Jack’s Cairo Chronicles

We are in day 2 of our 5 week trip.
We purchased all the flights back in January.

Cairo->Bangkok
Bangkok->Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai -> Hanoi (via Bangkok)
Siem Reap->Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur->Manila
Manila->Seattle (via Honolulu)

We are gonna take 3 weeks to get from Hanoi to Siem Reap via ground transports

We made hotel reservations in every city that we fly into,since those are “hard” dates.

Every other date is soft: we aren’t sure when we will arrive, so we will make reservations a couple of days in advance after we our schedule firms up.

So this afternoon, we are in Bangkok. We leave tomorrow for Chiang Mai.
I was perusing our hotel reservations for Chiang Mai.

I noticed I have a pre-paid, non-refundable room for July 28 for 3 nights via www.agoda.com.

If you notice the date on this post you will notice that tomorrow (relative to the day this post was written) is not July 28th, but JUNE 28th.

My darling wife was sitting across the table from me when I gasped and said
“Oh you are fucking kidding me”.

Kaddee had just been saying that our hotel, Raming Lodge Hotel, looked like a gorgeous place, with a spa and how she was going to get a massage and maybe a pedicure while we were there.

It took a minute before I could summon the courage to tell her

Uh, honey.. we may not have a room.

I explained that I had obviously been suffering from teh dumb the day I made the reservation.

She got the guidebooks down from the shelf of the hotel we are staying at, Wendy House in Bangkok, and started looking for alternatives.

She is a trooper.

I went online to the agoda.com website and clicked on the “chat live” button.

I explained the situation and we waited.

and waited.

The online help finally came back and said

We can change your reservation, they have a room for the new dates, however the rate has gone up and you will have to pay the difference.

I held my breath and asked

how much.

The answer:

$5.13

I thought, well $5/night is really not much of a stupid tax to pay, sure.

But it was $5.13 total for all 3 nights.

Sign me up!

Agoda.com had become my first choice for hotel rooms the last time we were in SE Asia. This customer service really stands out and means I will use them whenever possible and recommend them to anyone that needs a room in SE Asia. (I believe they are also doing rooms in Europe now)

I am sitting in Bangkok drinking a Tiger as I type this.

In the depths of my “i really hate egypt” moods, I was convinced that I would not leave egypt alive.

I was sure that Egypt would have one more surprise for me.
Like my plane being hijacked, or crashing into the sea.

I did a small jig in the Cairo airport, but held my breath until we touched down
in Bangkok.

I made it out alive.

FYE.

I added another count down timer till our lockdown is over.

There has been some waffling on this date:

“we will re-test everyone in 2 days and if there are no more cases we may lift the quarantine”

But if they retest, and there are more positives….. I don’t really want to contemplate that…

Update:  To no one’s surprise they did not retest anybody.

And the kicker: The students that tested positive and were hospitilized have been released from the hospital and roaming the streets of Cairo. And we, who tested negative are still stuck in lockdown.

It is times like these when I think the egyptians deserve their government and vice versa.

Well it is official:

5 students from Seton Hall have tested positive for H1N1. They look fine (they had them coralled in a corner with surgical masks on).

The dorm is locked down till June 15th.

That means no Dahab trip for us.

It is going to be a loonnngg week.

I know we probably sound like whiners:

“Wah. I can’t go on vacation…”

while some folks are sick and hospitalized.

I would still bitch, but go along with the quarantine, if it actually does any good. But it doesn’t.

Doctors from the Ministry of “Health” come and go freely, with no masks, no gloves, nada.

So there is another disease vector.

And all the students are hanging around in the common areas. Not smart.

And some of the RA staff are wearing masks…. strung around their necks.

They have done throat swabs on every resident. I imagine if a single additional test comes back positive they are gonna lock down the entire place for at least a few more days.

Then guess what: there will be more cases! “Gee, where are all these cases coming from.”

Good thing they are killing all the pigs.

I actually walked the perimeter of the building yesterday, testing all of the fire doors. They are all padlocked (and have been for 3 years. Another genius move).

I eye balled the fence surrounding the basketball court.

There is one section of wall that is only 4 feet high, with a 4 foot fence on top of that. If one were to get over that, one would have to balance on top of a 12 foot high wall, with broken glass embedded into the top.  And then jump down from the 12 foot high wall into an alley. And hope that alley goes somewhere.

All while the guards on inside are standing around and the cops and Ministry of Health security personnel are milling about on the outside.

I am considering it.

So, here we are, still stuck in our little slice of heaven.

Still no news from the Ministry of Health about when or if we will be released.

There is now 15 hours until our plane leaves for Dahab. We are packed and our bags are by the door incase we get “permission” to leave the building.

The doctor (who normally visits the dorm 3 days/week for office hours and is stuck here like the rest of us) said that Insha’allah the Ministry officials will be here soon (it is 10:15pm now) to let us know the results of some of the swabs and hopefully a timeframe for their decision.

Now, their decision may be “48 more hours of quarantine”.

So it is looking unlikely that we will escape to Dahab for our vacation.

If it gets delayed by more than a day or so, it becomes less worth making the trip, what with having to buy new tickets and still having to get back here to meet our packing/paperwork obligations prior to our final departure.

The good doctor kd is taking this hard. I am used to spending 2 or 3 days in the flat without leaving. She is getting stir crazy, and the control freak in her is having trouble with not having control of her destiny.

Of course tomorrow may be a lot less rosy for me as well. I am currently drinking the last beer in the house! :-O

BTW: FYE is an acronym used by AUC (at least they used to) as part of their orientation for new students. It officially stands for First Year Experience. I have redefined it to express my more heartfelt emotions about living here.

2 residents of the AUC Dorm have been diagnosed with swine flu. The building is locked down by the Ministry of Health. No one can enter, no one can leave.

We figured:

“bah, nobody enforces any rules in Egypt, we should be able to just stroll on out, we’re FACULTY. They wouldn’t DARE stop us.”

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.  The doors are locked and there are many men standing in front of the doors. They are very apologetic and look very sheepish, but “Mish mumkin”

Hopefully the quarantine will be lifted today around 6pm, pending tests.

We are supposed to fly to Dahab tomorrow.

If they do lift the quarantine,  or we manage to go over the wall, we are headed to a friends apartment for the night. And then leave from there for the airport.

Insha’allah.

Update: we just got throat swabs (and not in a good way).

It was the doctors knocking on the door at 3:30AM.

Hopefully we will know more later today, but I am not optimistic.

It ain’t exactly Rolling Stone….

and we aren’t on the cover….

and it ain’t photos of us,but…

Allow us to toot our own horns for a moment.

So a friend of ours asked if we had any good pictures from our trip to Zanzibar.
She was doing an article for “Horus” magazine, the on-board magazine of Egypt Air.

We sent her a bunch and she picked 4.

2 of Kaddee’s and 2 of mine.

Our photos will be in the June/July issue of Egypt Air’s Horus magazine!!

The pictures are here.

The first 2 are Kaddee’s, the 2nd 2 are mine.

The mag isn’t online, but I have been promised a .pdf of the article. I will probably put that up after the issue goes to print.

We will have to fly somewhere to get hard copies.

This is our stepping stone to greatness!<snork>

Look left.

Swine flu paranoia strikes Cairo, Egypt.

Pigs to be slaughtered.

and

Slaughtering has already started

Yes there are pigs in Egypt. Many of them. They are usually raised by the Christian garbage recyclers. They are used to turn garbage into protein.

The meat is available in some stores, butchers and restaurants. It isn’t the best pork I have ever had, but it is tolerable. Except the bacon. The bacon, from at least one store, tastes like fishmeal wrapped in saran wrap.

Anyway…

It is unclear to me whether or not the meat will be destroyed or just butchered and sold as it normally is.

I doubt with the paranoia about this that the meat will be sold. Especially since the government has closed at least one pig butchery in Alexandria.

It will be interesting to see if all the pigs are butchered and if this overwhelmingly Muslim state will allow pigs back into Egypt or if this will be used as an excuse to ban the animals.

Edit: May 2nd. Yesterday, we went to our favorite pizza place, Maison Thomas. It is own and operated by Coptic Christians and normally sells pork products, both as groceries (ie: a rack of pork chops, sliced ham etc) and on pizza. We were told “No pork products.”

I was unable to determine if this was a voluntary withdrawal of their pork offerings or if they were ordered to do so, or  if they were just unable to obtain pork.

I find it hard to believe that pork is no longer available due to the slaughter.