The Buzz Bin

Several folks on Twitter have asked for a recap from my recent trip to Egypt.  As promised, here it is.  The trip definitely provided new perspective on several things.

1) Egypt cares about it’s tourism business. And that makes sense as it’s revived since the 90s becoming one its largest industries.  All of the tour guides, museum and site staff, hotel staff, and restaurant waiters were extremely courteous. Much more so than anything I experience here in the United States.  Our worst experience was at the one American restaurant we visited, the Hard Rock Cafe – Cairo.

The government invests in toursim, too.  There are actual collegiate programs training tour guides.  And because of 1997 Islamic fundamentalist attack on tourists, you could see armed protection almost everywhere.  The police are officially called tourism police, and are dressed in black. While reassuring, it was also ominous.

Overall, we could stand to learn a thing or two from Egypt’s approach to customer service.

2) The Egyptian Social Media culture centers on Facebook (see Now Is Gone for full write-up), though there’s also a vibrant blogging culture, too. Their mobile handset infrastructure was more advanced than ours with better features and robust broadband access. Internet access occurs primarily on these handsets. It was fascinating to see how a different society reacted to and embraced social media.

3) You don’t find many Egyptian restaurants in the United States.  There’s a reason for that.

4) The Egyptian people were very friendly and quite humorous. I found our conversations to be friendly, enjoyable, and really, much more life-centric than the average casual chat here.

5) At the same time, great danger still exists in Egypt as in much of the Middle East.  We did meet a few Islamic fundamentalists, and they were just outright pushy and nasty, scorning my wife, and making her wear a hood while we toured one site. 

Ironically, on our last day in Egypt, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.  The general impression I got from the local civilians was one of fear.  It could easily happen there, and in fact, Egypt, too, suffers from autocratic rule.  Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas  (See Shel Israel’s full profile) has done much to highlight the government’s wrongs — in spite of frequent beatings.

I never revealed my Jewish heritage in Egypt.  It seemed like a mistake, and within a six-day span I heard several backward remarks about Jews, including one comment about killing them all.

6) The Aswan damn’s environmental impact has been significant.  The agricultural Nile has shrunk north of the Damn, and rain has ceased in the same territory.  Crocodiles no longer frequent this part of the river. At the same time, it has brought great boon to Egypt in power, fishing, and agriculture for Lake Nasser area.

Folks who are interested can see a full set of Egyptian photos on Flickr including the pyramids, and the temples of Isis and Karnak.