An Unsightly Scene & Practice

Finally lunch, it was supposed to be the best rotisserie chicken in town. It really did look good on the grill while they were cooking, but the portion was so small I wasn’t sure we actually ate a piece of chicken!!! One, I was certain the chicken size might be half of the US one at best, and then the portion was supposed to be half a chicken. Now I would think half of chicken includes a wing AND a leg, no there were four half-parts in one chicken here since each person had a quarter only. Hey, but it was all fun.


As for cleanliness, it’s all relative. As we entered into the restaurant, this woman was sitting on the floor, making pita bread. She bided us to come for a closer look, in one basket, there were the pita bread, and in the other basket, it was US dollar bills. Basically, she was asking for tips just to take a peek at the dough and pita making. I didn’t want to think where her hands were as I didn’t see any water for washing nearby….

The “tipping” practices were everywhere. Everyone wanted money and not subtle about it either. You wanted to take a picture with anyone, you paid. You wanted to use the bathroom, you paid. You wanted to look closer, you paid….This even happened to our tour guide, we could see she had to pass out money here and there to grease the wheels….

By the end of the tour, all of our tour mates (including us) believed there‘s a scamp going on here as no one would have small changes. So all we Americans had in the smallest bill is $1 or $5. Even in Egyptian pounds, there were no small bills ($1 Egyptian pound is the smallest and you hardly saw those anywhere). No one wanted to give you small bills as you would then give a smaller tip…Before the trip, we already knew to get a bunch of $1 bills to bring with us as this kind of practices were expected everywhere around the world in underdevelopment countries. But this had to be one of the worst I had seen, partly because I never imagined Egypt to be a poor country, but the people certainly acted that way.

The City of Unfinished Buildings

There are the rules, and then there are rules. I think it is just human nature. Loop holes and loop holes…

In Giza on the way to the Great Pyramids and probably lots of buildings in Cairo too, we passed by many unfinished buildings but yet there are people living in them. It made the roads and the city look very ugly. You could see the steels still sticking out of the top floors, along with satellite dishes. So you knew there were people living in them. Plus the hanging clothes lines to air dry clothes gave it away.

Our escorted guide told us there is a huge loop hole in the tax law there. If a building were not finished, you wouldn’t have to pay property tax. Well, if you didn’t put the top floor up, or you didn’t finish a window opening, etc, the building was not finished. And therefore, no TAX!!!