Video Transcript:
What’s up, guys and gals? Welcome back to another video! Actually, this video is long overdue, but you know life has gotten away, and I ended up traveling to Kenya and then getting busy with work. I wanted to
make this video to give you some valuable tips to know when traveling to Egypt.
Before I get into the content, please go ahead and hit that like and subscribe button to be notified when I upload new videos.
This has been a good journey creating content, sharing it with you all, answering all the questions you have. I look forward to you where things will go and where I’ll go and see and share with you all.
As you’re aware, Egypt is an Arabic speaking country you will meet plenty of people, mainly in the cities who
speak English, especially Cairo, but it’s also good to know some of the basic Arabic phrases just in case you come across someone who’s just not entirely understanding you or the person doesn’t speak English.
You can at least use some basic phrases or even hand signals to figure out where something is, give a simple greeting or ask simple questions.
Phrases such as salaam alaikum, Kem Fil, masalema, and so on so just knowing those basic phrases will help you out you can grab a phrasebook you can Search the internet and find out some simple words and just use them and or use something like Google or Bing translate I think it’s called Bing translate. You can use that as well, and that’ll help you out. From my personal experience, when you can connect with someone, even if you’re just saying basic things in their language, it opens them up a little bit and makes things a little more cordial more friendly
When in Cairo, oh my gosh, traffic is chaotic there!! I traveled alone with my children, and I would say my biggest worry was crossing the street with my children because there’s nothing like you know cars stop or anything like that, so cars just drive and you gotta like just make your way across finding an empty space or a clearing and just make your way across.
You know what it’s like if you ever played that game that was on atari back in the day called frogger, and you got to try to make your way across the street, that’s what it’s like in Egypt. I didn’t drive. I don’t think I can drive in Egypt. you basically just put your car where there’s space, and you just go go go go go so it is chaotic.
If you’re thinking about driving in Egypt Cairo specifically, I would avoid it, and then please be careful when crossing the street. Please be careful don’t find yourself bouncing off the hood of a car.
When you are in the tourist sites, you’ll find vendors and more or less they’re trying to hustle they’re trying to make a living over the past two years, things have been hard for these people, so they’re hustling even harder so there’s a possibility that you might experience someone trying to hassle you.
If they’re trying to haggle with you to get you to buy their stuff, I understand it’s nothing personal it can get frustrating. I personally didn’t have too much problem with people hassling and haggling. From my experience, if you say a few words in Arabic to them, such as “Ana asif, mish 3yez aya haga!” people tend to back off a little bit and leave you alone.
if you want to buy a nice souvenir to bring back home or if you see something interesting, never accept the first ogger because you’re going to get the tourist price, and it’s probably going to be at least double that or even more what the actual selling price is.
It’s entirely expected for you to barter and for you to negotiate the price and drive a hard deal. I recommend you try and bring it down as low as possible and be willing to walk away, even if it’s something that you really want to take back home or give as a gift to someone. Don’t accept the first offer!
Another thing is to carry cash, there are places where you can’t use cards even in the tourist sites. You need to have some cash on you. I’m not saying bring a whole lot of cash. Carry just enough to get yourself some food, if you need to get some transportation and so on.
In some of the smaller towns and villages you may find they don’t accept debit or credit cards. There may not even be an atm in the area, so make sure that you have
sufficient cash on you, and that goes for anywhere you’re traveling. You always want to have a little bit of cash on you just in case of an emergency or to buy some of the stuff you want or need.
if you haven’t seen the Egypt videos that I published, my sons and I, visited multiple cities, so we started out in Cairo; we went to Luxor, then we went to Sharm El Sheikh and back to Cairo. There are many ways that you can travel to these places. You can catch a felucca(a boat), ride the train, get a taxi
or a private car, and fly.
To make things hassle-free, my sons and I flew all over the place. The flights are very, very cheap. Our plane tickets were the equivalent to like $50 each; it saved a lot of time. And again, as I said, it was pretty much hassle-free now.
If you have time on your hands and you want to make the most adventurous trip possible, then you know, feel free to catch the train or book a private car, uber, or whatever to take you around.
If time is limited, then I would recommend you fly. There are many airlines such as Nile Air, Air Arabia, Egypt air, etc. The flights go back and forth for very cheap, and it’s a short flight between places like Cairo and Luxor or Sharm El Sheikh.
So another thing that might worry some people is a crime; you know, people wondering if they’re going to be victims of crime when visiting Egypt, so from my experience from talking to people from and what I saw, I didn’t see any crime.
Crime is low, and from what I heard, the punishment is harsh if you commit a crime. You get caught, so yeah, I’m not saying that you don’t have to worry about crime because crime exists everywhere, and you should always keep your eyes open. Still, it may not be like some other countries where you visit, and you have to have your head on a swivel looking around, you know, making sure that someone doesn’t come up and mug you or rob you and so on. From you know what, I’ve heard from what I experienced, crime is low
Another thing to keep in mind is that if when you’re flying into Egypt, you’re going to need a visa, and there are two ways you can do it you can do the entry visa online the link for that is in the description of this video
Or you can do the visa on arrival, which is straightforward. After you land and clear a couple of initial checks, right before customs, there’s this group of banks, and you go there, give them your passport, and pay $25.
My sons and I flew in different times, and it was so easy that my 15-year-old son was able to go and get the visa on arrival himself, so it’s nothing to worry about, nothing to stress about. If you want to have it before you land in Egypt, then you can go ahead and complete the e-visa online, and it’s going to cost you equivalent to 25 us dollars.
The last thing that I had is that um within like the city’s Cairo if you want to get around uber is available they also have taxis. In my experience, when going to foreign
countries, especially if you’re a tourist,
you’ll never ever get the same tax rate; one taxi driver might try and charge you a sky-high price, and another
might be more reasonable. Uber is available in Cario; it’s pretty accurate, convenient, and can save you transportation and communication troubles.
These are some random tips that I wanted to share; all in all, the trip to Egypt was amazing. I’m so glad that I had the chance to take my sons there
and we got to experience Egypt Cairo Luxor Sharma learn about the history see some of the important
world heritage sites like the pyramids it was a really good trip then it just made me happy that my sons were able to experience that as well as myself because it was something that was always on my to-do list
I hope that these tips I gave you were helpful; if you haven’t seen my videos, please go back and watch them, and if you have any questions comments, go ahead and leave them in the comments box, and I’ll try and reply as soon as possible, thank you!