Chris and I took 8 flights in a row to begin our journey in South Africa. One of the flights left us with a 13 hour layover in Cairo. Chris’ friend Hatem lives in Cairo and kindly picked us up from the airport, took us to lunch, and then back to his place to hang out until we had to be back at the airport to check in for our next flight. While it seems like no time at all, Egypt made a lasting impression on me from the very beginning.
Hatem took us to an amazing traditional Egyptian restaurant where we ordered enough food between four of us to feed a king and his castle. Upon leaving the restaurant, we were trying to back out of a small alley while playing chicken with other cars, pedestrians popping out of nowhere, donkeys pulling watermelon carts, and city buses. We finally made it out of the alley and were driving around a crowded Giza when I realized that there were no stop lights in the city…or street signs for that matter. To make matters even more stressful, men, women, and children were dodging in and out of traffic with no crosswalks in sight. In Egypt, the driver does not slow down for the pedestrian. The pedestrian slows down for the driver. It must have been perfect timing because as I stared out the window I saw a bus driver stop his bus, grab a crow bar from under his seat and jump out into oncoming traffic chasing down another man. It didn’t take long before he had tackled him to the ground and started beating him with the crow bar. I couldn’t bear to watch, yet some how I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the scene. It looked as though the man being beaten had tried to steal something and was getting punished for it. The country obviously takes stealing very seriously.
On the way to Hatem’s house, we stopped along the side of the road and viewed the pyramids from afar. They were magnificent! After snapping some photos, we drove the final stretch over to Hatem’s house. He introduced us to the rest of his family (his wife, kids, parents, sister, and nephew) and we all sat in the backyard drinking tea and fresh juice. He and his family were lovely. They were extremely hospitable, entertaining, and informative.
Driving back to the airport, 10.5 hours later, Hatem explained that Egyptians do not use headlights at night as they feel it is rude to blind other drivers like that. Additionally, the police do not perform safety checks at night so there were vehicles driving at excess speeds, no headlights, and pedestrians still dodging in and out of traffic. I am used to structured roads and traffic lights. I am used to pedestrian cross walks and donkeys being ridden on back country paths. I am used to seeing crime scenes only on TV. Cairo opened by eyes to a new way of life. A life that works for the Egyptians. Instead of continuing to fight it, I decided to accept the lifestyle for what it is and find beauty in the chaos. And a beautiful chaos it was. More to come in two months when we spend substantially more time in Egypt…
My process for choosing a camera for this trip was probably more in depth than anyone you’ll ever meet, so I’ll put a little summary up front, and if you’re still interested in more, you can click through to read the full story.
Summary:
Wanted a DSLR for the quality, but thought they were too big. Looked at high-end point and shoots and decided to get the Panasonic Lumix LX3. Two weeks later realized that if I can’t fit my camera in my pocket I won’t shoot any photos. So I sold the LX3 and bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS1. It’s a great 12MP camera with a 28-129mm lens that is waterproof, shockproof, dustproof AND shoots 720p HD video. For me, size meant everything!
So we love our current health insurance plan with Anthem BlueCross. However, it provides ZERO coverage when we’re outside of the US. Therefore, I started looking for a travel insurance policy. Everywhere I looked I kept hearing fantastic things about World Nomads and if I didn’t have a ridiculous tendancy to over-research things, I probably would have signed up with them on the spot. However, not only did I want to be comprehensive, but also my grandfather has an affiliate deal with Travel Guard, so I thought I should at least give them a chance too.
Anyways, I took all the providers I could find and put all the plans relevant to someone taking a >6 month international trip in one spreadsheet here. Travel Guard was instantly out due to their $5/day surcharge for trips longer than 30 days. Most of the other providers were either too expensive or were only providing medical coverage and none of the extras (e.g. flight cancellation or delays, lost luggage) that a complete travel insurance policy would include.
Not surprising, I ended up deciding that World Nomads was the best policy. I made this decision for the following reasons:
Everywhere I turned (blogs, books, travel websites) there was another person saying that World Nomads is THE BEST travel insurance company out there.
Despite that their policies are for a maximum of 6-months, they can be easily extended online.
You can file any claims with them from their website instead of having to use fax or mail.
I tend to go a little overboard when I start to research just about anything. This trip was not an exception. I have probably checked out over 75 books from the San Francisco Public Library and visited over 100 different travel related websites. As of right now, if I could only have five of them, they would be:
Travel Independent . Info – This has to be the most valuable website to any traveler… I think I’ve actually read every single page on the site.
Vagabonding by Rolf Potts – This book might be my favorite book of all time, I’m considering buying a PDF version for the trip.
The Man in Seat 61 – The MOST comprehensive source of train, ship and bus schedules for the entire world.
Runners-up:
Thorn Tree and BootsnAll Forums – Two fantastic travel forums. Anytime I had a question, my first stop was always to search these two sites.
Wikitravel.org – a free, open-source travel guide for the entire world. Also checkout Oxygen Guide, which is a downloadable version of the Wikitravel.org content that you can take with you.
Since putting our couch up on Couchsurfing.com two months ago, we’ve received over 75 requests from people to stay with us. We couldn’t accommodate everyone, but we have been able to host 14 people. Three of them were actually in the midst of Round The World trips, so we took a few minutes to get their top pieces of advice for any long-term travelers.
Tom and Jeremy started in Grenoble, France and traveled through India, Southeast Asia and China and are now spending 2 months crossing the US. Sarah started in East Yorkshire, UK and has traveled through Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Hawaii.
The undeveloped world does not run on a timetable, so always be patient.
Do your best not to worry about the little things (e.g. Am I going to get sick? Will the airline lose my bags?).
Don’t forget earplugs. There’s no need to get anything fancy, just make sure they fit your ears.
For Malaria prevention, make sure you get a good mosquito repellant (DEET works) and ask locals for more information about infected areas. Often times the doctors in your home country make country-wide suggestions because they don’t have information about specific regions.
Don’t use your guidebook to plan out every last detail, let things come naturally and just use it as a “guide”.
Don’t bother bringing a sleeping bag or sleeping pad unless you’re actually planning on sleeping outdoors regularly.
If you’ll be changing climates, just pack what you need for the first climate and buy things along the way.
Anticipate that you will want to change your dates/routing, so make sure the fees for doing so aren’t too high.
Carefully choose the music you bring, because it will keep you going when you need it the most.
Bring something for water purification. Despite that almost every hotel/hostel/restaurant will have drinkable water, you never know when you might need it.
Don’t bring anything that you’d be devastated if you lost (e.g favorite t-shirt, expensive watch).
In most countries, consider internal flights when you’re looking at buses and trains, sometimes (specifically in SE Asia), you might find the flight to be cheaper.
Leave *some* space in your bag for buying things, but don’t forget that it is VERY easy to ship a package home from anywhere in the world.
Don’t bring 100% Cotton clothing. Active/quick dry clothing is definitely worth the higher cost.
Don’t bring anything white, it WILL get dirty.
ALWAYS SMILE! You have no idea how far a smile can get you. Also, getting angry almost never helps the situation.
Some shower areas have no good place to set down your toiletries bag, so it’s best to get one that hangs.
Bring a lot of ziploc bags. They’re great for food, liquids, wet things and more!
Definitely bring a small computer. There seems to be WiFi everywhere. Just don’t bring anything too expensive or heavy.
Don’t buy your shoes at the last minute, they might end up not fitting like you expected.
We’ve done quite a bit of research into what vaccinations we wanted to have before going on our trip (Vaccination wiki page here). Additionally we did even more research about where the cheapest travel clinics are in the Bay Area (comparison spreadsheet here). It turned out that by far, the cheapest place to go was in Amy’s home town of Steamboat Springs, CO, where she would be visiting for a few days. That was great for her, but I still needed to find a place to get my vaccines locally. I knew that I only needed to get a Tetanus shot and the Typhoid Vaccine, thus I didn’t really want to pay any consultation fees.
Then I found the Safeway Travel Clinic (not just at SF Safeways). They were able to give me those two vaccines without having to pay a $40 consultation fee. Even better, I could get everything done during my routine grocery shopping without having to make an appointment.
The Typhoid Vaccine (injection version) was $73.99 and the Tetanus (Tdap) shot was $59.99. Those prices were a few dollars more than the competition, but without the consultation fee it still came in less than anywhere else in town. I would highly recommend the Safeway travel clinic if you know exactly what you’re looking for.
We’ve done quite a bit of research into what vaccinations we wanted to have before going on our trip (
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