Humans have done wonders over the past 1000 years to both create  and destroy on a level that has – as far as we know – never been seen before in history.  From castles to airplanes, we’ve found ways to craft nature and it’s resources into “things” that simply could not exist on their own.  From the Great Wall to the Birj Dubai, human beings shock me with their ability on a regular basis.

Cue the Great Pyramids of Giza.  Nothing can quite prepare you for your first glimpse of these awe-inspiring, overwhelming, mind-blowing structures.  Even in modern-day terms they’re remarkable – once perfectly smooth on four sides, symmetrical to a tee and nearly 600 feet tall.  They weren’t built this century, however.  In fact, they weren’t built in the last 30 centuries.  No, these genuine wonders of the world were built nearly FOUR THOUSAND years ago.  While Europeans were still living in caves and killing prey with sticks the Ancient Egyptians were building what continue to be some of the most impressive structures ever conceived by man.

I couldn’t get enough of them.  In fact, I made a point to visit, admire and go gaga for them every day I was in Cairo.  This despite their not being all that accessible.  That is, you take a taxi to the subway to a taxi that has to finagle its way some 5 miles down the most traffic-induced disaster of a thoroughfare I have ever seen, and I lived in China.  That five miles takes nearly an hour before you arrive at the “Giza Pyramids” turnoff, where all cars must careen more than a mile away from the Pyramids to go around the Giza Pyramids golf resort.  After that, it’s either a 2-mile walk or horse ride to the “main gates” which are oddly situated right next to a Pizza Hut.  Despite the aura of “desert isolation” that surrounds the Pyramids, they are, in reality, crammed right in the middle of one of Cairo’s poorest suburbs.  That’s right, people are living without running water or plumbing next to one of the world’s most visited sites.  That is, the Pyramids, not Pizza Hut.

The trouble is all worth it the minute you stand face to face with history.  It’s really a toss-up between The Great Wall and The Pyramids for most amazing site ever.  Lets just call it a tie and be done with it.  In the meantime, I’m going to try and figure out what happened in the last 5,000 years to bring Egypt from the world’s greatest Civilization to a modern-day developing nation?

No doubt with all the shiny gold and silver jewelry that enveloped every inch of the Egyptian Pharaohs, they had some gay designers and stylists around…

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Kyle Taylor

My flight into Cairo lands on time.  I scurry through customs where we are warned of our imminent sentencing to death should we be caught with drugs, by my sticker “money-making enterprise” VISAs and exit the airport.  First order of business: find a taxi.  I am approached by countless men whom I shrug off.  Finally, a mom-aged woman approaches me.  “Taxi?” she asks.  “Yes, to Dokki.  How much?” I inquire.  “75 Egyptian Pounds.”  As this is 25 pounds less than what I had already been offered I jump on it.

She leads me outside to a man wearing blue pants, a pink shirt and brown loafers.  I hand her a 100-pound note.  She forwards this on to him along with a receipt.  He hands her back 25 pounds – our change.  What, do you think, this charming mom-aged woman does?  She pockets 5 pounds, hands a twenty to me and says “some for him, this for me and here is your change” before b-lining back to the airport terminal to rob another unknowing tourist.  Blue pants man leads us to a gaggle of men sitting along a fence and points to another man who jumps up in his matching track suit before grabbing my bag and descending some stairs into the parking lot.  Minutes later we’re zipping through Cairo at an alarming rate given traffic, road size and speed limits.  We arrive to our crash pad and the man asks for “a little extra.”  I give him 30 Egyptian pounds and a promise to hire him for a day of driving to the Pyramids.  That’s a total of 110 pounds now including the fare, the obligatory tip to the woman and voluntary tip to the driver.

I say “tip” but what I mean here in Egypt is “backsheesh.”  While we translate it as meaning “tip” that is actually quite fare from the truth.  You see, while we tip if service is good as a sort-of reward for hard work and effort, “backsheesh” in Egypt is completely expected and if you’re foreign, the amounts just skyrocket.  I have realized in the course of my eight days that while traveling in Egypt appears cheap on the surface, it’s actually one of the most costly destinations in the developing world thanks entirely to backsheesh.

Why?  Because you have to backsheesh for everything.  Take a taxi?  Backsheesh there.  Somebody give you directions?  Backsheesh there.  Stay somewhere and have a guy help with a bag?  More backsheesh!  Get site information or a tip on where to take a good picture?  Backsheesh squared.  It’s a never-ending onslaught of “appreciation” and while it’s only a $1 here or $4 there, by the end of the day you’ve backsheeshed your way into the poor house!

At the Pyramids my guide (whose fees were supposedly “included”) had the audacity to say, after being given $10 in backsheesh after only 90 minutes of our two hour tour, “what is this?  This better not be for me.  Maybe for the horse boy, but not me.”  This led to a somewhat heated argument on horseback with the Pyramids as our backdrop and I proceeded to lambast the guy as a common criminal and somewhat crazy human being, telling him he has “made it awkward” and “ruined my afternoon.”  This AFTER a $10 tip on a $20 tour.

Then it was the all-day driver, who got $10 more in backsheesh.  Then it was our taxi to the bus station.  Our hostel helper.  Our guide at Karnak.  Our driver at Luxor.  Slowly but surely the cheap cups of tea and student-priced entrance fees lose their majesty to the never-ending onslaught of pushy tourism industry pros trying to squeeze a few more pounds out of me.

This practice is completely exhausting and – at times – has the effect of totally destroying what is supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime exploration of some of mankind’s greatest monuments in one of mankind’s oldest civilizations.  Of the more than 60 countries I have visited, no place comes close to being as big a hassle as Egypt, where you almost always feel like someone is taking you for a ride.  That is, as long as that someone is in the tourism industry because literally everyone else in Egypt may best be described as saintly, charming and preposterously generous.

Egypt is – like China – a nation of extremes.  Either exhaustingly nice or exhaustingly theft-like. Extremely rude or literally TOO NICE.   In turn, my attitude or “Egyptitude” apparently only exists in extremes as well.  Either having the time of my life and wanting to stay forever or frustrated beyond reason and desperately searching for a cheap flight out.  As the days wear on a new mantra emerges:  when in Egypt, do as the Egyptians do.  Welcome to Egypt:  Please hand your currency to a local.  Don’t worry, they’ll find a way take it from you anyway.

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Kyle Taylor

Flying To The Middle East

It’s an oddly simple equation: Depart Athens, Greece at 10am.  Arrive Cairo, Egypt at 12pm.  Two hours and just like that I’m whisked away from Western Europe and the Mediterranean to the epicenter of the near Middle East.  Granted, it’s still traveling from chaos to chaos in many ways but seemingly everything – everything – is different.  The weather, the air quality, the buildings, the roads, the people, the bargaining and yet, due to modern technology and the pioneering efforts of the Wright Brothers I can – in a matter of hours – traverse the globe and “plop” into another civilization that – for thousands of years – had no idea the civilization I just came from even existed.

I find this to be one of the most fascinating parts of travel: this idea that things “changed so fast” when in reality, they really didn’t.  What’s more, that feeling of “everything is different” really only goes skin deep.  Yes, the architecture is different, the clothes are different, foods are different and religions are different.  Underneath. however, it’s just bricks, cotton, beans and faith.

If al this traveling has taught me anything, it’s that we are socialized from a very young age to constantly seek out, look for and identify what makes us different than everyone else.  How are we unique?  How are we special?  Often times, how are we better?  Yet if you peel away the surface, almost nothing about us is – in real terms – is any different than anyone else.  Instead, it’s the way we have interpreted the same things thats different.

We eat white bread, they eat pita bread.  We leave the bricks red, they paint them white.  We where cotton t-shirts, they where cotton robes.  At the end of the day, we’re all just human beings trying to get through life with enough food, a place to call home and a reason to live.

Naturally, this is the basis of my argument when dealing with gay rights in issues.  Aren’t gays and lesbians – at the end of the day – just people too?  If you start to think about social issues and equality issues through this lens – a lens of similarity rather than difference – it becomes clear that people are just people and all of a sudden that wedge of “us” vs. “them” fades away – wildly inconvenient when you’re attempting to subjugate an entire population of people.

There are of course cultural and historic factors that play a role as well, and I have no doubt the way people deal with and address homosexuality in the Middle East will be very different than the way it is treated in Europe – one more shocking realization when it comes to this continental leap.  In just two hours I have jumped from a nation that offers near full equality for homosexuals to a place where the simple notion of whether or not homosexuality is real is questioned on a regular basis.  I have no doubt dealing with gay issues as a gay traveler will be very different as well.  Time to find out!

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Kyle Taylor