Travel | GlobalSalsa: travel writer Belinda Jackson

Oct

Cruising the Nile on the cheap

Hi all, here’s a story I had published in Australia’s Sun Herald newspaper recently about cruising the Nile in Cairo. Enjoy!

October 4, 2009

Exploring the Nile in downtown Cairo comes with volume control.

WHAT Cheap Nile cruises in Cairo.

WHERE The Nile River, runs through downtown Cairo.

HOW MUCH From 4 Egyptian pounds (about $1) for a 20-minute spin or 50 pounds for an hour in style.

WHY GO Feluccas have been trawling the Nile for millennia. In Cairo, there are two main types – the long, low, motorised boats and the more elegant sailboats.

Motorised feluccas operate mostly from sunset into the night. They can accommodate up to 20 people for a quick-and-dirty 20-minute spin up the Nile for less than a dollar and depart when the boat is full.

You can’t miss these boats; they’re the little floating discos with pink, fluoro lights and loud music.

This is definitely a local scene: the outboard motor is whiffy, the PA plays tinny Arab pop cranked up to 10 and unless you hire the entire boat for yourself, you’ll find yourself squished up against plenty of happy Egyptian tourists. In short, it’s Cairo in a microcosm: loud, smoky and up for a laugh.

You’ll skim past ramshackle houseboats, riverside clubs and the big, evocatively named dinner-cruise ships moored alongside the riverbank – Omar El Khayam, Nile City, Le Pacha 1901. Departure points for motorised feluccas include the promenade near Qasr el-Nil bridge in the suburb of Gezira.

Option two, on a sailboat felucca, is infinitely more relaxing – a quiet hour spent cruising the Nile will set you back about 50 pounds, with the price including the entire boat, which can hold up to 20 people and the captain. The best time is to head out before sunset, armed with a few beers or a bottle of wine.

They sail between University (Al-Gamma) Bridge and Galaa Bridge, near Doqqi. The best launching spot is Dok Dok on the Corniche el-Nil, opposite the Grand Hyatt or Four Seasons Nile Plaza.

You’ll spot Dok Dok himself – at 89 years old, the grand doyen of feluccas – taking tea with his many sons on the pier. A taxi will cost you just a few pounds from downtown, but make sure they don’t take you to the Four Seasons Giza.

FREE STUFF On the motorised boats, free entertainment comes in the form of a crackling tape player but if you’re lucky, the captain’s children might get up and do a surprisingly good belly dance or the traditional boys’ dance. No, you won’t see the pyramids but you will see 187-metre Cairo Tower, a phallic column built in 1961 allegedly with US money sent as a bribe to win Egypt over during the Cold War. As night falls, the sparkling tower changes from pink to puce to aquamarine. You can also see the Cairo Opera House. Forget swimming: the current is ferocious and you could get bilharzia.

ADDED BONUS The sailboats are much slower and steadier than their motorised mates, so you can photograph the Opera House and Cairo Tower. Leave half an hour before dusk for some great skyline shots of Africa’s most populous city.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/traveller-tips/cruising-the-nile-on-the-cheap-20091002-gexb.html

Source: The Sun-Herald

Oct

Time travel and the adaan

Legend goes the mosque in Shali town, in the Siwa oasis, was the last to use a live adaan. Now, they’re all voice recordings that vary with every mosque.

Sometimes, I love it. I love it when I’m up working late and I hear the fajrthe call at morning light. Cairo is so still, you can hear the mosques starting up within seconds of each other, the call rolling like waves across the sleeping city. In my street in Roxy, I look out to see a few old men, past the age of sleeping, who walk silently to the mosque, and gather to talk in the street afterwards, white gellibayas fluttering with a little breeze, prayer beads in knotted hands.

Sometimes hearing the fajr fills me with despair – it means I stayed up too late again and I’ll pay later, when I’m yawning all day.

I’ve just about reverted back to Australian working hours. Sydney comes online at about 12 midnight here, and finishes around 9am, so I find myself staying up later and later as I chat with editors, getting an instant response to questions that could otherwise take a couple of days. On the positive side, when I do eventually go home, at least I won’t have to readapt…

Oct

War and Peace (the short, Austral-Egyptian version)

The blog is quiet: I’m stuck inside working all week. Really, I could be anywhere, not in the raucous hype that is Cairo. The only difference is the phone is Skype and sending photo disks takes a week longer than if I was in Aus (Egypt Post fluctuates between unbelievably speedy and slower than a recalcitrant donkey).

Yesterday was a day the entire city caught up on its sleep thanks to a public holiday. It was 6 October, and the 36th anniversary the day Egypt took back the Sinai peninsula from the Israelis.

The TV was full of interviews with veterans, some even in tears as they recounted the horrors and glories (but mostly glories) of war.

Then the TV commentators gave a blow-by-blow description of Egypt’s glorious day in 1973: from 2pm – the time the Egyptians started to attack the Barlif Line, a massive sand wall the Israelis had constructed on their side of the Suez Canal – until 8pm, when the Egyptians had taken the 8km by 20m high wall through a range of cunning engineering tactics and strafe bombing.

Egypt is good at creating and then celebrating heroes (you only have to look at football to know that). And war is no different: the heroes of the war include the younger brother of the then president, Sadat, who was the first casualty, the man who raised the first Egyptian flag on Sinai soil, and the head of the communications department that coordinated the successful attacks by 222 planes and its foot soldiers on the Israelis. The old documentary reels shows Egyptian soldiers in bunkers with lots of black Bakelite telephones and a sophisticated tracking system, though the one thing missing is the inevitable cloud of cigarette smoke (this being the 60s, a stressful time and…Egypt).

If they hadn’t crossed the Suez Canal and won the war, Egypt wouldn’t control the Suez Canal (its largest single source of foreign income), the Sinai would be Israeli and that contentious Egypt-Israel border would be just 130km from Cairo.

When we have war remembrance days in Australia these days, it’s all talk about loss of lives and learning from our mistakes – ironically, our war anniversaries are a time for peace. But of course, apart from the mess of the Vietnam War, which our government is still confused about how it should feel about it, our last big war (and remember, we were on the winning side) was World War II in the 1940s – time has mostly healed this wound.

For Egypt, the anniversary of this great military victory is a time for patriotism and retasting the victory after years of humiliation at the hands of its neighbours. The taste of revenge is still sweet.

In comparison, we now quite like sushi and going to Japan (which bombed Australia in WWII), for the shopping and skiing…

Oct

Open for business

There’s a bunch of boys outside my window clapping along to the beat of a drum. They couldn’t control themselves – football-mad Egypt just beat Italy in the Under 20s World Cup, which is being hosted in Egypt this month. It wasn’t a win; it was a route at 4-2 to the home country.

Australia’s here, too. They’ve played Czech Republic and Costa Rica so far, losing both matches. I watched the Costa Rica match and hid in the corner of the cafe as Australia managed to score an own goal. The TV station must have felt my discomfort as it began the broadcast once again, the minute the match was over. Double the humiliation!

So sympathetic friends have advised I NOT watch the final match in our draw, which is against the favourite, Brazil. The Australian matches are being played in Port Said, about 200km west of Cairo. I was going to make the trek out but have non-football UK friends arriving for a bounce around town on that night.

It’s the last weekend before school goes back, so the streets have been full of people revelling in the last of their holidays. The shops are still on post-feast sales with my favourite clothes shop, the ironically-named Expensive, flogging everything for LE40 (about $8).

Post-Ramadan, the koshary shops (the carbohydrate-heavy snack Egypt adores, deemed too simple to eat during festive Ramadan) have reopened, the booze shops have taken down the curtains, and all the pubs and clubs are back in business with a lick of fresh paint: they appear to use the religious month as enforced renovation time. The nights are suddenly cooler and from Saturday, the school runs will clog the streets in the mornings once more.

I have fallen in line with the pending sobriety, trading bright Russian blonde for a deep brunette (it appears Egyptian hairdressers are like Egyptian music – all or nothing, 10 or turned off). I thought that would make me blend in on the streets more, and stop nasty men from making lewd offers, but I’m still too pale skinned, so now the offers have a tinge of delight: foreign…but probably speaks Arabic!

So, after the hot summer and month of Ramadan, Cairo, finally, is back to business.

(Pic: Australia devastated. Getty Images)

Sep

The post-feast hangover hanging over Cairo

Well Ramadan has ended, and so has Eid el-Fitr, the three day ‘small’ feast that follows. It’s back to work, though the first day was a lot quieter than a normal working day in Cairo. It’s as though a collective hangover has dropped onto the city.

The first night of the feast was celebrated by a shopathon of epic proportions (it’s the time to buy new clothes, and yes, I obliged), followed by three days of peace. The traffic was so quiet, I could hear the birds in the trees, normally muted by the belting of a million car horns. Where were all the people? We found them…

Last night, we went to the Pyramids, to ride. It was pandemonium here, people. We went to our usual stable (it’s called NB, in case you’re asking) but to get to the stable, our cars had to dodge between horses of every shape, size and colour being led by small boys, dragged along by the handful to be saddled up for the armies of young guys that were pouring into Giza at midnight. Occasionally a few camels lurched slowly in front of the headlights, to add to the fray.

Hundreds of boys on rented nags barrelled out into the desert in packs of 10 to 20 at a time, riding as though their lives depended on it. Fearless, stupid. Choose your words. To the sides of the packs were the stable boys on ponies or donkeys, employed to holler and crack whips to keep the horses running.

Normally horseriding up here is most popular during the full moon, when the desert is lit up. But it was just after the crescent moon (Ramadan ends at the sighting of the crescent moon), so the desert was quite dark, and rang with shouts and whooping as everyone yelled out to keep sight of their mates.

I had a near miss and Karim’s horse reared at an oncoming horse and fell on its side. I asked what happened to him. “He reared and the next minute, I was standing beside him,” he said, still surprised at his own fortune, and we saw at least one riderless horse fleeing down the path, saddle and reins dangling. Dangerous? Yes. Crazy? Yes. Exhilarating? Absolutely.

Sep

Wraps off the republic

Battling hijab hair and the basic black wardrobe, fashion is flourishing in Iran.

Click here for a link to this story in the Sydney Morning Herald’s travel section…

Sep

Cash cows vs cash crisis

I’m taking a jump from markets in Morocco to a global wage comparison survey just released by UBS.

The annual survey finds that Zurich workers are the best paid in the world, Sydney’s so-so and Cairo? Hmmmm.

Here’s an extract from Forbes.com

“To crystallize the meaning of earnings in different countries, the study introduced a contemporary but ubiquitous item to the basked of goods–an iPod Nano. Taking into account pay, taxes and the price of goods, workers in Cairo would have to toil for 105 hours to get their hands on one of the MP3 players, while those in Zurich and New York can pick one up after working for the least amount of time of all the countries surveyed: 9 hours – roughly a day’s work.”

The survey also took 14 occupations in 73 cities and compared the wages, taxes and working hours, finding that a female factory worker brings in $18,200 in Chicago, but less than a tenth of that – $1,800 – in Cairo.

And also on a generic basket of food, priced across the globe, the most expensive was in Oslo, at $112, while Sydney came in at $68.50, and the cheapest in Delhi and Mumbai, where the shopping basket costs $37.60 and $30.90, respectively.

Sep

Sold on Marrakech

Marrakech’s streets are so full of markets and shops you hyperventilate with the desire to buy everything, all at once.

Long strips of brightly coloured woven fabric made from aloe vera plant. Nomad’s carpets. Natty leather slippers, babouches, in a rainbow of colours. Leather bags, cushions, belts. Spices. Kaftans.

What do you want?

Oil from rare argan bushes? Saffron stamens? Fragrant amber? Sandalwood beads? The finest kohl?

Or perhaps wax scented with jasmine, to smear on your warm wrists and scent the air? Antique bracelets, Berber amulets, the protection of Fatima’s hand. A monkey. A chameleon. A snake to dance for your pleasure. What’s your purse, a few dirhams or a prince’s bank balance? Your past or your future. It’s on sale: name your price.

Sep

Luxury trademarked:La Mamounia

Hotel porn: I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe the new La Mamounia. It is an absolute privilege to be able to test drive a hotel before it opens to the public – there are just 20 or 30 of us staying in this hotel of about 200 rooms.

The staff are there before you can say, “Can I have…” I have been spoilt rotten, test driving the three restaurants – French, Italian and last night, notably, the Moroccan, with its OTT entrée of Moroccan salads. Don’t be fooled, this is a 12-dish extravaganza. Who thought salads could run to so many dishes? Lamb brains, people, are back (tho they never went in Egypt).

The champagne is always on ice, the guest relations people appear to need no sleep, and the pool boys are constantly combing the 28x28m pool outside, seemingly day and night, waiting for me to swim up an appetite.

The signature scents drawn from cinnamon, cloves and dates steal through the hotel, the bar staff are playing with the same ingredients for a series of Marrakechi cocktails and orange blossom water is sprinkled about with gay abandon.

They’re still ironing out the minor details such as the music in the rooms, though the iPod docks are working fine, the spa has yet to open (yes, devastated, but I’m living with it) and Mssrs Gucci, Fendi and Chopard have yet to unpack their bags in the shopping gallery.

The only thing that hasn’t worked is the weather – at this time of year, apparently, it’s rare to see the High Atlas mountains without heavy cloud, and in fact this morning there was a rare glimpse of their outline but now, half an hour later, they’ve disappeared behind white cloud again, so that iconic Marrakech shot of palm trees and snow-capped peaks eludes me. But it’s sunny and a temperate mid-20s, and the best time to visit Marrakech.

This is not a hotel for everyone: to wit the E600 price tag, which peaks at E8000 a night for the self-contained three bedroom riads down the back of the gardens. But with a sensitive and lavish restoration that’s taken three years to get off the ground (do you really want to know how much it cost?), La Mamounia has been restored to iconic status.

PS Egyptians please note: the E600 is euros. Euros.

An update: here’s the piece in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Sunday papers
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/accommodation-reviews/this-lady-loves-her-facelift-20091030-hoko.html

Sep

The beating heart of Marrakech

Djamma El Fna is pumping. Smoke from the grill of stand 29 pumps out across the square, putting a mystical haze across the snake charmers, fortune tellers, monkey pimps and men who are dressed like lumpy women, with a scarf across their faces, bellydancing to a crazy band, money in the tambourine, please.

I take a seat at Number 29 and order tehan. For 12 dirhams ($2) I get a thick round of bread on paper, and two aluminum bowls. One is filled with bright red pureed tomato sauce, the other with tehan, chopped and sautéed with onions and fat. It’s the first time I’ve knowingly eaten spleen. Hopefully it doesn’t result later in venting my spleen.

Walking home, I collect my landmarks. The fruit market with its barrows of bright yellow melons. The crazy display of taps and pipes with a badly handwritten sign advertising a ‘plomber’. The mosque with the dicey-looking WC beside it. The neon flashing telephone shop. And finally I take the turn down the chopped up laneway that, every time I do it, makes me feel like a local.

I know where I’m going. I’m going home. To the white cat that sleeps at the door, so still I could assume he was dead if I didn’t see his scarred ears twitch occasionally. To the jasmine-scented courtyard. To the hum of the staff in the warm, friendly kitchen and the slice of tart apple flan they have left out for my late-night snack. It’s good night from me…

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