Egypt: I hope the very name conjures up romantic images of camels, deserts and ancient monuments, as it did for us before we left.

Unfortunately, although the pyramids, the sphinx, Karnak, etc. they were interesting, we felt that Egypt was the well. We had been warned that Cairo was very polluted and that was certainly the case, but the rest of the country was just as bad. It was the dirtiest country I have ever visited and that is not referring to the ever-present dust that one expects to find in a predominantly desert country.

There was rubbish everywhere, even piling up on the banks of some canals and pushed up the banks of the Nile. The attitude towards rubbish seemed to be, if you empty a pack of food or cigarettes in the car, you just throw the rubbish out the window. If you have household garbage in a bag, leave it in a nearby vacant lot or drag it down an embankment. If you use a tissue on the street, simply throw it in the gutter or on the pavement. People in the tourist areas were greedy, clinging to pests, the service was poor, and the food was pretty ordinary too, not a patch on Thailand or Turkey (see my previous articles).

It was very obvious that bribery was a way of life, and those at the top of the food chain got the most of the action, so everyone was eager to work their way up the ladder.

Tourists were at the bottom of the food chain and were aggressively targeted.

The star rating system for hotels and tourist ships reflected either a very low standard compared to the rest of the world, or that stars could be bought, probably both. We stayed in a 5 star hotel, would probably rate 3.5 stars elsewhere and only 2 for service. The Nile Cruise ship received a 5 star rating and while I would probably rate it 3.5 stars again, I would rate it a little higher due to the fact that the bathroom was luckily near the bed. The 3-day cruise itself from Luxor to Aswan was okay, but nothing to write home about.

The name of the game at all times was RIPOFF; For example, in the Egyptian Museum that you paid to enter, you had to pay extra to enter the section that contained the mummies of the kings. A poster in the Alexandria museum said it all: ‘Foreigners LE35, Foreign Students LE20, Egyptians LE2, Egyptian Students LE1’. On other tours we have done in India and Turkey, the tour guide also served as the tour leader. It was obvious that in Egypt the system was put in place to ensure the extraction of tips to the maximum number of people with a tour leader and then guides at each place visited.

General comments about the tour organized through a company that I won’t bother to name are:

– The Al Kalili market/bazaar was not as good as the one in Istanbul that we had just visited, or the one in Tehran that I visited in 1968 and we were constantly hassled which put us off completely. The Egyptians just don’t have the nice way of enticing tourists to part with their money that the Thais have.

– The Citadel museum was a joke with most of the interesting parts closed.

– The tour did not cover the step pyramid and the museum, which I did on my own later and found more interesting. But avoid Memphis, which is usually part of that option on a tour, where the only interesting thing was the large statue of Ramses II, which was certainly not worth the LE35 entrance fee (scam).

– We took an overnight train trip from Cairo to Luxor (and back the same way) where we were informed that dinner and breakfast would be served as part of the so-called first class service. Don’t use the train! If you must, make sure you bring the proper food, as the food served on the train is inedible (which our guide admitted when we caught him buying his own rations from a nearby stall!)

– Optional Nubian tour dinner suddenly increased from the advertised LE40 because we had to pay the driver to take us from the secluded hotel where they dumped us in the river, then the boat ride, then the village tour, then tips on the top. Also, we were too far from the city to visit the Nubian museum without paying for a taxi. Another scam!

– Due to my partner being sick, we visited the Gayer-Anderson museum in Cairo on our own after the tour, which turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip for us. It contained some lovely items and was a time capsule of a bygone era in an old style house that no longer exists in any of the areas we saw in Cairo to the detriment of that city.

– One of the things I look forward to on any trip to foreign destinations is experiencing the food of the country. In Egypt the food was pretty bad, especially after Turkey. Bread was generally stale, poor choice and taste. One of the best meals we had was in the Nubian village with freshly baked bread and home made portions of vegetables and meat.

– Naturally, the tour leader did not reimburse us for the cost of admission to the places that were included in the tour price, but that we had missed due to illness.

We were both sick on the trip, my partner quite ill, despite taking all the precautions. This was the first time that none of us got sick on any of our trips to Europe, India or the Far East and we weren’t alone – our entire tour group was sick or unwell at one point or another.

My advice to anyone contemplating a trip to Egypt to see the ancient monuments is to visit your local library, borrow a book and DVD, and enjoy them in the comfort of your own home.

If you must visit the country, make sure you have enough extra money for the scams you encounter, make sure you have enough medicine for upset stomachs, and make sure your travel insurance has good accident and health coverage.

Also, thoroughly research where you want to go, plan the shortest and fastest route between points and be very careful about what you eat, to be in and out of the country in the shortest possible time. That way you can avoid being bothered too much and getting too sick (I wouldn’t bet on the latter, though).