Day 9: Did someone request a stereotypical picture of me on a camel?

The last day of the trip was Pyramid day, and we were all obviously looking forward to it, to put it mildly. I'm not sure how much you can say about the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx without sounding trite. I will say that one of the coolest things about entering the pyramid and making the hike to the burial chamber is the perfection that is evident in the passageways. Because the limestone that smoothed out the pyramids (and the golden top) were long since removed, you associate the pyramids with a sort of jagged roughness that makes them appear impressive, but imperfect. But once inside, not only is it awe inspiring to be within the structure, but every line is perfect, every incline exact, every seal between the gigantic rocks perfectly smooth, and the chamber itself is a perfect 10x10 cubit square. We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the pyramids, but there was plenty of picture taking outside. I'll put up my four favorites...

After the Pyramids we saw the Khufu Boat, one of 2 boats discovered next to the pyramid that was painstakingly restored over 10 years and was kept in a small museum built next to the pyramids to maintain and display it. The boat is gigantic, over 140 feet long, and was assumed to be for the king's journey to the afterlife with his servants. It was buried in a giant tomb covered with over 40 limestone slabs weighing 20 tons each. Here's my best picture of the boat...


And what better way to follow up an exhausting day of climbing pyramids and riding camels than a nice, relaxing stop at the Kalid Ali Baba Bazaar. And yes, that is sarcastic, since the moment we stepped into the place we were accosted by 500 salesmen. Now, I appreciate that everyone has to make a living, and when you have 300+ shops all selling pretty much the same 10 items, there's going to be a fight for customers. But there's aggressive and then there's insanely aggressive, and you had to be a bargainer of the highest order to feel comfortable haggling in that environment. I took a shot at a few items but couldn't quite pull the trigger on anything. My travel companions bought plenty, with various levels of success in the rip-off department...

After a quick rest we headed out for a traditional dinner cruise on the Nile, a fitting end to the trip complete with singing, a whirling dervish, and belly dancing. The dervish was insane, the performer spun around for the entire 15 minute (or longer) performance without ever stopping, using a number of costume elements to create patterns while spinning. When he first came out I could tell our group didn't know what to expect, but everyone was impressed. The belly dancer was a different story - while obviously talented in her own way, we couldn't help but find the busty, scantily clad dancer at odds with the extremely conservative culture of Egypt in general. The performance was risque enough to send our professor to the back corner of the table to avoid being photographed. Sadly I didn't have my camera with me for the dinner, but just about everyone else did, so there will be plenty of photos of the event in my photo album. Link to come after our final class...

So that wrapped up our trip. All told, an amazing experience, and a great balance of business-related events and sight-seeing. We owe a huge thanks to our hosts and our Professor for setting up all of the events and having such a great knowledge of the area, and for putting up with us for over a week. Jessica, Andrew and I actually did not head home with the others at this point - we took off for a couple of days of sun and relaxation at Sharm al Sheikh. I'll post some pictures of that as well in the final photo gallery, but needless to say it was an unbelievably beautiful and luxurious way to end our trip.

Ok, I'll post a picture of the view from our Villa in Sharm to end on... Thanks for reading!

Day 8 - Final Day of Business Visits

Day 8 wrapped up the business side of our travels in Cairo, as we stopped in for a visit at the Egyptian Junior Business Association. Right off the bat we could tell there was a slightly different tone to these talks - our speakers exhibited a much higher level of candor than at our previous stops. Not that our previous engagements weren't informative, but to a certain extent they were towing the company line, which is understandable considering the fact that they were leaders in their respective companies.

As a group though, we had a few nagging questions. If the Social Fund for Development was pumping billions of dollars into small businesses, where were the success stories? And if entrepreneurial business is so inviting for foreigners in Egypt, why was every speaker at the Entrepreneurship Business Forum originally a native Egyptian that came back either to take up the family business and grow it or to get married and start something new?

The price we had to pay for answers to these questions was a terrifying ride up an elevator with no door for 15 floors. If you've ever been on that "Tower of Terror" ride at Universal Studios or wherever it is, you have an idea of what it was like. My elevator featured two of our girls who will remain nameless, since the screaming that occurred whenever the car unpredictably switched directions was pretty intense. But we made it safely to the top, and the view was pretty nice (we walked the 15 flights down).


One of our speakers had previously worked at the Social Fund, and had a lot to say about the Egyptian culture as it relates to government. Due to its Socialist history, there is a prevailing goal of many Egyptians to land a cushy government job and be set for a life of easy work and reliable pay. Some aspects of Egyptian economics that had been presented to us as a benefit also have a down side. For instance, the much heralded resistance to the global downturn Egypt has enjoyed has been due greatly to their lack of dependence on a credit market. But the flip side is that Egypt has almost no credit market at all. Everything is paid for in cash, and there is no system in place for handling debt. There are no bankruptcy laws and the judicial system for following up on bad debts and collections is substantially limited. While a company like Vodafone can find ways around such problems, it is extremely problematic for small investors. The Social Fund, which spoke very highly of their small business loan programs, is more of a loose system for welfare and keeping people out of extreme poverty. It seems to be less about micro-loans for small businesses as it is grants for cheap labor.

The prospects for a failed business are extremely dire. Government assistance only lasts so long, and currently debts and bankruptcy in Egypt lead directly to lifetime unemployment and often jail. While we did hear that reworking these laws is the top priority of the current financial leadership of Egypt, it would be difficult to recommend small startup firms to take such a big risk outside of being backed by the government itself.

While it may sound like these talks were negative, they really weren't. We all appreciated the realistic take on the current climate of Egyptian business, and most of us knew there were some catches here and there that we hadn't heard about yet. Every developing country that offers such opportunity has its complications, and being exposed to some of these realities was more reassuring than it was disturbing, in an odd way. It was a fitting end to the trip however, and our hosts were extremely gracious in answering all our questions even if some of us were a bit worse for wear due to the previous night's Heineken party.

A shout out to Jessica and her friend for recommending Sequoia for dinner - they had some great food, a ridiculously cool outdoor tent setup with flat screen tv's, and even a sushi bar. Easily the nicest meal we had while in Cairo.

Day 7: A Slow Start...

So there are some benefits to being in Cairo and having a violent strain of bacteria ravaging your system. In the States, I would have had to track down my doctor, scheduled a visit, gone through an exam, gotten a prescription, gone to CVS, ordered medicine, waited for it to be prepared, and then picked it up. In my experience it's a process that takes anywhere from 2 to 30 days.

In Cairo, you simply pick up the phone and ask the front desk for Cipro, which is delivered to your door 15 minutes later for a grand total of $10. And so ended my fight with Pharaoh's Revenge, knocked out with a single pill, but it did cost me the morning of Day 7, which included a couple of meetings and a tour of the new Nile University facility currently under construction. A few follow-up conversations with my fellow travelers conveyed that the University was extremely impressive, and that a meeting with the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones reiterated a number of positive aspects of the current economic climate in Egypt.

That evening we managed to find an Irish Pub in a nearby hotel to watch the Manchester United/Barcelona UEFA Championship match, along with celebrating Jane's birthday. We had to vacate our hotel because they were having a Heineken party and it was invite only - we tried to pull what few strings we had but to no avail.

After Barcelona pulled off the upset we headed back to our hotel and decided to try to sneak into the party. We got a few funny looks from the bouncers but just strolled on in to a ridiculous setup, complete with gigantic projection televisions, a DJ, 4 bars, and all the Heineken you could drink for free on the rooftop deck of the hotel.

I'm very fortunate not to have any pictures on my camera from that night.... Instead, I'll post a random picture of Jane showing off some bug spray, which nobody else needed if they were sitting anywhere near her...

Day 6: ALEXANDRIA!!

Day 6 was one of the most anticipated days of the trip, we hopped a bus early in the morning bound for Alexandria, a 3 hour drive north of Cairo. Beyond it's reputation as a historically beautiful place (think Antony and Cleopatra), I was looking forward to visiting the first of two Wonders of the Ancient World on our trip - the Lighthouse of Alexandria. And here it is:

Now, if you, like me, think that looks an awful lot like a fort instead of a lighthouse, you'd be right. That's Fort Qaitbey, which was built on top of the ruins of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which was destroyed by a series of earthquakes back around 1300AD. But this is what it probably looked like...

Outside of the Giza Pyramids, it was the tallest building in the world for its entire life.

The next stop was the New Library of Alexandria, which was built close to where the original Library of Alexandria stood. Unlike the Lighthouse, I knew going in that the library was destroyed in a fire, and that virtually everything in it was lost. Whether it was by Caesar or some other battle is apparently still up for debate, but the new library is incredible. Finished in 2002, it has room for 8 million volumes, has a 70,000 square foot reading room that has multiple tiers and natural lighting, and a number of museums.




We toured the library and then had a gorgeous lunch at the Fish Market. This might have marked my first meal that was not a Mixed Grill since my arrival in Cairo, and it was a welcome change. The views weren't too shabby either...


After lunch we met with the Entrepreneurship Business Forum. Seated at a rather formal round table, complete with a microphone system, we met with a number of local business owners who had recently started businesses and Egypt. It was a very enlightening conversation, from which I took away a few thoughts. The first was that because Egypt is a little late to the game in globalization enterprises, it enjoys what has become a unique advantage in cost and labor - the result of which being that almost any idea put forward by the group was deemed a possibility by the panel. (Well, not counting the idea to organize the millions of street vendors selling hand soap and paper towels. Tough to figure the profit angle on that one, or so said the panel). In addition, the government is offering huge monetary advantages to companies who open offices in Egypt, as evidenced by the Smart Village. So with so many opportunities and so much monetary aide, what's the catch? First, individuals put themselves at great risk when opening businesses in Egypt due to outdated bankruptcy and business laws - so you'd better be, or at least have the backing of, a large cash-heavy company that could afford to buy their way out of a bad situation. In addition, the market of Egypt is tough to figure out. One panel representative scoffed at the idea of a Walmart coming to Cairo and noted a failed effort by a European company to back up the claim. The next panel member noted a successful similar venture and found the idea extremely likely to succeed. With no credit system in place, extremely high illiteracy rates, and unique cultural issues for working women, there are a number of landmines that must be avoided. This backed up the earlier comments by Vodafone from our previous visit.

We headed out for a few quick stops after the meeting, including the Roman Ampitheatre and the Catacombs. The ampitheatre was very cool, complete with numbered seats and rows that seated up to a possible 100,000 people.


We also visited the Catacombs, which unfortunately didn't allow cameras. Probably one of the coolest places we saw in Alexandria, we descended a circular staircase into a multi-room tomb that was discovered by accident in 1900. The bottom floor, and some of the 2nd as well, were submerged, but exploring what was above water felt just like an Indiana Jones movie. I snagged a picture off the web of the main entry way of the tomb for an idea of what they were like.


We then headed home, where I unfortunately became the unofficial 12th member of our group to become sick...

Day 5 - Back to the Smart Village

Today we kicked off our more official side of the trip, visiting a number of businesses just outside of Cairo in the Smart Village we briefly visited earlier. The Smart Village is roughly the exact opposite of Cairo proper. Located about a half hour away from downtown Cairo (or an hour in traffic), it's 3 million square meters of contemporary buildings, green parks, lakes, and franchised shopping and dining. Nothing is older than 5 years or so, and everything is sleek, shiny, and techy. Here are some of the buildings:




The first company we met with was Telecom Egypt. To picture the kind of company this is, imagine Verizon or any other massive land line phone provider in the US. Now remove any and all competitors, and pretend cable was never run anywhere. Basically, they have a complete monopoly of Egypt's telephone and internet delivery over copper. With over 60,000 employees, they are traded on the stock exchange but owned mostly by the government. Their biggest problem is figuring out how to spend their massive reserves of cash and how to compete with the coming cellular internet boom. Solution? Buy over 45% of Vodafone Egypt, which we also visited. Here's the guy who spoke to us. His job must be real hard...


We had a great time visiting the Vodafone folks. Although the US doesn't know Vodafone too well, they're a powerhouse global cellular provider and pretty much represent the opposite of everything that's wrong with American cellular companies. They have an extremely positive approach, and you could tell the employees were excited about working there and enjoyed the environment.

Cell phone service in a country with almost no concept of credit makes for a much different market than the US. Cash only transactions, no contracts, and extremely high numbers of low income and illiterate phone users who do nothing but play with every possible function of a cell phone all day routinely challenge and surprise the Vodaphone folks. People buy cell minutes for 1 pound (25 cents) at a time. They use complicated morse code-like intentional missed calls to relay common messages - ie. one ring hang-up means meet somewhere, two ring hang-up means meet somewhere else. Vodafone programmers released an undocumented feature where you can request minutes from a friend if you need to make an emergency call - 90,000 users were using it in the first 3 hours simply by word of mouth. And my personal favorite - one guy figured out if he attached his bank account to his phone bill, then transferred all his money to another account while he made a call, he could continue with his call for hours without being charged. Unfortunately he tried to blackmail Vodafone with the info, which didn't work out so well.

Our other visit was to Xceed, one of the first modern call centers in Egypt built to compete with the supercenters of India. Guess who owns them? Yep, Telecom Egypt, of course. Our guide was a fast talking, born-and-raised New Yorker who managed the personnel of the site, and it was pretty impressive. 1,600 internet-ready desks with smart phones, queue lists, depth statistics, and 100% recorded and archived phone volume of 3 million problems a month. The center is 24/7, 7 days a week, always on, always crazy. We watched the Microsoft section in action, specifically the Xbox 360 help line. The pitch is that Egyptian workers have a clean accent when compared to Indian call center workers, while working for similar wages. To this ear, I'd say "clean" was pushing it, but it was certainly an improvement. Maybe they'll give India a run for their money in the coming years.

Another interesting example of how working in another country presents new problems is with the female workers - any shift that ends during evening hours requires the company to drive the women home, taking them from the door of the office to their front door. Every female in the company, every odd-houred shift. I will add that there was a surprisingly high percentage of women working there (we were there during the day, obviously the desired shift for women) - but it was well over 60%.

The final stop of the day was to CultNat, a government sponsored institute for maintaining, restoring, and documenting the history of Egypt. It's supported by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which is also conveniently located in the Smart Village. They had a number of cool technology tricks to show us, including a 9-projector wide slideshow, a complete online version of all the historical locations in Egypt complete with 3D walkthroughs and videos, and some recreations of famous relics, like the sand clock below.

And that was it for the Smart Village.

The evening sadly found me without my camera, but I'll hopefully add some pictures before long. We found a local with a membership to a nearby sports club and went with him to watch the Cairo/Alexandria football (soccer) match. It wasn't much of a game, but Cairo pulled it out 1-0 in a defensive struggle whose only goal came in the first few minutes. The city pretty much went nuts in celebration, and our friends took a group of us out on a boat ride down the Nile. There are some good pics of this in one of our cameras, so I'll post them soon...

Next up, the city of Alexandria. Oh, and the tally jumped again, with two more falling to the dreaded pharaoh's revenge. It's a bloodbath at this point.

Day 4 - What's riskier, the Stock Market or Cairo Food?

Morning #4 started off with a stop at the Cairo Stock Exchange. Operating for the past 90 years or so, the stock market in Cairo was dormant during those pesky years of Socialism in Egypt, but is back in action now after upgrading to NASDAQ's trading technology and renovating their location in downtown Cairo.















So far Egypt seems to be very resilient to the global downturn, primarily because their strengths in low wage work and government subsidized land makes them a prime target for outsourcing and cost savings. Since reinvigorating the market in the 90's, new rules, regulations, and technologies have brought new investment opportunities. Looking for somewhere to invest? The last 4 years have seen record returns - more than twice the world's average.

Next we headed to the Social Fund for Development, but first a shot of Cairo University, one of the top 10 universities in all of Africa.

We arrived at the Social Fund for Development and were met with a panel of hosts who detailed a number of the program's features. From small business management to grass roots micro-loans, the Social Fund extends into everything that isn't a big company in Egypt. Over 9 billion pounds have been put into such businesses and individuals this decade, with special effort being made to support women, both in business and in rural settings.
Sorry for the rather lame picture, but it wasn't exactly the greatest photo-op during our lecture.

For dinner, we hit up the Cairo Tower for a marathon meal, barely making it out in time to check out the view from the top of the tower before it closed at midnight. The Cairo Tower is wrapped in lights that change both colors and patterns, and it's one of the most recognizable features of the Cairo skylines. Pictures below...


Those views were a pretty solid nightcap to the night, even if it was hard to get great pictures from the tower. Tomorrow we're back to the Smart Village...

(Oh, and the running tally so far is roughly 40% of our group has gone down to illness. We'll see what tomorrow brings... Yours truly is holding strong, for now. Not sure my plan to fully experience the food of Cairo will keep in the land of the healthy.)

Day 3 - Tourist Time

Day 3 met us with some serious tourist activities. Up first, the The Mosque of Muhammad Ali at the Citadel. Also called the Alabaster Mosque for obvious reasons, it's the most popular Mosque to visit in Cairo, and probably the most striking.


Muhammad Ali is buried inside the Mosque in grand fashion. The Minarets that extend over 80 meters high were built on only a 3 foot base - all in the 1830's. And no, you were not allowed to go to the top of them, unfortunately. The view of Cairo from the Citadel wasn't too shabby on its own though.

Afterwards, we headed down to the Mosque of Sultan Hassan, which was also a Madrasa for 400 students at a time. An older Mosque dating back to the 1300's, it has the infamous history of a collapsed Minaret that killed over 300 people. I'm also betting its entryway, the largest of its kind in Egypt, claimed a few in its time as well.

Afterwards we grabbed a fantastic lunch at Al Azhar Park, which was easily the most beautiful park we've seen during our time in Cairo. Built as a green initiative and cultural reclaiming effort, the park was started 2 decades ago, reclaiming 500 years of its existence as a debris dump. Now it features a number of underground freshwater reservoirs, a man made lake, childrens' playgrounds, and exotic gardens. And it has a great view of the first Mosque we visited.

Despite a rather high level of exhaustion (and lingering jet lag) after lunch, we pressed on to see Coptic Cairo, including the Hanging Church, the Ezra Synagogue, and the Coptic Museum. The museum featured an incredible array of early Egyptian Christian artifacts, including an original version of the Psalms of David that dates back over 1600 years, making it the oldest known Coptic Psalter. The Hanging Church was so named because it was built over the narrow beams of a Roman fortress, and is likely the oldest Christian church in all of Egypt. The Synagogue was actually a Christian Church originally, but was sold in order to cover the massive taxes levied on the Christians and was promptly turned into a Synagogue.

Last but not least, we headed over to the Smart Village (much more on that later) for a welcome dinner hosted by the Nile University. It was a great ending to a very long day, despite the fact that it may or may not have led to digestive trouble for rougly 75% of our group. They were gracious hosts and went out of there way to make us feel welcome in Egypt.