Walking through the marketplace at lunchtime in Khan el-Khalili bazaar, Cairo, I struggled to find any decent food stalls. By 2pm, I was absolutely starving. That’s when I saw a tiny kebab joint packed with locals. Turns out that was my first mistake.
I woke up at 3am the next morning in
hot and cold sweats. My stomach felt like it was about to explode. Problem was, we were due to board a 17-hour bus trip to Dahab, a diving
paradise on the Red Sea. At each military checkpoint, I jumped out and emptied my
guts while guards armed with machineguns looked on and laughed. I spent New Year’s Eve on the dunny, feeling like I was going to
die. Food poisoning sucks. It was even worse seeing friends eat fresh seafood platters, while I laid there listening to my gut gurgle.
Next stop was Luxor and we boarded a felucca (small sailing boat) and looked forward to an exciting three-day trip on the Nile. Within 10 minutes, Captain Yousef and his deckhand Zac lit up massive
joints. Excellent – our lives were in the hands of Cheech and Chong.
The breeze suddenly picked up and we had to quickly scramble from side to side to maintain the weight of the boat and prevent getting hit by
the sail. It got worse when massive five-star steam cruisers flew past, their wake nearly causing the felucca to
capsize. We all wished we paid the extra money to be pampered on the steam cruiser, instead of watching Cheech and Chong get progressively more stoned.
After being warned about the
deadly parasites in the water, we shook our heads firmly when offered the chance to take a swim in the Nile. But after dinner, we saw Cheech and Chong washing our dishes in the Nile – ignoring the floating carcasses cruising by the boat and the sewage spilling into the water.
On the second night after we’d moored, we were warned about a village
thief operating in the area. While sitting by the fire and playing drinking games with some hot Canadians, the Captain spotted the thief and read him the riot act. Before going to sleep on the felucca at 11.30pm, the girls on board were worried about getting robbed, but the captain assured us there would be no problems. He did this while blazing up a doobie in his little Dutch oven room. The big steam cruisers continued to blitz past us every 30 minutes.
I woke up startled by the sound of the sail flapping, and instantly realised we were in trouble when I couldn't see land. I looked at my watch and it was 4.10am. I screamed at the captain – “Wake up and sail us back to shore!” The angry village thief must have removed the anchor from the sand while we were
asleep. We’d been drifting for up to four hours, and could have easily been hit by one of the big cruisers.
It ended up taking Yousef about two hours to get us to shore due to a lack of wind. Zac was still zonked out in the "magic room" doing what he does best – bugger all.
That night on land in the Aswan marketplace, I negotiated the sale of an ornamental shisha. After getting the money from an ATM, I returned to purchase the shisha. In that five minutes, the same salesman forgot the negotiated price and increased it by 200 per cent. Next thing, we're trading insults and threatening each other with violence.
Egypt is one country I'll never
forget – for all the wrong reasons.
Saxon Cheng
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