Travel | GlobalSalsa: travel writer Belinda Jackson

Aug

Cruise control

Like many other countries, Egypt can’t see why a motorbike or scooter should cope with just one or two people (even if the cost of petrol is, by our standards, incredibly skimpy, at just LE2, or about 22c/litre).

Newborn babies balanced on women’s laps as they ride side-saddle is common, while six is the highest count I’ve seen on a small Vespa, children hanging via the foot pegs and the will of God.

But tonight in Cairo, I saw two guys on a scooter, and the one on the back had his laptop open and was surfing the net as they cruised down the cool night streets. A blend of first-meets-third world, surely it takes geekdom to a whole new level?

Aug

Sufism in Cairo

The Hussein mosque in one of Cairo’s main square is one of the holiest in the country – take a look inside and encased in a silver casket is the head of Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Mohammad (though as the Lonely Planet points out, a mosque in Iraq alleges it has the same head of Hussein.)

Men enter in the main door, women at the side, and the mosque is completely divided in two. The same guidebook says non-Muslims can’t enter, but I’ve never heard of anyone being turned away. The men’s section is spacious and calm, while the day I entered the women’s section, it was full of kids and picnics, and women ululating by the casket, which is visible from both quarters.

On Fridays, the columns out the front of the Hussein mosque bloom into beautiful umbrellas to shield worshippers from the hot summer sun.

The area around Midan Hussein is also a hotbed for Sufism, a tearaway arm of Islam that most people know through whirling dervishes, the religious twirling to rhythmic chanting in a bid to enter a trance-like state to get closer to God.

A troupe of Sufi dancers perform three times a week in the Wikalat Sultan al-Guhria, a caravanserai (doss house for travellers) that dates from 1504AD in Islamic Cairo. The sufis wear full-circle skirts (tannoura in classical Arabic) while a singer cries over a blisteringly loud band of drums, rebaba (a two-stringed violin from Upper Egypt) and the strident clarinet-like instrument, the nay, which is said to date back to Pharonic times.

Meanwhile, as the six men (it’s all men) in white skirts spin and whirl for up to half an hour, a seventh, in the middle, wears brightly coloured skirts. At different points, he peels off layers of his skirts, a jacket, and holds aloft a flag with Allah’s name written on it.

Be warned: like all Egyptian music, which has just two levels, off and 10, it’s seriously loud. It’s ear-splittingly loud and it’s mesmerising.

Details: Al-Tannoura Egyptian Heritage Dance Troup, free admission, Mon, Wed, Sat 8.30pm.

Aug

The tonic of life

“Here’s your G&T,” says my current visitor, Andrew. Surely one of the nicer sentences in the English language.

Tonic is a soft drink regarded with an evil eye here in Cairo as the locals are sure the only reason we foreigners want to drink it is to dilute our gin. So it’s not so easy to find. The foreign supermarkets sell it, but you’ll never find it in the Egyptian chains or in the fridges at the little kiosks at every street corner, which sell everything from water to phone cards, chocolates and cigarettes. All the essentials. I learned the lesson about tonic after I rolled into a little supermarket nearby and asked for tonic.

“Noooooo-ooo,” replied Ahmed behind the counter, waving his head like a bull with a fly in his ear. “We never sell tonic. Because you will mix it with alkoool.”

Ethical consumerism, it appears, is not yet dead.

My grandmother, who firmly swore by a diet of tonic water and natural yoghurt while travelling in foreign climes, would surely have turned in her grave.

Aug

Oases in Cairo

This week, the temp ramped it up and the aircon died, so it was time to road-test two places to swim in (or near) Cairo. The first, the Atlas Zamalek Hotel has a rooftop pool that the Lonely Planet says is usually empty. Which of course made us deeply sceptical as once it’s in that guidebook, nothing’s ever the same – to travellers’ annoyance and owners’ delight. However, they were right. We were the only people there on a weekday afternoon. The LE40 ($9) charge lets you swim and order from the café. So we swam in the cool water and ordered salads and burgers, fresh strawberry juice and club sandwiches. The water wasn’t so clean, so I’d say no to opening my eyes underwater. But when it’s this hot…

The hotel wins bonus points as we were two girls in bikinis (yes we had sarongs to cover up when walking around), and the marked absence of perving from the charming middle-aged waiters was downright refreshing.

The second place was the Sakkara Palm Club (in the pic) just up the road from the ancient pyramids of Sakkara. Entrance is either LE65 to swim only or LE95 including a buffet lunch. Cool music from the DJ, large pools with little palm islands and *gasp* a swim-up bar! We spotted some bad, bad girls on the submerged bar stools snogging dodgy looking men. But apart from that, the crowd was a mix of locals larging it up and lots of foreigners in packs. The pool attendants were constantly combing the water to keep it clear, and stopped anyone from the worst excesses, such as taking plates of watermelon on the pool (hey, I agree, no food in the pool. Who wants to swim alongside soggy tomato slices?) but indulged us by bringing an ashtray so our nicotine-dependent friend could smoke in the shallows. Ah Egypt. Lovely, lovely Egypt.

Details: the Atlas Zamalek Hotel, 20 Gameat El Dewal El Arabeya St. Mohandiseen, 02 3346 6569
Sakkara Palm Club, Marioutiya Canal Road Tel: 02 33819 1775

Aug

Shopping on the metro

This morning on the train, I bought some hair pins and that liquid glue that instantly sticks your fingers together.

A woman in a niqab (the black robe that covers everything but eyes) was doing a roaring trade in eye liner pencils for about 50c each.

This is one of the great things about Cairo (and many non-first-world countries). Your shopping comes to you. Forget newspaper sellers, you can buy screwdrivers, pens, combs, washing-up cloths, scouring pads… sometimes all hanging off the one body.

Of course, tissue sellers are a given on every carriage, every metro station, every corner, and I even saw Vodafone top-up cards being hawked on the train the other day. My best investment to date has been a pretty fold-up paper fan, perfect when the fans on the metro carriages’ roofs break down.

Kids often work with their parents or alone, rushing down the carriages to drop lollies or gum in passengers’ laps, shouting the price as they go, then sweeping back up the carriage to collect the unwanted sweets. Sometimes, a woman will silently drop religious leaflets throughout, instinctively avoiding the non-Muslims.

Of course, they’re all illegal traders competing in an economy where unemployment is officially at 9%, but most pundits place in the mid-teens. A recent Reuters report stated that 20% of the population live on less than US$1 a day.

Aug

Pilfering the petrodollar

You know I’ve mentioned before that Cairo’s full of Gulf Arabs at the moment, who will enjoy Egypt’s ‘cooler’ weather (it’s all relative) until just before Ramadan, the holy month of Islam, which starts on 21 August and continues until 19 September.

Apparently the rush of new movies and theatre is another drawcard for the influx of Gulfies, as such luxuries were banned in Saudi Arabia until recently.

Sure as an obvious foreigner I have the occasional moan about being treated as a wallet with legs (and chest) and subsequently charged double or triple the going rate, but the Gulf Arabs say they cop it far worse.

“[Egyptians] see my face, and they see a barrel of oil,” one Saudi banker was quoted as saying in an article in The National, a newspaper out of Abu Dhabi.

To help protect their petrodollars, Egyptian Tourism has established a phone hotline so foreign tourists can complain about being ripped off by hotels. Maybe they need another one for the camel touts and the papayrus ‘museums’…

Jul

Ghost town Cairo

When I went to my Arabic class early on Thursday morning, the taxi skimmed through empty streets so fast, the driver HAD to give me change (normally they will shamelessly pocket whatever you put in their hand, even a 100 pound note, unless you put up a fight).

Where was everyone? They’d all scooted up to the North Coast for the long weekend which celebrates Revolution Day when King Farouk I was toppled from his throne by military coup in 1952, led by a handful of officers, three of whom (Sadat, Naguib and Nasser) would go on to become the first three Prime Ministers of Egypt and have metro stops named after them.

(Egyptian trivia: Farouk’s full title was His Majesty Farouk I, by the grace of God, King of Egypt and Sudan, Sovereign of Nubia, of Kordofan, and of Darfur. He might have been but a puppet of the English, but love the throne! So much more colourful than the incumbent black hair dye addict, Hosny.)

So Cairo has been a ghost town…well, as much as a city of 16 to 20 million people (give or take 4 million) can be. Even chic Sangria, a nightclub, bar and open-air restaurant on the Nile, was quiet on Friday night. Walk straight in and get a riverside table for eight! No crawling between elegantly exposed knees to get to the bar! Room in front of the mirror in the ladies! Bouncer let the men in wearing ‘slippers’, ie cool leather thongs!

While we chilled over cantaloupe (rockmelon, for you Aussies) shisha, we heard that the normal 1.5 hour journey between the city gates of Cairo and Alex took double the time, the traffic on the mega-freeway actually stopping for an hour late at night. Knowing Egypt, though, some enterprising young guys would have appeared from the farms along the roadside selling tea, cigarettes and blow-up beach toys at 3am.

Ghost town or not, the Corniche along the Nile was still bumper to bumper traffic when we left Sangria at 1.30am in the Victorious City which I’ve heard not described as the city that never sleeps, but the city that sleeps…in shifts.

Check out: Sangria, Corniche el Nil, opposite the Conrad Hotel, 2579 6511. Reserve on Thursday and Friday nights if you want a table outdoors. If all else fails, the garden below is often nearly completely empty, even though its dreamy white curtained lounges are gorgeous.

(Pic credit of Sangria: www.eklegodesign.net)

Jul

Peter Pan of the Arab world

It’s been just three weeks since Amr Diab’s latest album, Wayah, was released, and I’m convinced that all Egypt knows every song, every word.

For those playing catch-up (I was ignorant till I came to Egypt) Amr Diab is Egypt and the Arab world’s most successful pop star. He’s the face of Pepsi in this neck of the woods, and his face, for that matter, changes with every album. He gets younger and more sculptured with each year, a fact not lost on Egyptians. But they love him, so they forgive his love of the surgeon’s knife. The boy from Port Said is 48 years old this year.

This album, Amr’s been doing cheekbones and arms, which are on display in his tight, white singlet as he launches his brooding ‘street brawler’ look. Despite the tough-boy stare (think ‘Blue Steel’, people), he still adheres to the principle that all Arabic pop songs are composed primarily of just five words: habeeby (darling), hayeety (my life), donya (the world), alby (my heart) and bahebik (I love you).

This being Egypt, there is sport to be had with Amr’s album releases. The game is to see if you can download the album beforehand illegally from the internet, then blast it from your car speakers to the envy of all listeners. Indeed, those who managed it this year were infinitely coooooooool, as the album has been long delayed – being at least three months late.

Despite the delays and the internet leaks, my mate Wiki says the album sold more than 1.22 million copies in its first week, so he must be doing something right, eh?

Jul

Egypt morphs into the Gold Coast

For those of us on the other side of the world, it’s easy to forget Egypt is on the Mediterranean. Countries such as Italy and France have already cashed in on that claim to fame. But the north coast of Egypt is hundreds of kilometres of big, blue Mediterranean sea.

Mind you, it also has 80 million people wanting to swim in that same sea (and it’s a sobering reminder when you’re in the water with 200 or so other people that peeing in the water isn’t exactly a novel idea), so a little snobbery goes a long way.

On a weekend pootle along the coast, we drove west from Alexandria to Marina, half way between Alex and the famed blue waters of Marsa Mattruh, where the sea is cleaner and the action less hectic than in the cities closer to Cairo.

In the private enclave that is Marina, the bling is real, girls wander through cafes in shorts and singlets thrown over the top of their bikinis, guys are in their Billabongs and t-shirts, kids run wild on sugar and trikes.
It could be anywhere in the western world. Just the shisha pipes in the pool and a lack of alcohol make the difference. And the Remembering Allah billboards on driving into Marina. Leading into the hedonistic beachside paradise, the series ran as such: “Remembering Allah,” then “Remember…His door is always open,” followed by the ominous “Remember… He is always watching you” to the downright scary “Remember…you could meet Him now!”

Marina’s landmark is the massive Porto Marina, a clutch of towers that have been painted red-and-yellow stripes, amongst other colours. It erupts like a giant pimple from the desert, but once you’re inside, it lures you into its thriving outdoor café scene, and there’s even a fake Venice built inside, complete with canals and gondolas that were busy churning up the waterway. Yes, really.

The whole complex is built on a series of man-made lagoons and islands; Australians, think Gold Coast. In fact, when the jet boat, jetskis and parasailers zoomed past, I was taken back to Broadbeach in a flash. Aside from the hideous building, Marina is a series of tasteful villas built along the waters’ edge and it’s all so deliciously clean and shiny, and correspondingly expensive.

If you thought you’d nip in for a look, beware: Marina is a gated community which means you’d have to be hitchhiking with a member to get in there (or a friend of a friend who’s borrowed a card…).

It’s all very weird and challenges my principles of equality. But if you were the elite and money but a boring concept your accountant deals with, you’d love it – my neighbour and good mate Hosny Mubarak (aka The President), as well as the big guns in the military and anyone who’s vaguely noteworthy, all decamp here during the summer.

Check out: Tahiti beach and pool, a chic, up-market beach resort, and Studio Misr for traditional Egyptian food with gargantuan portions. The chicken fatta is exceptional, both in Puerto Marina. Zalabia (sweet dough balls soaked in rosewater honey) from Patiserrie Hamama in 6 October. Dental suicide, but worth it.

Jul

The price of Paradise

This weekend, I went to Paradise. Entrance costs 50 Egyptian pounds ($12). But if you know a guy who knows a guy, you can do it for maybe 20 ($5)…

Summer in Cairo? Insa! (Forget it!) Come Thursday evening, the highways are packed with cars and minibuses taking Cairenes away from the city and to the nearest body of water – the Mediterranean. Much of Egypt pours up to Alexandria for at least one month, while the north coast, ie. everything west of Alex, is littered with beach resorts whose names range from the chic to the corny: my favourite was the humble, unassuming, ‘Nice’ resort. A fake Dolce & Gabbana t-shirt is this year’s must-have accessory, worn by the sharp-eyed, dark-skinned boys of Upper Egypt, out for whatever havoc they can create on their holidays.

The beaches are a bewildering mix of public and private, and the private beaches can range from a strip of sand cordoned off from the great unwashed with a few beach umbrellas and seats to the lavish – bean bag at the water’s edge, shisha pipe in the pools, chaise longue on the white sand beache.

Their names are as evocative as they are global – Paradise, Cuba Cabana, Tahiti, La Plage…
Paradise is the basic number, with lifeguards on duty as this stretch of beach is notoriously dicey, with a strong undercurrent and waves that have no qualms about dumping you on the beach, swimmers full of sand, in front of hundreds of amused Egyptians.

After you have found your spot, hired your umbrella and beach chairs and settled in, guys wander past selling everything from ice creams to cappuccinos, frecia (a sweet wafer peculiar to Alex) to blow-up beach toys. You want it, they’ll run for it. They’ll even take your money and bring your change a half hour later, remembering your spot amongst the crowds. Australia, take note.

In comparison, entrance to Tahiti, a beach resort further up the coast in the gated community of Marina, costs LE75 (about $17) entrance (absolutely no alcohol, they even looked in my bag) and the scene was coooool. Lots of bikinis, lots of long hair tossed about, belly jewellery, Gulf Arab families with Filipina nannies, young actresses spotted in the mix, funky music and the smell of pizza wafting through the air. We lazed along the beach on chaise longes and bean bags and swam and drank coffee then moved to the pool and the lounges to order pizza and watch the big orange sun slide down past the palm-lined horizon.

Another night, we nipped into an open-air beach club at Agamy Bay. Slap bang on the beach, its location is impeccable. Blue has a reservations-only upstairs section, which this night was into bottle service (ie a bottle of Jack Daniels or vodka on each table, resting in an ice bucket) while downstairs was more into the dance floor.

Surely to be Dutch means you must be a great DJ? (Think Tiesto, Armin van Buuren etc). Wrong. The Blues DJ was cashing in on his famous brothers, but himself was a dud, yelling heavily-accented inanities into the mic whenever he got excited, “Take it easy, guys!” when a rare fight threatened to break out on the dance floor to “There’s a girl dancing on the beach!” as well as the obligatory advertisement for tomorrow night’s foam party, every third song.

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