Lecherous Luxor

Luxor would be an entirely forgettable city if it were not the gateway to so many ancient Egyptian sites. Which is, of course, what drives tourists by the thousands to it and provides a considerable financial windfall to Luxor as a whole.

While the ancient Egyptian sites were chock-full of tourists, taking photos of every inch, climbing and touching wherever there was a sign prohibiting climbing and touching, the taxi drivers and horse carriage drivers spent considerable time trying to convince me that there were almost no customers, and I was the only thing preventing their starvation.

Uber, usually my first tool against the rapacity of taxi drivers, was technically available in Luxor. Still, the two drivers who showed up for me hit me up immediately for more money in addition to the app. This resulted in my pretending not to speak English. Numerous times, I tried using the Uber app, only to have drivers accept the fare, then ask me where I was going, then cancel it. This happened on my last night when I was a few kilometres from my hotel after a long walk to the nicer part of the city for dinner. I ended up legging it after wasting half an hour with half a dozen drivers declining to play by the rules.

The horse carriage drivers were dogged, often following me on foot or horse for ten minutes before finally giving up. The horses were in terrible condition, with bones protruding while they scavenge for food in trash piles. This of course didn’t convince me to partake in their services. Their main clientele seemed to be tour groups, who seemed to have no problem being carted around by half-dead, pitiful creatures. It was also one of the horse carriage operators who offered me a “special massage”, with a handshake, with a peculiar caress with the fingers, which I could only assume was code for a sexual service.

On my first day in Luxor, I walked through the main market, where I got told to “keep walking” by a stall owner after telling another stall owner that I was just walking, which seemed unnecessarily mean even as I laughed it off, and, indeed, kept walking. Later, on the outskirts of the market, I went to pay for my coffee, and was asked to pay six times the going rate for it, apparently being mistaken for an organised tour member. I threw down fifty EGP (the going rate) and walked away. swearing under my breath.

Because of this coffee experience, I ended up spending a lot of time at the McDonald’s, which was probably the worst McDonald’s I have experienced since Hong Kong, often forgetting orders and not bothering with an apology when I enquired about my order, but at least the ordering kiosk didn’t mark up the bill in response to my skin colour.

Before booking my bus ticket back to Cairo, I realised that I would spend too much time back in Cairo before flying out, and that I should really spend some more time in Luxor, but at least in Cairo I could comfortably spend most of the day in coffee shops for little money in comparative, unmolested comfort.