My Wikimania 2008 experience in Egypt so far in two words: not fun.
My problem perhaps was thinking there was a reasonable way of getting from Cairo airport directly to Alexandria by some means of conveyance. The Cairo airport isn’t very welcoming from the outset. Note to CAI airport: cramming both departing and arriving passengersthrough one small doorway is not a smart idea.
After exiting the airport immigration/baggage area, I’m hounded by scores of limo and taxi drivers trying to scam visitors into a hotel or a cab ride. I try to lose these hangers on and head right to the Information counter. The one guy with a computer screen of flight info knew nothing about buses and trains to Alexandria, and it seemed like he barely understood my English question. After seeing my failure to get anything useful from INFORMATION the limo drivers slapped the “clueless fresh meat” label on my forehead, and again swirled around me giving dubious information and trying to ply their wares. Even when I said no, they trailed along like Pikmin asking to “help.” I’ve travelled to too many sketchy places in Asia to fall for that trap.
I do a lap around the airport terminal and there is no tourist information booth or other helpers, only paid services counters who I never trust for general info.
I finally found a security guard who points to a location in the distance saying buses to Alexandria are out there. Walk across the sky bridge to an adjacent modern mall, drag luggage up steps, down steps, through sand, under a railing and across broken pavement. Along the way two drivers insist they can drive me to Alexandria for 400 LE. After tailing me for a while, they realize they’re not going to get me. They turn tail and give up.
I stumble around the parking lot asking a few folks about the mythical bus to Alexandria, who keep pointing out on the horizon. Maybe they were saying, “Walk to Wikimania.”
After finding two different sets of buses, neither the ones I’m looking for, I got to a covered depot with no English destination signs, only Arabic. One person said a bus to Alexandria leaves at 7am, one said 730am, one said ticket was 35 Egyptian pounds (LE) another said it was 10 LE (hard to believe for a four hour bus ride). Buses looked rickety and rusty. Couldn’t find anything for the life of me. Went back to fellow who pointed it out, and said, “I can’t find anything there.” He laughed in annoyance, held out his hand to grab mine, and dragged me to one white shack, among many, that had only an Arabic sign and coach bus photo. Walked to the back, cracked open the door to find some attendant sleeping on a makeshift cot. “Hey, this guy want Alexandrina.” Laconic attendant rises slowly, insists the bus was coming in 5 minutes. “How long it would take to get to the destination?” He said four hours. Ouch. “Doesn’t train take two and a half hours?” I said, optimistically. “Yes, but you have to go to downtown Cairo to take that, by that time might was well take four hour bus.” He has a point. If it’s true.
So I wait, in the hot open air depot with the snarl of rusty diesel buses, all of the commuter type — no air conditioning, open windows, plastic fiberglas chairs. The only “coaches” look worn and aren’t going where I’m going. Twenty minutes later of a “five minute” wait, I knock on the shack again and ask, what about the 5 minutes. He says bus should be there at 730 for the ride. Wait a bit with him, and nothing shows. He said one comes every hour. But I’m not convinced.
I figure it’s all too risky. My time is better spent doing the book edits I owe New York, something I thought I could do later that night in cozy Alexandria in a hotel by the beach. I’m not even sure nightfall is practical on this supposed four hour bus ride. (It might actually be more like 6-8 hours, as my friend who visited Egypt/Alexandria recently said she endured because of traffic and closed roads.)
So instead, I wimped out and opted for a “first world” solution. Remembering the beacon of hope, the Novotel sign out in the distance, I dragged my luggage across the parking lot to the police station, asked for the Novotel airport hotel. Took three tries to find a police guy in white military outfit who spoke enough English to understand what I was talking about. Doing sign language for “sleepytime” (hands clasped together, head cocked left, eyes closed and snoring sound) helped.
Walking across the auto toll lanes that don’t have a crosswalk, I ambled to the airport hotel at 8 am. Realize I’m going to have to pay full rack rate for a room at 116 euros, but that sounded much less painful than hypothetical bus arriving “real soon now” to who knows where arriving hopefully some time before sunset.
Asked the hotel checkin guy, “Is Internet included in the price?”
He chuckled and said, “No no no…” What a dense idiot I am, an Accor business airport hotel *giving* you Internet?
OK, lay it on me you scam artists. What was the Internet pricing. He looks it up and quotes 147 LE.
That’s around US $27.75 for 24 hours of Internet access.
Yes, for the price of nearly two months of broadband Internet access in China, give me 24 hours in an Accor hotel. Why not. I’ve got no fight left in me. It’s already 20 hours of travel into this endeavour, and I’ve been foiled at every turn to get to Alexandria — no English language help, no clear signage, conflicting reports and waiting at a hot smelly bus depot. (And I haven’t even mentioned the obscenely high price for 3G web surfing while roaming that zapped nearly US $20 from my phone card when accessing just a handful of web sites.)
So I’m tired and defenseless. Am I going to argue? I slap down the Amex. Just throw it all on there. At least they’ll check me in this early in the morning.
I’m in the Novotel lobby awaiting my room. Just ticking the minutes down when the formal Wikimania bus arrives tomorrow to get me to the conference, when I get to see some friendly faces, and don’t have to deal with this whole slog.
I get up to check to see if the room’s ready.
“Not yet. Five minutes, sir.”
