15 Do’s and Don’ts for Cairo & Giza

this is our first time in Africa and we are really excited to share with you all our experiences from Egypt there are so many things that we had no clue about and we are excited to share with you everything we've learned [Music] welcome back to find Gina Marie where we share our lives as full-time Travelers and the connections we make along the way if you're new here welcome I'm Judy and I'm Kevin like so many other people seeing the pyramids and the Sphinx have been on our bucket list forever I was a little uncomfortable going to Egypt because it was someplace I didn't know about it was very different from Europe and I have to admit I had some anxiety we also didn't really have a lot of time to prepare for this trip so there was a lot we didn't know we started off by just asking people who had been to Egypt some of their best advice and we have learned so much in these first two weeks that we spent in Egypt so here we are on a rooftop patio in Cairo bringing you all the do's and don'ts that we've learned over the past couple weeks this is the first of several episodes from Africa so if you haven't already subscribed you'll want to do that now so you don't miss any future episodes we're gonna break this down into don'ts and then dues so let's let you start off with the donuts don't waste your money and get an e-visa in advance of arriving it is super easy to get a visa on arrival and it's much cheaper as well yeah a lot of the online services will say they're going to save you time and effort but we really didn't spend that much time and effort so as soon as we get off the plane we follow the signs to visas and passport control looked around a little bit got a little confused because it said visas and Banks and we didn't know which window was which I was a little bit afraid that maybe they were going to sell me an e-visa but they were there to really just give you a straight up Visa the banks are handling the money so they're also giving out the Visa stamps and they look just like teller regular Bank thing is they want cash they do offer to take a credit card but we watched a couple ahead of us use a credit card it took a lot longer there was some fussing back and forth there was more confusion just take cash it's not that expensive right is 25 per person and you also don't have to be at the mercy of a machine that doesn't work or there's no ATM so if you actually have to get money you're kind of out of luck so at the Visa spot the bank they just basically wanted our money they gave us the sticker to go ahead and take over the passport control and that was it nothing else no must of fuss when you fill out a need visa form they actually want to know how long you're staying and a whole bunch of information that you have to upload but really the bank just wanted your cash and then once you get that sticker you walk a few feet over to passport control or then they go through and look at your passport ask you how long you're staying then they take that sticker peel it off put it on a blank page stamp it and you're on your way really didn't get much else in either spot it was very easy to get through I think that you can probably put the sticker on yourself but I didn't want to mess with anything I wasn't going to pull stuff like that yes sir whatever you want Sarah take my sticker take my passport so one of the big don'ts is don't get taken advantage of at the airport for transportation to your hotel or Airbnb when we arrived a baggage claim there was a man who came up to us and maybe we were a little bit flustered because my bag hadn't come out right away and he had a Ministry of Tourism badge on him and there was a booth right behind him with the same name I wasn't expecting somebody at the luggage belt so I was a little bit flustered and I felt like maybe he took advantage of that we thought outside we're gonna get overrun by taxis and people trying to help us and all the rest so we were not prepared for this and all we want to do was get our luggage now the problem was I had my bag already it came out really quick and Judy's was nowhere to be seen and you could see that we were gonna have to wait a few minutes and normally we prefer not to have to check our bag but we didn't have a choice on this Airline so everything was just a little bit out of sorts and he could tell that we were anxious and looking for things and he used that to his advantage and kind of engage Us in the conversation and really he started asking us a lot of questions and then Judy was left alone with him because I had to go around the other side of the belt so it was not the ideal situation and we weren't thinking very clearly it's important to know that Cairo has Uber and you definitely wanted to take it if you can an Uber ride even though we were going 45 minutes was only going to be seven dollars and that's like 150 to 200 Egyptian pounds and if you want to give them a tip of something like 30 Egyptian pounds which is a good tip on Uber that equals about a dollar so you're really not hurting when you pay for the Uber rides and even if we would have arranged a private car it would have cost less than what this person was charging and honestly it felt uncomfortable but I'm too nice and I didn't speak up for myself and so that is a lesson learned that please speak up for yourself and one of the tips that someone had given to me my dear friend Martin who suggested that just say that you are going to the lemurray Meridian Hotel which is attached to the Cairo Airport so therefore you don't need any transportation and Uber does not have need you to have cash you know you're paying for that through the app so if you're a little short on Egyptian cash you're in good shape with Uber now we're saying use Uber because you don't want to drive in Egypt especially in Cairo and Giza it is chaos out there on the streets and I can't believe that Uber is charging as little as they are an hour ride was filled with so much drama on the streets on the highway there isn't necessarily any lanes any signals definitely when you get off of the highway people are merging into traffic everywhere Tuk Tuks can't really be seen behind cars so they're pretty dangerous you've got motorcycles threading in and out and when you're off the highway you also have pedestrians Crossing major highways and just walking through traffic um panhandling the chaos is unreal and you definitely do not attempt to drive through it all there is a language that they speak with their cars and their trucks and their buses they have horns going all the time but they're like or they're a little North I'm right next to you you're within inches of hitting my car your cars are squeezing in between each other I mean I don't know how they do it I would never drive here recommend not driving here just use the Ubers use the taxis be safe I don't even recommend not I'm saying absolutely don't even think about renting a car next on our adult list don't be afraid to try street food there's plenty of small little vendors that are all over the place and it's safe and there's a lot of really tasty food one of the things you want to watch out for is that there is somebody actually cooking your meal fresh and remember you're paying for this food with Egyptian pounds which are like you know one dollar equals 30 Egyptian pounds so even if you bought something and you really don't like it you're not losing a lot of money be courageous experiment try the different foods there's so much flavor out there don't let language barriers get in the way of having a rich experience at vendors for food I pointed I found something that somebody else was eating and I said I want some of that people are kind and they really want to help you in fact one time you said I want what they're having and it was turned out to be a full table full and they kept adding more to their tables like no no don't add any more to our table and especially if you're at a restaurant you know most of the menus have pictures or something you can point to you can also use Google Translate and it will be able to take a photo of something and then and give you some of the English words from the Arabic to make it a little bit easier for you to make a guess the other option is you can just trust your waiter and and just try something new we did that once and we had a great experience it was delicious and just be flexible be patient with the language situation if you're having trouble paying you know sometimes you hold up a certain Bill and they'll hold up a bill and they'll show you know it's this bill they might hold a calculator up and show you the numbers on that you know there's a lot of ways around this just take it slow and you'll work through it and remember you are a guest in their country and they are not expected to know English so if you get the wrong thing it's not the end of the world it's an adventure but they are happy to have tourists so they will try really hard to satisfy you so we don't recommend that you book the same guide for your entire trip you know your itinerary might be very flexible there's different reasons for different guides for different areas helps if you know what kind of a traveler you are we for instance really like a lot of information thrown at us we want to learn as much as possible but some people really just want a skip the lines to her we've found that you can get yourself into trouble if you book someone for the whole time and when you meet them they really aren't the kind of guide or their English is hard to understand so unless someone has made a recommendation and you really trust that person uh keep your itinerary flexible and don't over commit to your entire trip at once yeah your first guide will certainly offer you some options if they have other services they can offer other places they can show you and you know think about that but research is important you did a ton of research and it worked out well for us sometimes I go to chip advisor and to Viator and also to get your guide there's a company called with locals and also sometimes what I've done is to look at TripAdvisor and then see the actual local company and book directly with them and avoid the additional third-party charges but do make sure that you tip your guide to tip the driver there's typically both of them on your private tours or even your small group tours and they don't make a lot of money and they really do depend on tips yeah and remember when you're looking at the money Egyptian pounds it seems weird to throw a hundred pounds at somebody but it really is very cheap and well worth it so one of the things as you're looking at tours don't fall for a lot of the extras that they throw in there they're going to take you on tours of places that may offer to sell you something and the reason they're doing that is they may get a kickback from these places and that's fine I mean they should be earning all the money they could possibly earn but you're getting put in a situation where they want you to spend more money for instance the wanted to go to after the suggestion of one of our tour guides we had no intention of buying anything there but it was still quite interesting because we can't take a carpet with us anywhere unless we're flying on it they didn't offer those it was an interesting tour it was a great come company uh the person that talked to us was full and we had a great encounter it was actually a school you know we saw them teaching and how they how they built the carpets and it really was a great part of the tour one of one of the standouts for me but you don't have to feel obligated to buy anything same with a Papyrus tour and a perfumery tour they're actually going to teach you things which are really helpful but at the end they're also going to try to sell you something you just don't have to accept that stand firm and beware of anything that is a free gift I promise you there is no such thing as a free gift here they are even if they tell you that it's free they are going to want money this is not a great economy for a lot of people they need all the cash they can get this is just one of the ways that they try to add on to their income and it's good it's it's okay don't get upset by it but also you don't have to pay for it and if you want to by all means do nobody's telling you not to buy just bear in mind that um nothing's free okay that's our list of don'ts let's get to the dues the first do is that you really should arrange to speak with the doctor about vaccinations that you need any prescription medications that are going to help you with any kind of stomach problems the food and water are different here your gut biome may not be accustomed to dealing with it so take the extra time to make sure that you have taken all of taking care of all of that it's not necessary to really worry about yellow fever this is not a dangerous area for something like that but you really want to take care of your gut health and give yourself enough time to do this we were kind of in a crunch and we ended up having to do this in Rome and luckily got the right place if you're interested to know how we got vaccinated and met with a travel doctor while we're traveling the globe outside of the U.S check out our last video on how we got vaccinated in Rome all right one of the big dues is make sure you have cash this is not the kind of place we can pull out the credit card a lot and you want to get to an ATM as soon as you can get Egyptian money and then you're set to go and get a lot of Egyptian money out of the ATMs my typical poll from an ATM was 2 000 Egyptian pounds and sometimes three thousand Egyptian pounds because if you go to a restaurant you might spend a thousand Egyptian pounds or 1100 Egyptian pounds about 40 bucks on a really nice meal really nice meal in a lot of cases really really cheap you can get Falafel on the street for for Egyptian pounds so nothing yeah now when you go to these ATMs a lot of them are really nice because they have a cover on the back so you can kind of stand in front of it with some privacy make sure you don't do the conversion if it asks you just do it in Egyptian pounds most of the US Banks will go ahead and convert it for you the fees are minimal and when I was taking money out my bank was barely charging me anything maybe a dollar a dollar and a half for conversion and I was getting 65 out of the bank each time on these wads of money that I was taken away from the cash machine I also felt very safe in front of the ATMs this whole city has felt safe so there was not a concern walking up to one of these people stay back they're not looking over your shoulder or anything that seems like a very polite way to react to when people are taking money out we didn't know better so when we arrived in Egypt in the evening we didn't really make it a priority to get cash so when we went to the coffee shop which is a primary thing first thing in the morning they did not have a card reader that and we needed to pay cash yeah we tried to give them euros and they didn't want that either we kind of got spoiled by the airport where they would take American dollars Euros kind of anything you had and these jobs aren't equipped for that they have Egyptian pounds and that's what you pay in and while we were at this coffee shop I offered to let Kevin go and I would stand there and wait but they insisted that Kevin and I both go together they were like very understanding and polite but I just tried to give us directions but I just wouldn't recommend that you put yourself in that kind of a bind but it just shows how kind they are and how willing they are to help you our directions only took us so far so I approached a woman and asked if she spoke English fortunately she did she just pointed to where the ATM was and actually took us with her since she was going there anyway she let us go first and she was really not interested in any money or any kind of tip for it so that was very sweet we did make it back to the coffee shop paid them and that was a good Subaru too do wear sturdy shoes and watch where you're walking there are sidewalks sometimes but usually they're also High curbs so you're stepping down into a drive and then stepping back up to on to a sidewalk and the sidewalks might have broken tiles you may have to walk out in the street you may be on gravel there's a lot of things going on and if you're in the more uh non-city areas like we're living here near our Airbnb then there's uh maybe animal droppings and other things that you need to look out for they still use some donkeys in our area to pull carts and they have bigger droppings than the dogs there's a ton of construction here there are holes just in the middle of the street you really want to watch where you're going because you can get hurt if you're not careful so another do is make sure you get bottled water as Judy mentioned earlier your stomach biomes aren't necessarily going to work well with the local water system so we've been sticking to bottled water instead of pouring out of the tap make sure that the cap is unbroken somebody had given us some and the water definitely didn't look yeah great they definitely filled this bottle with some tap water and we're like yeah no they didn't necessarily pass it off as it was brand new water but whatever it was we didn't want to drink it it's also recommended that when you brush your teeth you should be rinsing it in a small amount of bottled water in a cup Now Kevin is playing fast and loose he doesn't think that's necessary but I think it makes sense to go that extra mile and avoid ice in your glasses as well just keep yourself safe I'm not swallowing a lot of water when I'm brushing my teeth so I didn't think that was a big problem and I didn't get any ice in my drinks I did get some fruit smoothies which were delicious and I had no problems but somebody else got hit with the pharaoh's Revenge one time and I've been doing just fine so you take that as you may but that is also the advocacy to get medicine before you leave so that you can treat that straight away yeah you will need to tip if you ask someone directions you will need to tip someone if they give you toilet paper outside a public toilet you don't have to pay to use the toilet but there's often no toilet paper there and there's someone standing guard who is expecting you to pay for toilet paper even if you don't accept some they're still looking for money yeah you'll know because the little hand comes out just you know they're very subtle about it but well they've actually said Pay okay for me they've been nice but when I've said I've had no money normally he keeps the bulk of it they've been very understanding someone may offer to take a picture for you that's going to cost money and in restaurants it's very common to tip ten percent of the bill I was basically rounding up a lot to make our bills easier so again very few places they're going to take credit cards and the one time we actually tried to use it he actually had a walk to a spot in the restaurant where the reader would connect to Wi-Fi so it's easier with cash and tipping's easier so basically if it's like a thousand dollar bill for your restaurant again about 40 bucks you tip them 100 and that's good you may see a service charge on your bill but that money goes to the restaurant and not to your server so tip the 10 or more on top of the total amount of the bill and also make sure you tip your Uber driver like I said before they're not making a whole lot of money off of these rides you know you take an hour ride and you're basically paying seven dollars that's just not a lot of money a lot of our rides around town have been only about 30 to 40 Egyptian pounds and really we're going good distances yeah sometimes 20 minutes but sometimes 40. yeah because you get into traffic and they're stuck in traffic so you end up paying like a dollar for this Uber ride I often have been paying 30 Egyptian pounds as a tip even if the ride itself just costs 30. also if you are going to photograph someone please ask them first and then tip them and be careful with Photography in general because people aren't comfortable with the camera being out and you just want to be respectful definitely now this isn't a big problem for us but if you are a light sleeper do make sure you have earplugs because you may have heard during this recording this city can get really loud there's prayer announcements that go on five times a day beginning at 5 a.m yeah so just make sure that you're comfortable with a noisy environment make sure that you can get some sleep the way you need to we love it but restaurants open till four o'clock in the morning you can expect hustle and bustle at all hours yeah they start their day late and they end it very late but for some reason you can still get breakfast at 8am if you want to you may already know that Ramadan is a period in Egypt where there is fasting and that happens from sun up to sun down but bear in mind that people are still cooking they are still looking for tourism during Ramadan in fact our tour guides suggested that you please come just because that's a holy time for Muslims there are all denominations that live in Egypt and people even though they're not eating themselves between sunup and Sundown they have no problems cooking for everybody else they still are looking for tourism they still need to make money so they would be delighted to have you come during that time there's really nothing closed there's nothing you're going to miss out on during Ramadan and our final do give yourself time to adjust to Cairo and Giza it's well worth it I know when I first got here there was a lot of stress from the activity at the airport it was a crazy ride to our Airbnb and I was feeling a little anxious and I was feeling like maybe we are in the wrong place maybe we shouldn't have come here and I felt like wow what can we do to fix this situation can we go get a hotel or something and I'm so glad that Judy booked the space that she bought in Giza because it gave us a real look at uh life for the average person in Egypt and after a few days here I felt so much better and I felt so blessed to have experienced it we've met so many people that have been so kind and really really give this place time give yourself time to adjust the chaos we stayed in mohanda scene which is in Giza but it is just a quick trip across the Nile to Cairo it's noisy there's a ton of energy it's unfamiliar there's language barriers there's um it's hard to read the Arabic language it's easy to allow all of those things to overwhelm you but really as Kevin said give it a little bit of time we have felt so comfortable in just a few short days it's made for just such an incredible experience for us the food may be different from what you're used to making restaurant and try to order some alcohol they may not have any on the menu you may have to choose different things you may have to experiment and ask what is this and they may bring out a dish or point to something just take it slow be open to what they have to offer because every time I stretch myself every time we stretch ourselves we experience so much more and it really has made a difference it may look a lot different from other places that you've been to but that's the part of the reason that you are Adventure seeking and exploring so overall Cairo and Giza are great places to visit there's so much that they offer there's so many things to see so many new things to experience and Egypt overall is very safe country we have not felt unsafe at all here so even though some people may have warned you that there's problems it really is very safe felt much safer here than even other places if you have a list of places that you want to visit make sure that you consider adding Egypt to it it will not disappoint you and if you haven't already please subscribe we have another episode from our time in Egypt and Giza of things to expect when you come here and you're not going to want to miss it and go to find gmail.com to find out more information about our episodes and to check out Judy's Journal which talks a lot a lot about what we're doing every day until next time until next time

Channel: Finding Gina Marie – Travel the World

Views: 235,693

Keywords: adoption, san francisco, italy, travel vlog, travel, family, Europe, Buffalo, travel 2022, moving, moving to europe, finding birth mother, london, paris, dna, 23andme, verona, digital nomads, digital nomad lifestyle, digital nomad italy, carry on travel, minimalist travelling, lecce, puglia italy, lecce italy, lecce puglia italy, brindisi, travel 2023, full-time travel, cairo, giza pyramids, cairo egypt, giza egypt, sphinx

Id: pMI0tLdfxmw

Length: 23min 39sec (1419 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 08 2023