May 21, 2003
Cairo

Well today was rather anti-climactic compared to yesterday. I got totally lost by myself, managed to make some kind of religious faux-pas and got totally ripped off. We bought a train ticket to Aswan today and we leave tomorrow night on a sleeper train. That should be fun. We had to buy it at Ramses train station which seems to be like the central train station and that place was just completely mad. No one spoke English and there were like 2 women for every 30 men wandering around, absolutely no other tourists. I wondered where the tourists were... was it just a bad time politically or do most tourists bypass the whole buying tickets at Ramese station experience and instead pay their travel agents to do it ?

The area near our hotel has a lot of clothing stores and almost all of the mannequins are caucasian with blond hair. They model clothes that I have hardly ever seen an Egyptian woman wearing. Maybe these stores are for tourists but I've hardly seen any tourists in this part of town.

At night we went out with some boys we met at the stables yesterday. They took us to an outdoor sheesha cafe. Sheesha is flavored tobacco that you smoke out of a hooka. It's really good actually. And that's coming from someone who normally hates tobacco smoke. The fruit flavor of it takes away the normal tobacco smell that I hate. They offered to take us for midnight camel riding around the pyramids but Anjie and Liz were too tired and there was no way I was going by myself. I think camel riding may have been an euphamism for making out anyhow. On the way back to the hotel we got lost for about 45 minutes.

Egypt has the best juice bars ever !!! There are juice bars in Cairo the way there are Starbucks in major US cites. Maybe even more actually. A big, fresh squeezed juice is like 20 cents and it's all juice and fruit, not filled with frozen yogurt the way they are at juice bars back at home. I had three glasses in one sitting and it was like 60 cents. Juice is like my favorite thing in the world so I love this place !!!! Some of the more exotic juices you can get here: karkadeh (hibiscus), coconut juice, sugar cane juice (DELICIOUS), tamarind juice, and guava.

Anjie and Liz met an American on their plane who lives and works in Cairo. His name is Eric and I met him tonight. He was really helpful and knowledgeable about this place. He's going to meet us in Sharm el Sheikh in a week and a half and take us scuba diving in the Red Sea !