The Egyptian touts have a similar approach. When you pass them on a sidewalk they first say "Welcome to Egypt" and then ask where you are from. When you say America, they stop in their tracks with a look of delighted surprise and say "America! I have family in Texas! America number one!" as if we were long lost twins, finally re-united. Only then do they hapen to mention, almost as an aside, "Well, my friend, felucca ride?"

It might be a good ploy if you hadn't heard the same guy say to the people on the sidewalk in front of you, "Deutschland! Wunderbar! Ich habe familie in Berlin!"

On Reincarnation
I decided months ago that if ever I were to be reincarnated the creature I would least like to be reincarnated as -- the lowest, most miserable form of life on earth -- is a member of a Chinese road construction crew. I'm not ready to abandon this belief just yet, but I have a close runner-up: the Egyptian donkey.

In America, donkeys are cute, funny-looking things that get pulled out once a year for the Christmas pangeant. Otherwise they spend their days fattening up in green pastures. Here, donkeys are mangy and thin. Their ribs protude through hide rubbed-raw from the yoke. IF they are lucky they slave all day in a muddy field, but many are assigned an even worst fate and live in the smog and filth of downtown Cairo, pulling huge carts behind their small bodies, getting honked at by buses and choking on the state exhaust of old taxis.

America Number One
A good thing about would travel is that it puts your own home country in perspective. It makes you appreciate what you have. Back in Asia I started a list called "What America Does Better Than Anyone Else" and I've been adding to it every since.

Without further ado, here's the list as it now stands:

1. We use fabric softner.
2. Our supermarkets are larger.
3. Old American men don't wear Speedos.

Ich Bin Ein Archeologist
For Egyptians trying to sell themselves as guides, a close second behind the "I have family in America" approach is the achaelogical pedigree approach. Somehow it always manages to slip out that the guide's father (or uncle, or grandfather. . .) was a key figure in the annals of Egyptian archaeology. Usually their father served as Howard Carter's (the Englishman who discovered Tut's tomb) right-hand-man and that it was he, not Carter, who basically ran the show and who provided the expertise that led to most of the important discoveries of the 20th century.

Road Safety
As with most of the developing world, "road safety" in Egypt is a vague and nebulous concept. Especially in cities, drivers ignore traffic lights, advanced theoretical concepts like "right of way," and pretty much every other rule designed to bring a bit of order to the chaotic streets.

But traffic police here have one rule they enforce religously and that is a requirement for all front-seat occupants to wear a seatbelt. I assume this rule is enforced, because every single taxi and bus driver we rode with made a point of wearing his seatbelt when he approached a town or police checkpoint.

Only, not quite. They would throw the belt across their chest like a sash, carefully tuck it down by where it snaps, but they wouldn't actually snap the thing in. The first time I noticed this was our second day in Cairo when I was riding in the front passenger seat of a taxi. The driver motioned for me to put my belt on, but as I struggled to locate the thing it snaps into he looked at me like I was crazy and pointed to the loose end of his belt resting comfortably on his thigh. Since then I've noticed a lot of nicely-positioned belts, none of which would do any good in even the minor-est of fender-benders.

". . .this could be Heaven or this could be Hell. . ."
Is there any country in the world that doesn't have local bands that play a really, really bad cover version of Hotel California?

In-Flight Entertainment
The good news is that Egyptian public buses are relatively modern with such amenities as video systems, air-conditioning, and toilets.

The bad news is that Egyptian public buses are relatively modern with such amenities as video systems. On a recent 6 hour bus ride we suffered during the first three hours to really loud Egyptian pop music blasting over the stereo. I thought things would get better when we saw the driver finally pop out the audio cassette and grab a videotape. The screen above flashed to life and after some preliminary static the movie began.

It started with a bus cruising down a highway, then cut to an interior shot of the happy passengers quietly reading and sleeping. Then -- wham! -- a horrific crash. The bus cart-wheeled several times. Glass shattered and bodies flew through the air. The next hour followed the excruciating recovery of the crash's sole survivor. This was our movie!

I glanced around the bus and the other 4 or 5 Westerners on board were all staring in horror (as Sarah and I were) at the video screen. Couldn't believe it. The Egyptian passengers hardly noticed.

Freelancers
Ask any traveler to Egypt what they find most annoying, and high on their list will be "baksheesh", the Arabic word for "tipping." Baksheesh pervades every aspect of society. it's not just tipping in the Western sense of money for services provided (waiters, opening doors, carrying bags) but it also bleeds into the gray area of bribery.

In this country where unemployment is endemic, an unofficial workforce of "freelancers" has sprung up around the concept of baksheesh. Old men hang out by elevators and jump aboard behind you. All they do is push the "close door" button (and if you've already pushed it they stand there anyway) but of course they expect baksheesh. At the train station, one guy grabs your bags and carries them along the platform (baksheesh), another guys shows you the correct car (baksheesh), and yet another shows you to your seat (baksheesh). People are constantly sneaking up to you to provide useless and uninvited services.

But most annoying of all are the freelancers at the museums. You have already payed your admission fee to get in, but an army of people inside are waiting to baksheesh you to death. As you amble from exhibit to exhibit someone will invariably come up next to you to point out unhelpful things. Standing next to an Egyptian bowl, with a label that says "Egyptian bowl," the guy will point to it and say "Egyptian bowl. Baksheesh?"

Ignore him, tell him no thanks, tell him la shukran (no thanks, in Arabic), it doesn't matter. He will follow you, speak at you, and then ask for money. Occassionally a guy will actually provide some interesting information and in that case I have no problem giving him a small tip, but of all the tombs and museums and sites we have seen I can only think of one guy that added to the experience rather than simply being bothersome and in the way.

The hand-down absolute worst most annoying case of baksheesh freelancers is at the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. It's a smallish museum with an OK collection of art, but in addition to the tell-you-useless-facts guys there were several people who tried to earn baksheesh by turning on lights to the display cases when you walked up to them. The worst part -- you've just seen the same guy run ahead of you to turn the lights off just so that he can turn them on again. I began speed-walking and throwing in fakes -- fake left toward the pottery then cut right to the illuminated manuscripts -- just so I could get there first and turn the lights on myself.

Missing
I had always heard that in Islamic countries women had a lesser status than men, that women dressed modestly and were subservient to their husbands. Travelling through Egypt I have found that to be true, but the big surprise is the complete lack of women, everwhere. You just don't see women anywhere. They aren't on public transportation. They aren't shopkeepers or hotel cleaners. They are completely unseen. At home, I guess, safe from all us sex-craved Westerners and other corrupting influences.

Egyptian Television
Egyptian television authorities are gracious enough to provide a station dedicated solely to English- and French- language programming. At times when my shortwave radio wasn't receiving Voice of America, this station, called NileTV, was our only source of news so we watched it several times. The newscasts were pretty generic. They typically start with a body count from the West Bank and then move on to a quote from Yassar and then wrap everything up with a few clips of the Egyptian national soccer team. It was what came next that was the scary part.

Apparently they bulk out their programming schedule with footage that is available for free (or for really REALLY cheap) from sources around the world. In an attempted rip-off of the those touchy-feely feature stories that come at the end of American newscasts, the NileTV news has an "In Depth" section at the end their news. Here, though, "In Depth" is always some ancient high-school science film.

First you hear its soundtrack, sort of like the Mary Tyler Moore theme without the vocals. Next you see a graduate student with really big hair holding a beaker in one hand and disgusting strip of puce-colored meat in the other. Then the narrator begins, "Watch what happens when we place a strip of raw meat inside this beaker of gastric juice." Riveting stuff. The next night's "In Depth" was a feature on the latest advances in carbon dating (circa 1960), complete with slide rulers, teletype machines, and a computer the size of a train car.

Oasis
One of the many icons of Egypt is the Oasis. Sucking life from small springs, six or seven oasis towns have clung to existance for thousands of years amid the harsh expanse of Egypt's Western Desert. These oases are nurturing, peaceful islands of serenity in an otherwise bleak and unforgiving landscape.

If you ask me, I say Egypt's best oasis is in downtown Cairo, on the east bank of the Nile. It's called the Nile Hilton, and Sarah and I got to know it well. We didn't stay there, but we did find excuses to stop by there almost every day, for example to use the ATM (even though we would pass several perfectly good ATM's on the walk there). Inside was a quiet and peaceful wonderland. Greet plants in a city of concrete. Pizza in a land of falafel. Diet Coke with ice.