the belgian queens

the egyptians: as many of you may know, i've been having a few issues with the egyptians. i was feeling quite burdened with guilt about it (the fact that i hated them) until i discussed my views with quite a few other tourists, and found that i wasn't the only one.

for more than a hundred years, rich western tourists have been floating up and down the bilharzia, handing out ludicrous sums of money to the poor on its banks. because this country is so poor, and because the people who visit tend to be so rich (and part of tour groups), everyone here has perfected the art of milking money out of the unsuspecting tourist.

this has impacted on me in a number of ways. the first is that it's difficult to take photos of anything involving people: everyone demands money. i was on elephantine island in aswan a few days ago, and after taking a photo of a colourful window, i was chased by an old woman demanding cash for the picture of her neighbour's house. another old lady stopped me on the street and begged me: "please! please take a photo of my cat! it's so cute!" i had my camera out and took a photo of her stupid cat, at which point she demanded baksheesh (a tip). i as indignant. it's SO unpleasant! many of the people i've spoken to have been subject to very elaborate tricks to get their money which are impressive in their scope.

the second is that you can't have a conversation with anyone about anything, because everyone's trying to sell you something. as benign as the conversations seem, you invariably end up in someone's shop or even house with them either demanding money for something or trying to sell you fake papyrus "50% off, only for you my friend and only today". when walking through a market, it's open season.

the worst part for me is that i've been absolutely unable to improve my arabic because i can't have any conversations.

of course there are exceptions, but they are incredibly few, and when you encounter them, you feel so suspicious that you're unable to relax into the pleasure of interaction. of the other tourists i've met, i haven't met a single one who has thought the egyptians were pleasant, genuine people, and many are making a beeline to the various airports to cut their trips short. every single person i've met who is trying to learn arabic (and i say this without exception) has all but given up for lack of people to practice with.

so - does this mean i'm having a shit time? not at all. i've adjusted my expectations to not involve friendly chats with the locals, have forgotten my dreams of speaking arabic in the near future, and i'm having a rather wild time with the other tourists that i meet. egypt itself is an amazing country, and i do know how to enjoy myself :)

so - what have i been up to? after heading up to abu simbel, i stayed in aswan for a few days checking the place out, eating heaps of pastries, dancing on the roof of my hotel, and generally hanging out with people and being lazy. on saturday, i hopped onto a felucca for a three day float down the bilharzia. the trip was wonderful. we had two boats - on mine there was with a 23 year old guy, nick (which means fuck in arabic), from melbourne who was returning from a 3 month tour of the middle east. also a 21 year old guy (guillaume) from montreal who was doing a world tour and trying to pick up as many languages as possible on the way. he already spoke 7 languages (including arabic which he had to give up whilst in egypt), and was even going to china to learn chinese later this year. don't you hate it when there are younger, better versions of yourself running around? terrible! he inspired me to get my language study on track, and also to get over to montreal pour les beaux hommes. the other boat with us had 4 korean cousins, with whom we spent the evenings playing korean circle clapping games involving physical punishment for errors. delightful.

at night we were moored to the banks, and lay in our sleeping bags watching the full moon and listening to the creak of the wooden feluccas as they were rocked by the gentle movements of the bilharzia.

during the day, we read, ate, chatted and snoozed on the deck. nothing of note occured, except that our boat sprung a leak at one stage and soaked our bags, so we had to evacuate the vessel whilst the hole was found and plugged.

we arrived in kom ombo on monday morning, and stopped by a few temples on our way back to luxor.

i've been in luxor now for three days. tonight i leave on an overnight bus to dahab, on the red sea in sinai, for the last two weeks of my stay in egypt. i'm keen to get some trekking and hiking done in the beautiful deserts of sinai.

of course most social interactions go unmentioned, but i wanted to tell you about one in particular: the belgian queens.

i had met a guy from antwerp on gaydar, a gay chat/personals site. i thought it would be good to meet up, as he and two of his friends were staying in luxor for a week, and i'm quite partial to passing an interesting evening.

the belgian queens were staying at the sherraton, which was the first indication to me that all was not right. i rocked up to the hotel during the day so i could leave him a note telling them of my whereabouts. the actual hotel sickened me - it was in a really poor part of luxor, and had huge fences and guards around it to keep reality at bay. there was an egyptian band at the front door which began playing as soon as a tourist was in sight, and a huge foyer with leather couches and carpets and whatnot and whathaveyou. i left the note and departed hastily.

at 9pm, i was to meet the boys in the foyer of the hotel. i was already a bit stoned, because i had been chatting and smoking on the roof of my own hotel with another belgian guy (raymond-andre), and we had spent a rather pleasant afternoon together.

in the foyer of the sherraton, the three of them were sitting in the middle of the room, legs crossed, sitting bolt upright with one hand up in the air, next to their heads, holding cigarettes a la audrey hepburn. it was so camp i wanted to laugh out loud. we made our introductions, and then moved out onto the balcony where i refused a drink a few times (who wants to pay 30 egyptian pounds for a beer when they sell them for 6 in the street?) before i was forced to have a stella. the guy i had made contact with had a face that looked like a snake, and the boy next to me had plucked out most of his eyebrows and drawn them back on about half a centimetre lower than they should have been. i couldn't really tell which gender he was, and because of the weird eyebrows, after looking at him for a while i couldn't tell whether he was facing upways or downways, leftways or rightways. being stoned didn't help.

what followed next was about 20 minutes of hideous interaction. the boys sat there with smug, superior expressions on their faces sighing loudly or sniggering when i made comments, and offering none of their own. when i told them that i was staying in a hotel that "even had water...sometimes!" and cost only 10 pounds a night (~2.5 aussie dollars) it confirmed their superior status and the conversation all but ground to a halt.

i asked one guy what he did, and he said "oh...i work..." implying that i didn't. i didn't really know what to say - it was so silly. finally one of the queens broke the dead-lock and started talking about something, but it was at this moment that i had the misfortune of tipping beer into a part of my face that didn't have a mouth in it. it streamed off my cheek and down the front of my shirt. everyone froze and there was a deafening silence for a few seconds whilst i realised what had happened. i made an accurate and appropriate summary of the situation: "whoops! i missed my mouth!" at which there was a furious exchange of glances and raising of plucked eyebrows before a loud discussion in flemish and much scoffing.

i'd had enough. i skolled the rest of my beer, placed it gently on the table and said that i needed to go to the toilet (to the general rolling of eyes and more exchanged glances). i walked back into the foyer, past the water feature, out through the big front doors and the coin-operated band, and then ran down the street through the warm, noisy, dirty, free air of my egyptian evening.

at first i felt a bit guilty about not paying for my beer, but then i realised that it was a victory - a victory for me and a victory for all australians.

as i walked through the streets on my way home, i felt an affinity for the people of egypt that have been forced into their unsavoury behavioural patterns under the weight of history and socio-economics. there was, however, no excuse for the way the belgian queens behaved, and everything from the overstated luxury of their hotel to their manicured nails disgusted me. the contrast made me realise all the more just how much i love to travel - to bargain down a felafel at the corner street stall, to join the throngs of locals in the back of a pick-up, to wander through ancient sites alone in the late afternoon, to play russian roulette with the nozzles at my $2 hotels: to go my own way.

HOORAY FOR INDEPENDENT TRAVEL!