Wow, since the Egyptian Revolution, this thread died almost a year ago.
Just wanna share my experience here (I'm now writing from Cairo for God sake
)
Currently I'm working in Cairo for a while. I've been here for more than a month. When my company asked me to come here, I'm like, what da hell? I was thinking that they're still some sort of 'BERSIH 2.0 or what ever' in the most part of Cairo.
Then came the scary part once I arrived here from Doha, the weather is cool! People still living as normal as they could. I was like, my mind has been poisoned by the ABC (Al-Jazeera, BBC and CNN).
We're staying in 5th Settlement, New Cairo, Morsi's neighbourhood. Yeah, they're still have a roadblock to get here, but not most of the time the roadblock is functional.
Our office is in Maadi, about 20km++ from our apartment. For the last 40 days, we've been pick up by our company's 'daredevil' driver almost everyday. My advice, don't ever try to drive by yourself. It's like rempits are everywhere, but these rempits are not only riding bikes, they drive cars, vans, buses and even the lorries like rempits. It is some sort of a must to have 'dented' vehicles here. There're no fast or slow lanes here. Every lanes are fast lanes and slow lanes.
You'll have a slight difficulties to communicate with the people here. Basic Arabic is preferable such as:
1. Numbers: wahid, isnin, salasa, arba 'a, khamsa, seth 'a, sam 'a, samaniah, teht 'a, ash shrot
2. Direction: yamin, syimal, amman
3. Greetings: assalamualaikum, sabahakir
4. Complement: sukran, afuan
About the protest or etc. , no worries, just ignore what the ABC have told you. Do your own research about the safety here. So far, as long Morsi is behind the bars, no need to worry. It is a compulsory for the citizen to serve in the army, therefore then I presumed what the military is doing=what the citizen is doing...
You must have a good tour guide. I've been recommended by my company to hire this guy, Mr. Mostafa, Whatsapp at +201003578717. He can do tours to the museum, pyramids, gift shops, Sinai tour, Suez tour, Valley of the Kings tour, Alexandria tour, hotels, restaurants and many more. His English is really superb, I even thought he's an American
> Just mentioned my name, 'Iqbal MCS Oil' to get better offer. Please do get better offer from him.
Visa is free for 15 days. Mine even already overstay almost a month and I don't have any worries about it. Just pay the penalty for overstay about EGP150, they cop your passport and you're free to go home. But, the best is, just stick to the rules, renew your visa if you wanna stay longer.
Malaysian Embassy is useless (currently). I've called them several times and nobody answer, even my email. Since if you read this article in Malaysia, please complain to Zahid Hamidi (jokingly) or what so ever to wake his staffs up in Cairo
The groceries are really cheap. The food is a bit like in KLCC.
If you've any plans to go here, please do so ASAP because you might have the chances to take pictures with the military armoured personnel in front of the museum. Oh, by the way, the museum is just next to Tahrir Square, hehehe
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By the way, dried rubbish is almost everywhere since the population in Cairo is almost the total amount of Malaysians
This post has been edited by qebalt: May 2 2014, 04:40 AM