Sharm el-Sheikhians are not Cairotanians

As promised in my previous post I was going to use this week to catch up on some experiences in Egypt.

Early May of this year I had my wife and kids over from the Netherlands. When you read the blog regularly you know that I live in Cairo by myself and my wife and two sons are still living in Almere, the Netherlands. Every other weekend I fly back to Holland to see them.
So early May they came to Cairo for two days and we then went to Sharm el-Sheikh and stayed at the Park Inn Resort, a resort very close to the airport (about 10 minutes) with an aqua park. The park is especially nice for younger kids. My sons are 5 and 3 and are totally into swimming and splashing and sliding and this aqua park allowed them on all slides but 3 of them, and these 3 were really a bit too adventurous for young kids like my son.
So we had a blast in Sharm el-Sheikh as well as in Cairo. In Cairo we obviously went to see the pyramids and the Sphinx. We also paid a visit to Cairo Tower. But the real fun was in Sharm el-Sheikh. The weather was great, of course, and so was the hotel. Rooms were spacious and clean. People working at the hotel were friendly. So was the food, buffet all the time, but very well prepared.

But the shop owners just outside of the hotel were pretty much the worst people I ever met. I mean, you know upfront that the shops are trying to sell as much as possible for naive tourists and we all know that typically these shop owners are very aggressive sales people. But the ones around the Park Inn Resort in Sharm el-Sheikh are horrible.
They practically dragged our kids into their shops just to get us inside as well. Probably to force us to buy something or else they wouldn't let us go. Even worse, they treated my wife with a total lack of respect, towards her or me for that matter. One time my wife was walking 2 meters in front of me, and the stares and looks she got were out of this world.

In one of my first posts about my experiences here in Egypt I characterize the Egyptians as the most approachable people I've met. Well I have to retract that remark... Cairotanians are the most approachable people I've met, Sharm el-Sheikhians are the most horrific people I've ever met. Okay, at least those that own a shop.
The badness of our experience was such that my wife didn't want to leave the resort any more, fortunately the kids didn't want to leave the pool either. But this counts for something. She got a pretty wrong idea of what Egyptians are like. I would've too, hadn't I met the Cairotanians. The shop owners we met in Hurghada were not as bad as those in Sharm el-Sheikh and in Marsa Alam I only met the drivers at the diving center everybody else was foreigner.

So my experience with the Egyptians in Sharm el-Sheikh during my vacation with the family was not so good. Thankfully I live among pharao's and they are really nice people.

Iwan

When traveling in Egypt, don't forget proof of who you are...

Hi,

It has been a while and I'll try to catch up this week on the blogs. Quite a bit is to be blogged about.

So I went to Sharm el-Sheikh last weekend, it was the second time this month. First I went with my family to Sharm, about which I will blog in another post. Last weekend I went with what turned out to be 'buddies' of mine as we went scuba diving.
Last Wednesday I went to Maadi Divers in Maadi, Cairo. They're on road 218, which is walking distance from my apartment, but only because Maadi is a rather small area in Cairo and pretty much everything here is walking distance. Keep that in mind if you ever plan to live in Cairo. I went there because I had to try on a BCD and a wetsuit for my scuba trip that weekend. And because they needed a photocopy of my passport. And I thought that was it, so on our trip the following day I didn't bring my passport... Oops, there're all kinds of roadblocks on the way from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh. My buddies had their passports and ID's ready for the showing, but I had only my driver's license on me.
Sure that has a photo of me on it and a recent one at that, but it doesn't show that I have a valid visa for Egypt. And that is kind of important as well.

So we were stopped quite often between Cairo and Sharm and more than once all passports were requested by the policeman at the roadblock. But for some reason they never questioned the fact that they didn't see a passport for me. Although we were very honest about the fact that I'm Dutch. Guess the Dutch are welcome everywhere or something. Or maybe I was just lucky.

Anyway, after a two nights at the boat on our way back at the very first roadblock they gave us a hard time and all passports were requested and checked. My driver's license was handed over as well. But again, for some reason they didn't get around to check and wonder about that pink little piece of plastic that didn't mean nothing as all text on it is in Dutch. So we got to go on our way back to Cairo.
The interesting thing here is that you can fly into Sharm el-Sheikh and stay there without a visa, but you're not allowed to go to Cairo without a visa, so if you want to leave the Sharm-area, they are very keen on people without a visa and without an Egyptian residents ID. Still I got away with it.

On top of that we got stopped for a speeding violation... guess what. The police officer ran out of tickets and we were told to move along. Guess we got some good karma this weekend.

Anyway, the lesson I learned and would like to convey to you, is that when you move around in Egypt, you should always have your passport with you so you know who you are and have proof of it, but you also have that ever so important visa to show.

Enjoy your stay in Egypt when you get around to visit this interesting country.

Iwan