Monday May 29, 2006 – Mummy Tummy

Cab drivers in Cairo are astounding; they make New York City taxis look like Grandpa out for a Sunday drive. Traffic lights are ignored, without even flinching they squeeze between cars, they constantly are honking and beeping, and the best part is they drive around in rickety small 30 year old Datsuns. There always seemed to be traffic in Cairo which makes the Egyptian cabbies’ lives that much more frustrating I’m sure. Along with traffic lights being ignored, pedestrians are as well. Everyone (Grandma, kids, Mom with baby, business men…) just reenact Frogger to cross six lane streets – run between speeding cars, hesitate for a moment, then cross the next lane. I was fairly confident that we would witness someone getting hit by a car but this heart stopping method seems to work well for Cairo.

Speaking of cabs, we were taken on quite a ride today. After acknowledging where we wanted to go with a head nod (only spoke Arabic), our cabbie took us on a 20 minute joy ride around Cairo. Once I realized that even with all his best efforts (map staring, looking for a translator…) that he had no clue where he was taking us, I had him drop us off no where near our tourist destination. Instead of the 10 pound fair he insisted on 40 (all this communicated via hand signals). As a matter of principal I gave him our only 10 (knowing that the 40 was a whitey rip off and that I had nothing smaller than a 50) and got out of the car. He got out, followed us, and went to the tourist police who were near the spot where we stopped. They didn’t seem to care and unfortunately didn’t speak English either. I “la, la, la” ed and the ladies and I quickly crossed a six lane road (Egyptian style) to get back to the other side in the direction we wanted to head. He happened to find us after u-turning, yelled some Arabic niceties and spit out the window at me (didn’t hit me luckily). Good times.

Throughout the trip, we often joked about the affliction of “Mummy Tummy” – every time we dared to eat a salad, saw ice precariously floating in our drinks, ate unpeeled fruit or that funky mystery meat platter on the airplane… Luckily we were able to avoid any gastronomical irregularities our entire trip, until I got this in an email from the Brit Tuesday morning: “One word of advice....never fly with mummy tummy...just don't.”

For those of you who didn't get enough photos of the trip, here you go...

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