A few more notes on Luxor

I forgot to mention that we met a Slovokian in the lobby of the Bob Marley Hostel when we went to pick up our bags before we left. We talked to him about his travels in Egypt and how he was getting around, and he gave some advice on cheaper travel. I'm not that it was clear in the post on Luxor, but we took the night train to Luxor but took a plane on the way back. This was because Egypt has implemented new regulations on foreigner travel within Egypt. While on our trips to Alexandria we were able to buy second-class tickets, we were not allowed to buy tickets for anything lower that first-class on the night train. On the return ride, the only train tickets we were allowed to purchase as foreigners were for sleeper cars. These were more expensive than a flight, so we just came back by plane.

Egyptians operate under the assumption that foreigners have lots of money, and that they should therefore pay a higher price for goods and services. Usually tourists don't know that the "real" price is lower or they don't care, since the marked up tourist price isn't exactly expensive my Western standards anyway. For example, if as a foreigner you ask a cabbie how much the ride from Zamalek to downtown is, he will tell you at least 10LE, maybe even 20LE, when in reality a fair price is 5LE. Since we've lived here for a while, we've gotten a sense of how much a cab ride to certain places should cost and simply pay that price when we get out of the cab, without the price ever being discussed. It is simply understood. If the cabbie complains and you know you paid him fairly, you just ignore him and keep walking.

As far as I can tell, the Egyptian government has gotten annoyed that tourists have begun to realize that riding second-class is almost as comfortable as riding first and much cheaper. It seems that they have limited foreigners to purchasing higher class tickets in order to extract more revenue from them. If we were wealthy adults making the trip over to Egypt for a week or two of tourism, we probably wouldn't think twice about the money we were spending on train tickets, but as students trying to stretch our money in order to travel to as many places as possible, saving money is imperative. I'm assuming that scrimping and saving was also important to our Slovakian friend, who seemed to be backpacking across Egypt.

We were pretty upset that we had to buy a plane ticket back and explained our story to our new friend, but he told us how we could still get second-class tickets to anywhere. He said all you have to do is get on the train in any second-class car. When they come around checking tickets and see that you do not have one, it is more convenient for them to avoid the scandal of kicking you off the train (and perhaps risking a huge drop in tourism, Egypt's largest industry) and just make you pay the equivalent of a ticket plus maybe a little baqshish. He explained that this was how he was getting around Egypt, jumping trains.

The town of Luxor itself is incredibly interesting. The train station and aiport are well-kept and modern, and so are the five-star hotels that line the East Bank of the Nile. Along the East Bank is a wide white brick corniche. Docked on the east bank are tons of faluchas, both sailboats designed for pleasurable afternoon cruises and motorboats designed to ferry people over to the West Bank. Amidst these boats are docked a number of huge cruise boats, essentially floating hotels. They shuttle tourists up and down the Nile, between Aswan and Cairo and any stop of interest in between. On the street parallel to the corniche are rows upon rows of horse-drawn carriages. An otherwise enjoyable walk along the Nile corniche is interupted by hundreds of people trying to sell you falucha and carriage rides, sometimes ensuring you that you are gettin the "Egyptian" price.

All this is just illustrative of the contradictions within Luxor. As far as the Egyptian population goes, it is much more conservative than Cairo. Many more people wear the traditional galabiya and more people are of a rural origin. Then there are the tourists, almost all European. You see people wearing bikinis and tanning on top of their cruise boats or walking around in short skirts or booty shorts, whereas the temperature is 80 F and the Egyptians are still wearing pants and long sleeves.

However, differences in perceptions of modesty and cultural insensitivity must be looked past because this city exists soley because of tourism. Everyone is competing for a share of the money tourists bring in each year, and the number of tourists is declining. So you have hundreds of boat owners and carriage drivers competing to get a shrinking number of tourists to pay for their services. Often, having a schtick helps, as in the case of the Shakespeare-quoting falucha sailor we went on our ride with.

I just find it strange and fascinating how such incredibly different cultures are coming into contact in a place such as Luxor, and how one is forced to put up with the other because it is dependent on their money. My friends and I here try our best to conform to Egypt's cultural norms, even if it is at times inconenient. We still wear pants even though the temperature has been in the 60s since the day we got here and has now gotten up to the 80s. The girls wear scarves on around their necks and always have their shoulders covered, and many times their collar bones as well. We've gotten used to this way of dressing and to seeing everyone else dress this way as well, so its a little shocking when we go to places like Luxor, where we see tourists in short skirts and tight tops or tanning in bikinis. Its stranger still to see this behavior alongside an even more conservative Egyptian population than we are used to seeing here in Cairo.

One wonders what a town like Luxor, or even Egypt as a whole, would be if the Pharaohs hadn't built such massive, indestructible, and unbelievable moments.

I don't mean to sound arragont though. Luxor also allowed us to relax a bit because we really didn't have to constantly watch our behavior since the locals were used to seeing foreigners do much strangert things than we were. Most of the time we tried to fit in with Egypt, showing that we weren't like the other foreigners, but other times we simply enjoyed the opportunity to act like tourists and goof around without sticking out too much.