Where have all the tourists gone?

Egypt is full of tourist traps, it is a “fact” widely circulated in guidebooks, online forums, and even the “scammers” themselves would caution you.

“Going to Pyramid? Bus station this way, come, I show you, sometimes no good people here waiting for tourists, I just want to help,” says a young chap as my sister and I exit the Giza metro station.

Yet our experiences in the last few days tell us, anyone who appears to be too eager to help have something up their sleeve; they are out to “detour” you, telling you the museum is closed for prayer, or the buses are not running on schedule, or the road ahead is blocked for demonstration, and out of good will, they want to show you the “right or safe” route, which ultimately would lead to their shops.

Well, no true harm comes out of these “detours”, except some delays and long talk to decline viewing or buying souvenirs, or sometimes, desperately refusing to accept “gifts” that are literally shoving down your pocket. But what do you expect? when you clearly look foreign, carrying a backpack, visiting touristy sites, with camera hanging down your neck, and you are just a piece of sweet meat, calling out to a swamp of ants to devour you.

So at the Giza metro station, we stick to the direction our guesthouse’ staff has specifically told us: “at the exit, keep to the left, and left again, down a stair, and left again, many buses there to the Pyramid. Many people will come to you, say this and that, no listen.” My sister and I did just that, the exact opposite direction of what the “helpful” guy is trying to show us, and we play dumb by acting that we don’t speak a word of English: “English, la, la faham.” (in Arabic means English, no, no understand).

That is just the beginning of a stream of touts to descent on us, from onboard the bus as it is nearing the Giza Pyramid site, to the uphill path leading to the entrance, right up to inside the Pyramid compound, there’s hardly a few minutes gap without anyone harassing us to view their wares, to take picture with a fee, or to go on a horse or camel tour.

Though we find it annoying, we could not help but start to feel sorry for the touts, as tourist arrival has dwindled sharply since the revolution in January, the once enormous tourism pie is now in short supply, not enough to go around to feed the millions dependent on it for a livelihood. Take the Giza Pyramid for instance, perhaps no one would have come to Cairo and leave without seeing it, yet the site is far from crowded, in fact, you see more camels and horses than tourists.

We have landed in Cairo for four days, nearly everywhere we go, we seem to be the only few tourists around. At our guesthouse, we get full attentive service, as we are the only tourists having breakfast at its dining hall, occasionally, we are joined by Jordanian, Sudanese, and Palestinian on working trip. We have also been to a handicraft souq (covered bazaar), and there, we dine alone in a huge restaurant waited by a dozen of staff, the tables covered in dust from underuse.

At the Giza Pyramid, we meet Said, a 39-year-old from a nearby village, he has been in the tourism trade for more than 20 years, rearing horses and camels to take tourists to tour the desert around the Pyramid compound. “I have never seen so few tourists like this year,” he laments, pleading us to give him some job by taking his horses at a discount.

As much as we hate to cave in to emotional blackmail, as much as we resent locals using small kids to ply their wares, to have those boys barely 7 to 8 years old running up to us, with their big innocent-looking eyes but shrewd trader mannerism, offering to teach us how to take creative shots with Pyramid as the backdrop (bend down and kiss the tip of Pyramid, lean on Pyramid, step on Pyramid, etc…..), we find it difficult to be mean to these people in difficult time, especially when none of them are too persistent nor rude, as long as we state our stand politely, the touts would bother us for a few minutes and soon leave us alone, until another tout tries his luck.

At the end of the day, after more than three hours walking around the Pyramid compound, we decide to go back to Said, he is still waiting there by his horses, it’s already nearing 3pm, an hour away from the winter closing time for the Pyramid site, and he has yet to secure any business for the day. We agree to go with his horses to take a panaromic view of the 9 Pyramids lining up in a straight line, a sight that numerous touts have told us, by drawing with a stick in the sandy ground to illustrate to us the amazing view – three big triangles in the middle, flanked by three small triangles on both sides.

We ride out to a distance, across some small dunes, and under the golden sun rays, there stand a group of Pyramids beneath the blue sky, with the Cairo suburb right behind it, but no sight of 9 Pyramids neatly formed into a straight line, yet we don’t exactly feel shortchanged, as the view is still nevertheless superb.