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Ron Mexico said:
Gigal park is such a strange but great spot.

I just booked a flight for Egypt for new years. I'll spend about a week there. My wife had a job opportunity in Cairo last year, but I had no interest in living there, but I am excited to visit. I plan to go to Jordan pretty soon as well. I have a friend working there and through my wife's work they have a safety course for traveling in dangerous areas that we need to take. It sounds interesting, things like what to do if your driver gets shot and dealing with terrorism.

The place I haven't been that ive always wanted is UAE. I'm going to get over there soon as well. I'm pretty happy to be living in Ethiopia for a few years. They have so many direct flights for cheap to places I want to go. I'm planning for my birthday in February to go to seychelles or one of the other islands in that area. Having been stuck in a country with a closed border I might go a little nuts with travel for awhile.
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str8line said:
I was in Egypt this spring(and UAE). While they were cool to visit I probably won't go back. Cairo is the only place I've been that seems like it could erupt into civil war at any moment. It has massive issues and I got a bad feeling there. Was actually relieved to GTFO.

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Great pictures and thanks for sharing. Did you venture out of Cairo? We booked a trip for this spring to Egypt and we're going to hit quite a bit, going all the way down to Abu Simbel. We have a couple days there before we fly down to Luxor and so one of the days we were going to take a tour down to Amarna, which is really isolated and takes about 4 hours driving south to get there. That's the one I'm most concerned about, especially when Ron is talking about "what to do if your driver gets shot." It would just be us with a driver.

I've also wanted to do UAE, though I'm not sure when we'd do that. It's really one of those ones where if you're planning such a big vacation to some place so far away, there are definitely different options, so I think if or when we ever went, it'd be part of a different trip where that was a layover or something.
 
Ron Mexico said:
Gigal park is such a strange but great spot.

I just booked a flight for Egypt for new years. I'll spend about a week there. My wife had a job opportunity in Cairo last year, but I had no interest in living there, but I am excited to visit. I plan to go to Jordan pretty soon as well. I have a friend working there and through my wife's work they have a safety course for traveling in dangerous areas that we need to take. It sounds interesting, things like what to do if your driver gets shot and dealing with terrorism.

The place I haven't been that ive always wanted is UAE. I'm going to get over there soon as well. I'm pretty happy to be living in Ethiopia for a few years. They have so many direct flights for cheap to places I want to go. I'm planning for my birthday in February to go to seychelles or one of the other islands in that area. Having been stuck in a country with a closed border I might go a little nuts with travel for awhile.
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Wife? You got married? Again!

Sucker!
 
infection said:
Great pictures and thanks for sharing. Did you venture out of Cairo? We booked a trip for this spring to Egypt and we're going to hit quite a bit, going all the way down to Abu Simbel. We have a couple days there before we fly down to Luxor and so one of the days we were going to take a tour down to Amarna, which is really isolated and takes about 4 hours driving south to get there. That's the one I'm most concerned about, especially when Ron is talking about "what to do if your driver gets shot." It would just be us with a driver.

I've also wanted to do UAE, though I'm not sure when we'd do that. It's really one of those ones where if you're planning such a big vacation to some place so far away, there are definitely different options, so I think if or when we ever went, it'd be part of a different trip where that was a layover or something.
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Sounds like an amazing trip. I bet it will be mindblowing! We just did the pyramids and the Egyptian Museum so we didn't leave Cairo. They were amazing. If I could afford security, a quality driver and nothing but five-star hotels I would spend more time there. But I hate tours, so it was sketchy, especially with a 17-year-old daughter. Men rule Egypt, and they are some gnarly dudes. The locals near Giza are extremely pushy, even the hoteliers. You have to be strong to the point of being rude or they will take advantage of you, and they are pros at it. It's ok for a minute if you're an intrepid traveller but it gets old fast. Most flights arrive well after midnight and our 45 minute drive to Giza at 3 AM was wild as hell. Read about the way they drive, it's all true. I'd wager Cairo has some of the worst drivers/traffic/roads in the world; it's like they have a death wish. From there it just continued to be weird. Taking advantage of tourists is ingrained in their culture, so read as much as you can about dealing with it and steel yourself before you go. I would only use reputable well-known tour companies if I had my family with me and planned to travel cross-country. One caveat is that we were there this past April and there was not much tourism going on coming out of covid, so it might be different for you if you can blend in more than us.
 
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str8line said:
Sounds like an amazing trip. I bet it will be mindblowing! We just did the pyramids and the Egyptian Museum so we didn't leave Cairo. They were amazing. If I could afford security, a quality driver and nothing but five-star hotels I would spend more time there. But I hate tours, so it was sketchy, especially with a 17-year-old daughter. Men rule Egypt, and they are some gnarly dudes. The locals near Giza are extremely pushy, even the hoteliers. You have to be strong to the point of being rude or they will take advantage of you, and they are pros at it. It's ok for a minute if you're an intrepid traveller but it gets old fast. Most flights arrive well after midnight and our 45 minute drive to Giza at 3 AM was wild as hell. Read about the way they drive, it's all true. I'd wager Cairo has some of the worst drivers/traffic/roads in the world; it's like they have a death wish. From there it just continued to be weird. Taking advantage of tourists is ingrained in their culture, so read as much as you can about dealing with it and steel yourself before you go. I would only use reputable well-known tour companies if I had my family with me and planned to travel cross-country. One caveat is that we were there this past April and there was not much tourism going on coming out of covid, so it might be different for you if you can blend in more than us.
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A lot of this stuff is why I had 0 interest in living there.

My flight plan right now is to get there Christmas day, thankfully its a short flight for me. We will stay a few days in Cairo at the Ritz which, fortunately we get a good deal at so its like $150 a night and probably a suite upgrade. We plan to hire a driver to the pyramids and a couple other things for a day trip. I found some decent companies online with good reviews that seem pretty cheap right now so they will drive us there and take care of tickets and bring us back. Its not my favorite way to vacation but it seems easier and safer for here. Then we plan to fly down for a few days south to a resort beach like area called Hurghada I think ill stay at the Sheraton resort there (similar good deal as above). It looks like a decent beach area with plenty to do and I can relax through new years before heading back. I was really hoping to see the New years fireworks show at the pyramids but this works out as well.

My wife has a work trip to UAE in February so I guess ill go with since I really want to go. I was hoping to go to Seychelles or canary islands around then for my birthday but UAE is high on my list to check out. I got accepted into an MBA there a long time ago and decided against it but I really got interested then to check it out.

Most tourism places are struggling still and people are either more willing to treat you nice and give discounts or the opposite of trying to rip everyone off and being very aggressive. It makes trips a lot more stressful these days especially in a country that isnt particularly safe.
 
Ron Mexico said:
Maybe should take a day trip to Luxor as well.
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The flights are pretty cheap. We’re going through Memphis Tours and their website contains probably a package for anything you want. You can even just tell them what you want to do and they’ll arrange it.
 
infection said:
The flights are pretty cheap. We’re going through Memphis Tours and their website contains probably a package for anything you want. You can even just tell them what you want to do and they’ll arrange it.
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I'm in hurghada now, it's much nicer than I thought. I couldn't find flights to anywhere that didn't require me to go back to Cairo. Usually you can fly to Luxor and back easily but these days there are no flights one direction and only one flight every other day the other way. But I arranged a tour for tomorrow, which looks great. The downside is it's a long drive there and back. But Luxor has been the most consistent place people have told me you must go. Hurghada has plenty to do in the tourist way and decent food/shopping, but no real museums or historical things to look at, just a relaxing vacation area. All of the tourist activities are really cheap though. So for a family it's probably a solid place to spend a few days. They have boat rides, fishing, scuba diving, snorkeling, atvs, camel rides, BBQs, dancing, and all that kind of stuff. Usually it's around 25ish bucks a person.

Side note Cairo is one of the weirdest design airports I've been in. It's kind of confusing. Also I did visa on arrival and it's easier than arranging ahead of time. They literally need no documents or info from them just cash in usd or Egypt pounds and they hand you a visa sticker regardless of where you are from.
 
Ron Mexico said:
I'm in hurghada now, it's much nicer than I thought. I couldn't find flights to anywhere that didn't require me to go back to Cairo. Usually you can fly to Luxor and back easily but these days there are no flights one direction and only one flight every other day the other way. But I arranged a tour for tomorrow, which looks great. The downside is it's a long drive there and back. But Luxor has been the most consistent place people have told me you must go. Hurghada has plenty to do in the tourist way and decent food/shopping, but no real museums or historical things to look at, just a relaxing vacation area. All of the tourist activities are really cheap though. So for a family it's probably a solid place to spend a few days. They have boat rides, fishing, scuba diving, snorkeling, atvs, camel rides, BBQs, dancing, and all that kind of stuff. Usually it's around 25ish bucks a person.

Side note Cairo is one of the weirdest design airports I've been in. It's kind of confusing. Also I did visa on arrival and it's easier than arranging ahead of time. They literally need no documents or info from them just cash in usd or Egypt pounds and they hand you a visa sticker regardless of where you are from.
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I watched a youtube video of some guy scuba diving in the Red Sea. It actually looked pretty incredible. Let me see if I can find it real fast...

This isn't the one but it's a good one...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vU-ArMrN5Q
 
infection said:
I watched a youtube video of some guy scuba diving in the Red Sea. It actually looked pretty incredible. Let me see if I can find it real fast...

This isn't the one but it's a good one...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vU-ArMrN5Q
Click to expand...

I did a couple hours scuba diving today. Despite the fact it was kinda cold and windy it was really awesome. We went to a spot to scuba with dolphins as well but they didn't come around today, but the seem to come most days. But there were lots of other things to look at. We did a private speed boat tour to good scuba spots for 4 hours and it cost 50 usd total.
 
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