I just remembered a food story:

When I was walking back from that wonderful mosque, Ibn Tulun, I thought to buy some mangoes for the trip from Cairo down to Aswan to see Abu Simbel (Ramses III's tomb), the Egypt dam (and effectively, Lake Nasser, which you are invariably roped into). I was about to go on the sleeper train trip with my new friends sort of Charlie and Sophie, whom I met when I was at the Ramses Train Station in Cairo. I was able to convince them to share a cab with me as we went and saw the pyramids at Giza, Saqqara, and the other place that I can't remember right now and am too lazy to read up on right now. (Just checked: Dahshur).

They agreed to come with me and we got into the taxi that I hired for the day to the tune of 100 EP. We talked all the way to Giza and learned a bit about each other. They were from England. One of them was a school teacher and the other I think WAS a school teacher or somefing like that. (Fey do pronounce feir "th"s as "f"s to my annoyance). When we got to the pyramids, I made to give the driver some money for food and drink—as we would in the Philippines, give our chauffer some lunch or merienda money. But he started demanding the whole fare for less than 1/3 the trip.

So we paid him 30 instead and dismissed him, shaking the dust from our slippers. Which was quite useless, since there was dust and sand everywhere. But we were able to get a new cab, thanks to Adam, a bedouin who quite aggressively latched on to Sophie (the second sidelong photo up above), inviting her to his village, talking woefully about his wife who mistreated him and whom he divorced.

So we got Iman, who is the man on the right in the group shot in front of the pyramid (that's Red Pyramid to you). At first, I didn't trust him. Actually, I was feeling generally distrustful of all Egyptians at that point thanks to our cab driver and to Adam who was being a bit testy. He never asked for money but he was kinda bossy, which is good, I guess when you belong in a developing country being bullied by foreign powers at will.

But as the day wore on, it turned out he was the nicest guy in the world. I think he had never been out to see the pyramids in Saqqara and Dahshur, so whenever we explored and went into the Red Pyramid (hence the tunnel view from the bottom of the shaft, a stupid photo of me with my mouth open as I'm staging a recreation of exiting the dark void, and a nice high res video of being inside the pyramid).

Inside the Red Pyramid

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He was so cool (and we were paying him exorbitant EP) that he bought us a round of really cold coke in can as we had about an hour of travel to go. He was a trooper though. And all the water in the world would be the same to him because he drinks from the tap while we carried our 1.5s of water everywhere we went. (Egyptians have a really interesting public water system. I will have to get back to this someday.)

So as I was buying these mangoes I went up to a stall owner. And, you know how we do it in the Philippines. Pick up the mango, pisil pisil (squeeze squeeze), and put it in the bag or put it back. When he saw me picking up mangoes he came up to me, snatched the one mango about to get pisiled and shooed me away. "No! No!" he said driving me into the street.

I was so puzzled and said in my mind, Ok, Effe you! and even looked to a teenager who was watching and the kid just snickered and shook his head, not really knowing (it seemed) what had happened.

But now that I think of it, having taken all the lessons from that Muslim country, I know exactly why he shooed me away. I was picking up the mangoes with my left hand, and that's a no-no, especially if you don't pick it up to take it.

Haaaay. good memories. I will post again soon. In the midnight good time.