptian Bank’s local exchange rate). Essentially it is asking if you want the exchange rate from your bank at home (by debiting local currency) or from the teller or local bank you are withdrawing from (by debiting in the ‘converted’ currency). In most cases (in my experience) the rate my bank at home offers is a better deal, so I always select the local currency for ATM withdrawals (or whichever value is listed as ‘unconverted’). Some places when witdrawing vs making payment (EFTPOS) they swap this around, so keep an eye out on this!

One way to test this theory if you’re unsure is to try and withdraw a smaller sum of money, note down what the ‘offered exchange rate and value is’ on the currency converted and check when you select the ‘converted home currency’ (for me this says Debit in AUD) option, see how much money is deducted from your account if you have internet banking.

In my case, 1500EGP was offered to me from the ATM for $139AUD if I accepted the option to Debit in Converted Egyptian Pounds (‘with conversion’ to AUD plus ATM fees). I selected ‘Debit without conversion’ which means my bank at home will use their own exchange rate, and the amount deducted from my bank account was $119.17AUD.

I know this sounds complicated, but don’t worry, when you see it on the screen it makes sense, and it works the same way for ATMs around the world. Once you get the hang of it, you won’t think twice when withdrawing money.

 ***I have been on longer tours like this before where the ‘long tour’ consists of a group and several smaller groups join, diverge and depart at different locations based on the ‘smaller’ tour they selected. I have noticed that not many Tour groups mention to attendees if they are booking a tour that will join a pre-existing tour. As the difference for us was only one day, it didn’t make much difference, but longer (ie. several week-long) tours do often catch people out this way. Just something to keep in mind when doing a tour, that if a ‘longer’ tour is offered, you may be joining midway through someone else’s longer tour.

****On Ramadan: We tried our best to keep our eating and drinking activities somewhat private/subtle when we were out in public, out of respect for local customs. I honestly don’t think (if you didn’t worry about trying to be subtle about it) that anyone would say anything to you directly, the people of Egypt seemed kind and respectful during our time there) but it felt right to us to be considerate of their fasting between dawn and dusk. Keep in mind, fasting is nil by mouth, so no water, food or smoking. This does mean sometimes in the evenings you’ll be hit with strong waves of smoke as all the locals have been abstaining all day.