my channel if you're new here my name is Lea and I am living in Switzerland right
now from America and today I'm gonna talk to you about my recent travel in
Egypt so um since I spent so much time in Egypt I wanted to break this up into
three different parts I'm talking about the major cities that I went to in Egypt
so I went to Cairo Luxor in Hurghada so this video is gonna be about the
Cairo experience so I'm gonna be talking to you guys about the good and the bad I
made a list here overall Egypt was draining mentally and emotionally so
before I went to Egypt a lot of people did warn me about the harassment but I
thought because I am black and I'm going to Africa I was completely naive and I
thought that I would not have the same experience traveling while being black
kind of has given me some advantages because people usually just think I'm
broke so I don't get like you know scammed or people trying to rob me or
trying to sell me things because of the color of my skin um but in Egypt they
just didn't really care they just cared that I was American and that was
important to them let's start with the bad so Cairo Cairo is not just pyramids
it is actually a huge city it's like the New York City of Egypt and it is filled
with poverty and it was extremely hard to see I did not expect that at all to
see the amount of homeless people on the streets the amount of beggars the not
just you know homeless adults but homeless children children on the street
begging it was very very sad and hard to see that they were just infants on the
street with their mom just begging for food the living
conditions of a lot of people there was very poor whole city was just poor and
rundown and it smelled and the conditions were just so poor and I did
not expect that so that was a complete shock to me seeing that along with the
poor living conditions like the traffic and it was horrible that first of all it
was trash everywhere the whole place is just polluted on the streets the amount
of traffic there was ridiculous I would definitely compare it to LA or New York
City traffic it was that bad but there they just don't seem to have any rules
to the road so they have like a highway that is probably meant for just three
lanes but somehow they have five lanes of traffic there because nobody cares
there's no lines on the road so people just kind of swerve in and out as they
please the amount of honking it's like there's no street signs
there's no stop signs there's no street lights at all well actually no there are
a few but for the most part there's none so people are just driving as they
please so that was very scary I remember being picked up at the
airport to get to my hostel and first of all the band was like the oldest van
I've ever seen in my life it was definitely made in like the 70s or
something and there was no seatbelts and this driver was going crazy like weaving
in and out of traffic and they used this hunk
they just honk all the time it's like they honk to let the other drivers know
they're coming instead of like having a proper turn signal so I was completely I
was like wow this is like my first near-death experience because I'm like
if he crashes I'm going through the windshield there's no seatbelts like I'm
dead that's it um so yeah the air was very hard to breathe not just because
it's in the desert so it's very dusty but also the pollution because a lot of
people have these very old vehicles like I said this guy this van was like from
the 70s everyone has these old vehicles so the exhaust is just very thick and
heavy and it's hard to breathe like I had a hard time breathing there also
what was very sad and hard about Cairo was the animals so animals I have a huge
space in my heart for animals and number one there was a lot of animal abuse
going on for tourism that was very hard to see so horses were treated unfairly
and camels were treated inhumanely donkeys were overworked every animal in
the tourist industry was overworked like you could see it you could see how just
their fur you could see you can tell what an animal is healthy or not you can
tell and I could tell that they were just not healthy and they were not
treated nicely actually as soon as I got there the first day I got there I stayed
right next to the pyramids actually the view from the the top of the hostel was
the pyramids like you could walk in Europe in five minutes here at pyramids
so I was around a lot of the tourists the tourism and like the yeah I was in
the center of tourism so above the hotel I could see look down into the stables
of a tourist company that was like doing horseback riding or something and in the
morning I saw this horse literally getting
whipped it was you could tell he was literally so tired he was laying down on
the ground and this guy was just like whipping him to like get up and he was
so tight like he couldn't even move and I was like oh my gosh
and like the I looked up and he saw me and he like
was like oh crap like he knew I was a tourist so then he like stopped so I
just stayed there cuz I was like okay I hope seeing that I'm still here he's
gonna not you know whip the horse anymore and then he like gently helped
the horse up after he saw me and it was very sad and you can just see those
animals are not in good condition so if you are traveling to Egypt please make
sure that you look at the animals like really assess the animals before you do
any camel rides before you do any horseback riding any buggy rides
anything like that with animals look at them because it's not worth it for like
a picture or like you know an Instagram picture to like put an animal through
abuse like it's not even worth it it really isn't like I didn't really get
any camel pictures because I didn't I was over it like I I did a tour at the
pyramids which included a camel ride along like the desert and I was with a
group they were from the hostel as well and like halfway through the camel ride
we all kind of except for like one couple like we won't talk about them but
except for that one couple like we all kind of came to this consensus we're
just like this isn't right like these animals are clearly upset like they're
not happy like they're not being treated fairly so we just got off and we just
walked back we're just like nope we don't we don't want to do this anymore
because the animals were clearly not happy that we were writing them they
were probably exhausted or hungry and you can just tell because
actually I wrote camels and Dubai and it was different they they weren't behaving
that way they weren't you know and the guy and the Dubai did not have a whip
and the guy in Egypt definitely had a whip so we just was like nope and we got
off the camels and we just walked back and the guy was like really upset but
we're just like no only we're not gonna contribute to this so once again please
look out for that so not just tourism but like the animals
generally so many stray animals and just starving and dying like I remember
walking down the street dead dog two dead cats another dead dog
another dead cat like it was so hard to see that like so hard to just walk down
the street and see dead animals or like extremely like sick animals and just not
being able to do too much because there's just so many like I did try to
feed like a few dogs and give them water but there's so many like you can't save
them all so that was really hard to see um so the biggest biggest part about
Cairo which was very hard for me like literally day three of being in Cairo I
was ready to go home like I really just wanted to leave it's the level of
harassment like once again people warned me they're like oh yeah you get harassed
all the time and I was just like okay I've done a lot of travel like I know
what that means people just gonna try and sell me stuff I can deal with that
I'm just gonna tell them no and keep it moving Cairo is different like this is
like I've experienced like level 1 harassment Cairo is literally like level
8 and that's not exaggerating it was so hard being like I would walk down the
street and as soon as I get out of my hostel there's like 10 guys in my face
like and this is not a joke like 10 guys this one here trying to sell me
something there's one here with a taxi like honking his horn like right next to
my ear like still honking like hey taxi taxi taxi and he's like oh just ten ten
pounds ten pounds and then there's another one on a horse as I go horse
ride horse ride ten Egyptian pounds ten Egyptian pounds hey where are you from
what do you what are you doing oh you look so nice
and then there's like a little kid in my face so here one dollar please one
dollar and then you know there's somebody over here shouting at me
somebody over here shouting at me and then they're all following me and I'm
like no thanks no thank you no no no no no and that's not enough for them at all
like I said no thank you like 20 times and they're still following me and
that's the thing they don't leave you alone so they were just like following
me at this point and I'm like there's like 10 guys following me and then like
maybe one gives up right after three minutes maybe one gives up but then here
comes another one in my face and then and then it's like hard because I try
not to be like so I try not to be mean because I know they're humans too and
they're just trying to make a living so I'm like nice but then that just didn't
help me because they're like oh hey what's your name where are you from and
I'm Michael Ben Ainslie I'm from America and then they just keep talking and
talking and then they're trying to sell me stuff they're trying to like and I'm
just like okay this is so much it's so exhausting and then you have the people
that want to take pictures of you and then there's the people that want to
take pictures with you because they they just don't see foreigners that often or
they don't see black foreigners and they wanted to take pictures with me of me
all the time they wanted to talk to me they wanted to know where I was from it
was it was so crazy that was hard because it's not and after a few days I
figured out like hey Egypt is not dangerous because you know I was walking
alone like what like I said there's 10 guys after me like behind me first of
all they could have mugged me if they wanted they could have robbed me they
could have beat me up they could have raped me easily there's 10 of them they
could have like all decided hey let's rape her and pulled me into the alley
while they're following me but they didn't do that they just want money
they're just they just want your business so you know after that I was
like hey it's not dangerous here it's not it's just the level of harassment is
ridiculous so that was extremely hard like I it was
to a point where I didn't even want to leave the room like I was like I just be
sitting there and I'm like crap I have to go out huh and I'm like I don't want
to deal with this like I really don't want to deal with this I just want to
enjoy my time and it really takes away from it because you can't enjoy your
time because there's ten men around you constantly and it's uh it's exhausting
Cairo was exhausting the good things about Cairo is the food was absolutely
amazing so Egyptian food definitely has this
like vegetarian / vegan vibe to it like at the hostel the breakfast every
morning was vegetarian / vegans sometimes it was actually vegan
sometimes it was vegetarian it's not like they did that on purpose it's just
how Egyptian food is it's a lot of potatoes okra eggplant tahini falafel
chickpea tomatoes salads um and they also have Egyptian cheese so yeah it's
amazing I love the food like I got to eat so well there so well the pyramids
was amazing all the ancient history was amazing the museum was amazing so what I
did get to see like the ancient history part was amazing it's just the
harassment that I experienced to get to those places was ridiculous that was my
Cairo experience I spent three days there three days almost four days in
Cairo and then from Cairo I went to Luxor I don't think I would ever go back
to Cairo I actually do want to go back to Egypt but Cairo it's off my list it
is it is too much it's too overwhelming
it's too much if you go to Cairo I definitely suggest a maximum of two days
you know you can do you can see pretty much everything you need to see in Cairo
for within those two days and then get out don't kind of walk around don't do
all that stuff don't try to like just don't just see
what you got to see and go because there's other places in Egypt that are
way better anyways that's it for the Cairo edition I will talk about Luxor
next so I'll see you in the next video
For more infomation >> 6/18/18 2:51 PM (Northern Wake Expy, Raleigh, NC 27616, USA) - Duration: 14:58. 
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