DAY 26 – A’WIGHT GIZA
I saw the pyramids on the Giza Plateau. I hugged the pyramids. I climbed the pyramids and I walked through the pyramids into a burial chamber. I have wanted to do this since I first found out about their existence as a kid. I was beyond stoked.
By the time I got back from Giza at nine I was in definite need of a cold beer so a Norwegian guy called Karl and I set out to find a few cold bevies. Our search led us to a grubby Egyptian character that knew where an off licence with a fridge was.
I return for this valuable information we had to return the favour. You see his ‘brother’ was having a ‘wedding’ the ‘next day’ and he needed our help to purchase some foreign alcohol from the Sheraton in Cairo. In short he wanted to take advantage of our duty free allowance to buy some foreign piss because all the stuff you can buy locally makes petrol taste good. He offered to pay for all of our taxis and I couldn’t see any way of getting scammed (and it was going to lead to cold beer!) so we figured what the heck. 20 minutes later we were outside the Sheraton meeting Grubby’s so called brother who was a fat well dressed Egyptian man. The fat man led us into the duty free shop where he maxed out my duty free allowance on alcohol and cigarettes and paid for everything with cash from a fat roll of Egyptian notes. They couldn’t use Karl’s allowance as he had been in the country too long, which didn’t please the fat man at all. Outside again the fat man was barely bothering to keep up the pretence of the wedding story and when he opened the boot of his Mercedes it was full of bags just like the one he just bought with my passport. By this stage the ‘brothers’ were having a heated discussion as they renegotiated Grubby’s fee because of the inability to use of Karl’s passport. We didn’t give a fuck though as we were on our way to the cold beer shop :)
Back at the hostel we joined a group of travellers and settled in for a beer or two. The most interesting character in the group was an Egyptian guy who owned the hostel. He told us that he is loaded and that he is a doctor during the day and that he only set up the hostel because he saw what a rough deal the travellers in Cairo were getting and he wanted to help us out. These stories turned out to be what are called ‘Egyptian lies’ which basically means that he was full of shit. Soon it turned out that nearly every bastard in the circle has a small stash of marijuana and the joints start circulating with alarming regularity. In no time at all I am stoned as fuck and was the weakest link (goodbye). Some time after this Doctor’s minder leaves to pick up his ‘girlfriend’. Now I could be wrong on this because of my diminished mental state and because most of it happened in Arabic but I swear the Minder was popping out to pick up a hooker for the Doctor. Thirty minutes later the Minder turns up with this tartly as looking Thai woman and the first thing she says is “Hero Doctor”. I nearly cried and I looked at Karl who was laughing too but I have no idea if it was for the same reason. Around 5am I go to bed and the Asian lady has long since gone having not left the smokers circle with the Doctor or anyone.
