The locals say that Egypt lost the 2010 World Cup (that’s football/soccer, to the unawares) largely because its taxi system was so bad (the meter is but a decorative concept, seat belts optional and a pricing system based on the quality of your shoes). But if the FIFA authorities had seen the crush outside the stadium last week as legit ticket holders such as yours truly tried to get into the Egypt v Zambia qualifier for the World Cup, they would have had another reason.

The stadium, in the north of the city, holds 80,000 people in three classes. The third-class tickets to the match cost just 5 pounds (about A$1.70) and reportedly sold out in two hours, while our luxurious first class tickets (forget Gold Class cinema, it’s seats, people, you get seats!) cost LE50 or A$17-ish.

We rocked up late, only 1½ hours before the match, and once our patriotic Egypt flags had had their sticks removed by the guards, and our bodies searched for lighters (hello, this is Egypt?? People smoke professionally here), we were let at the gate. Except there was a crowd of say 300 people at the gate, all with legitimate tickets, all clamouring to get in. Apparently the stadium was full.

“This is so … Egypt,” muttered one of the group as we joined the mass which was attempting to strain itself through the gates. So it was shoulders to the wheel, the boys made a circle around us two girls, and we pushed, like everyone else, to the steel turnstile gates ahead of us, the only things between us and football utopia. A guy near us called out, “You have girls with you! Go up ahead! They’ll surely let you in!”

Someone dropped food on the ground and it was trampled into a brown sludge that stuck to our shoes. When we got to the top, we were all separated, and there was a fence between us and the gate, which we climbed, bodies shoving and groaning.

“Does it ever get like this in Australia?” asked Amr.

“Only during the Boxing Day sales,” I told him. But as I was lifted off my feet when the crowd surged once again, I thought that nobody in their right mind would be doing this for a pair of cheap knickers.

We finally got through, I was plucked free by a guard who saw my white face and hauled me out, shoving me through the gate. Once in, we found the third-class boys had taken over half of first class seats, mostly handsome, wide-mouthed young boys, cheeky little buggers who fought and crowed and shouted naughtily through the whole game.

The stadium was a sea of flags and the orchestra a series of hand-held and big drums that rolled like a war march, as the stadium chanted, “Misr! Misr! Misr!” (Egypt! Egypt! Egypt!).

The cameras picked up the president’s son (and unofficial president-elect) Gamal Mubarak, and Samira and I had strips of black, white and red, the Egyptian colours, painted across our faces. Egyptians also do Mexican waves, though I’m not sure what they’re called here. Everyone wore something red, the girls co-ordinating their higaabs (headscarves) in the national colours.

Zambia wasn’t given a hope in hell against Egypt, the current African champions, so when they tied 1-1, the devastation amongst the home crowd was palpable. The pleas to the umpire, the entreaties, the heads in hands… some just stood up in the crowd and held their arms open wide in supplication.

But Egypt just couldn’t get past Zambia’s clever, hard-working goalkeeper, and we filed out quietly, our flags drooping along with the hopes for an Egyptian victory. A few people threw empty bottles toward the by-now empty pitch, and despondency descended on the cold city that suddenly seemed a lot darker.

For those of you who can’t get enough of weddings, the latest wedding I attended was that of Mokhtar and Samira. This time, I actually knew the couple getting married, as opposed to gatecrashing or being brought along as wedding arm candy.

The format for an Egyptian hotel wedding (as opposed to raucous street weddings) goes as such: couple sit on a raised platform while the guests are each photographed with them, then each guest drinks thick, sweet sherbaat, sort of like raspberry cordial without the water. Sugar-fuelled, the dancing begins. Firstly, as with western weddings, the newlyweds take to the dance floor. Samira wore a beautiful gown, the bodice heavily encrusted with sequins and the skirt trailing across the dance floor through a cloud of billowing smoke.

Then couples join them on the floor, and finally, everyone else get up to dance them into their new life, sometimes surrounding the couple , clapping, or taking turns to dance with either the bride or groom. The boys were feeling energetic, so they tossed Mokhtar in the air, for good measure while his sisters danced around Samira, kneeling like handmaidens to a princess.

There are many differences – most Egyptian weddings are dry occasions, dominated by a DJ who, despite being perhaps 25, is conveniently deaf to any requests to turn down the volume and the reverb, and there are no speeches. The paperwork has been done earlier, so there’s no officialdom, thought there was a point when the bride and groom changed each others’ rings from the right hand to the left.

The similarities include the big white dress and there’s also the big white cake. There’s also the faintly rugbyesque scrum for the bride’s bouquet (taken out neatly by a girl I thought was married) and a bevy of pretty little girls in baby versions of a wedding gown. They chose not to have a bellydancer (I was ok with that, see earlier posts of plumpy Russian strawberry blondes in pink body stockings).

Just before it was cut, I drifted over to take a look at the cake, to find the three-tiered affair rising UP THROUGH THE TABLE in a puff of smoke, like a genie emerging from the bottle.

Nobody else seemed to notice… Samira and Mokhtar glided over to cut the cake, feeding each other mouthfuls of the creamy affair that would later feature on the dessert buffet, and at midnight, disappeared to their penthouse room overlooking Cairo before travelling to the seaside resort town of Hurghada for a week-long honeymoon.

Mabrook (congratulations), Mokhtar and Samira.

Last night was the fourth wedding or engagement I have attended (or inadvertently gate crashed) in the past fortnight.

The first was while I popped into a hotel to pick up a friend, and we found ourselves embroiled an engagement zaffa in the foyer, sort of like a formal annoucement where the engaged couple walk down an aisle lined by friends and the traditional noisy, clashing band with handheld drums and wailing mizmars, a long horn, going full roar, with a bit of dancing and LOTS of camera phone action. The second was an engagement knees-up at the cool After Eight jazz club in Downtown, one of my favourite bars, but also one of Cairo’s smokiest. So we toasted the couple, danced to the house DJ’s bizarre music – which flipped from Supertramp to Arab pop to 50s rock-and-roll in three songs – and fell out onto the street gasping for fresh air after a few hours. The third was a Libyan wedding. A seven-day affair, the bride was from a very, very rich family who decided to go the traditional Egyptian street wedding for one of the nights, where you erect a tent in the street and family and friends pour in to see the bride and groom on their white love seat and have a bit of a boogie. The couple were heralded by two men on fiery Arabian horses whose riders rode straight into the waiting crowd and through the long corridor archway of twinkling lights churning up the carefully created sawdust designed ‘welcome mat’ out the front of the tent. Inside, there was a brightly painted cart serving sham homous (the hot, spicy tomatoey, lemony drink with whole chick peas in it) rugs on the floor and round tables with white tablecloths and seats tied with sashes.

There was no belly dancer, the bride, in a blue gown, was up on the tables dancing, much to the crowd’s delight. Perhaps because a lot of their workers live there, the family chose to erect the colourful wedding tent in a very poor part of the suburb of Giza, near the Pyramids. It also coincided with the public holiday for the Prophet’s Birthday, so naturally, every man and his dog who lived in the area wanted to get into the tent.I wouldn’t be exaggerating to say there were 200 people in the tent with another 100 trying to get in, mostly small boys lifting the sides of the tents to ooze through to ogle the rich guests dancing. The crush was incredible. My escort for the evening kept muttering disgustedly (and bad-temperedly), “These people don’t know not to come if they’re invited!” But the family diderect the tent in their backyard. The fourth wedding event, the wedding of Mokhtar and Samira, was my favourite, so I’ll save for their own blog. Till then…

So it’s the weekend, you’ve been out, had dinner, a maybe few drinks and then… not in the mood for a club? Why not ride a camel around the back of the Pyramids? What a great idea.

People, I am serious. We’d been out, eaten, drinks, and then someone looked up into the sky. Full moon! Midnight! It’s time to go horseriding! So three cars of us flew out to Giza where stables line the fence around the Pyramids. Even though it was past midnight, the streets were full of young guys on horses, galloping – yes galloping – wildly up the tracks that lead out of the city and into the desert – a distance of less than a kilometer.

By daylight, this area is a tourist hub, with touts leading riders from across the globe out around the Pyramids and past the Sphinx on camels, horses and even a donkey or two. By night, the locals come out to play (at half the price), especially during the full moon, which clearly lights the sandy desert.

We saddled up, my flighty grey mare pulling at the bit and skittering sideways when a band of about 15 boys flew past us. She spotted a few horses in a separate group in front of us and took off. Great. I was riding a leader, not a follower.

There were just five of us riding, and we finally got into a cohesive group, turned a corner past a few shops and there it was – the desert sand and the pyramids in the full moon. We cantered easily for about 20 minutes to a hill lit with fires, where guys sold hot tea – no polystyrene cups, we were drinking from glassware, baby.

We sat on logs pulled around a carpet (they SO know how to do this desert style thing), everyone smoked a cigarette, then mounted up again for home. We cantered the desert, my horse ever alert for the rocks and shale that marks part of the desert, the pyramids to my left, lit eerily with an orange glow. (Yes, it’s a gratuitious horse and pyramid shot taken in the day, months ago.)

As we rode through Giza yet more packs of boys (and a few squealing girls) on horses were heading out into the night, accompanied by at least one annoyingly loud quad bike and a dune-bashing car.

We turned our horses into the stables, to see a final group of about seven saddling up, and bringing up the rear were two wild boys high up on a pair of camels, about to set out. I looked at my watch. It was 3am.