El Tur a weird place....

At the beginning of Ramadan (Early August) I met a guy in Dahab who knew a place that issued 1 year visas rather then the measly 1 month the Mogamma in Cairo were currently offering. I took him up on the offer and the next day we drove to El Tur, El Tur is the administrative capital of South Sinai, I didn't see much of it in the few hours we were there, but I remember thinking it would be interesting to see more of the city.
A month later I got that chance, more friends needed visas (it is really becoming a big problem in Cairo) so we decided to go on a mission to El Tur, we found a hotel that said it was on the beach and we envisioned a few hours doing passport stuff and the rest of the day at the beach.......
So the journey started at 8am, we rented a minibus and were all at the arranged meeting point early and excited. The actual trip there was uneventful, we sang along to the spice girls and ate lots of chipsy (why does traveling make you want to eat so much?) We stopped at a place called Moon beach, most normal people had a coffee, Me and another girl decided to have a beer which was a terrible decision as it meant we needed to pee 10 minutes after getting back into the bus. Anyway we finally got to El Tur and drove directly to our hotel... ha ha ha on the beach? It was situated next to a drainage pipe and the beach was nowhere to be seen, hmm great maybe we could relax at the drainage pipe, set up a few chairs and drink a pinacolada whilst dipping our feet in the waste.... we thought about finding another hotel and drove around the city for a while, the other hotels were shockingly expensive (why? who comes here?) so we ended up back at the original one which was really dismal, full of cockroaches, no toilet paper in the bathrooms and damp all over the walls.
We then decided to go on a bit of an adventure and looked for somewhere to have dinner, we drove around for what seemed like forever and finally found a meat place, wow and there was a real clash of cultures as we walked in, there we were a group of mainly blonde girls/women (do I have to call myself a women?), inside was a table of fully covered women wearing the niquab (burka), their bearded husbands sat a table away, they looked at us and we looked at them, a cross cultural staring contest ensued. We ate our meal and were overcharged (I assume) and then vacated the place pretty fast. We then decided to find beer, one women with us decided she wanted to go back to the hotel to relax and made her way back, on the way children begged her for money and when she declined they threw stones at her... (what a lovely place this was).
So back to the mission of finding beer, we asked around for a beer shop and kept on hearing the name Fawzy, we assumed that Fawzy would be a "Drinkies" style shop and not too hard to find I mean liberal Sharm el Sheik was only an hours drive away so there had to be some form of alcohol here?? We searched and we searched and we almost gave up hope when we got right to the edge of town and still hadnt found the elusive Fawzy, but then one of the girls spotted a tiny handmade sign with a bottle of wine on it attached to a hut. Stooooooooooooooooop we all yelled in unison and we hoped out to take a closer look. We knocked on the door and an old toothless women opened the door, "Fawzy" we asked "Yeeeeeeeeeeeees" she replied and ushered us in. The room consisted of a big freezer, a bed, an oven and her son sat eating his dinner at a tiny table, they obviously lived here, we took in the surroundings as she threw open the freezer; it was full to the brim of all sorts of beer and alchopops. We went for the super strength lager, this place was strange and we thought we might well need it.
Next stop was a beach... well we all had the idea that we would relax on a beach somewhere and watch the sunset, everyone had their bikinis/swimsuits on under their clothes and were ready for an early evening dip in the sea. We finally found a place but there was no way we could strip down as it was very conservative and all of the women were veiled if not totally covered. The strange thing was it seemed totally fine that we were drinking beer, some of the girls ordered shisha (water pipe) from the beach sales guy (nice title ha) and we sat until late eating more chipsy, infact I should probably rename this post "the chipsy weekend" or something.
The next day everyone got their visas and then we set back to Cairo... leaving the strangeness of El Tur far behind us.
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Sux in the city....

Listening to my friends tales and spending hours having "Sex and the city" type conversations with the girls (hence the title and no its not a typo) I have come to a realization. Egyptian men cheat. I know a lot of you will say but all men cheat, but Egyptian men do it to a scale that actually makes me laugh with disbelief.. One of the girls I know is with a married guy (warning signs already I know) but they somehow have a normal relationship, well they did until she recently found out that he is  sneaking around going to events where he meets foreign women and trying his very best to contact any foreign girl he can. His reasoning when found out? Ahhh nothing happened, they were all fat and ugly. wow so she got lucky, but what if they were cute? So he pushed her to the point where she finally said, you are dead for me and it is over, and I was so proud of her, but then what did he do? He turned into a charmer, showed up at her place with a sign saying how stupid he was, brought flowers, begged for another chance, did everything he could to make her crack and back down, he became her dream guy for a few days and the entire time with a face like the cat who has got the cream. When he is secure in the knowledge that he has got her back he will return to his old self and she will be banging her head against the wall again.

Another guy who she works with spent years living in Europe, so one would assume he is more in touch with what is acceptable and what is not. He got together with another girl from work, a sweet Egyptian who was very much in love with him and willing to give up her own plans to be with him, the second he knew she was his he became bored and started to text the foreign girls he worked with telling them how into them he was...... Another girl I know is totally in love with a guy, they have been together for almost 3 years and all this guy wants to do is change her, she tries and tries to change but of course isn't able to change her entire existence so he tells her he will cheat, and her not changing is the same as him cheating, and the times he has cheated in the past are all her fault (!!!!). Another friend of mine is pregnant and of course married to an Egyptian, her husband didn't physically cheat but did go to the movies with another girl behind her back and spent time at the pool with her, one of his arguments for that was that he felt trapped because she always suspected him.  The same thing happened with all of these girls, they became angry, tried to end things and show that this was not behavior they would tolerate, their boys began to act perfect for a few days, if they were lucky weeks, they reeled them back in and then continued to act in exactly the same way.
Even my taxi driver.... the guy has a wife and kids and an English girlfriend on the side, he talks to the girlfriend on the phone in front of the wife and its obvious that the wife knows exactly what he is doing and who he is talking to, and you can see on her face that it hurts her (she traveled with us once).

But why is it that the men are so unable to stay monogamous? Well i think that part of it is society, its considered normal to have a women on the side here, they witness their fathers doing it without shame and on almost every TV show the guys have a mistress, to put it simple they believe it is their god given right to have a women on the side and actually get annoyed if their wives make it too complicated for them by checking up on them. Conclusion? Not really a conclusion but a warning maybe... if you are going to be with an Egyptian guy you should probably face up to the fact that he will cheat on you at some point, I know of a couple who haven't so far and I live in hope that they wont so I can be proved wrong, but honestly 95percent of the men I know or know of are cheating on their partners.
Yeah for us girls it truly sux in the city.

I am a slut!!!

Really! Every thing makes you a slut in Cairo.... You leave the house with wet hair, you are a slut, you accidentally make eye contact with a man, you are a slut, you smile at a man whilst talking to him, you are a slut, you smile and make eye contact at the same time, you are a mega slut, you ask a man for the time, a light, directions what ever then yep you got it right, you are a slut. You get into the front seat of a taxi, you are an incredibly stupid slut, you get into the back seat of a taxi and accidentally make eye contact with the driver through the rear view mirror you are a slut. You laugh too loud on the street with a bunch of female friends then you are a group of sluts. You smoke shisha, you are a slut, you smoke cigarettes in public, you are a slut bordering on a prostitute. You close the front door when a repair man is inside your house, you are a slut, foreign male friends visit you in your home you are a slut, Egyptian male friends visit you in your home you are an even bigger slut. You take your shoes off whist dancing... you are a slut. You are late for the train and hop in the mixed carriage, you are a slut. Seems like just existing makes you a slut!!
Ok rant over :D