The first thing which surprised me in Cairo was the crazy number of cars there. The preconception I had for Cairo was just the pyramids in the middle of the desert. However, I had to realise it was totally wrong when I was on a taxi from the airport to the accommodation. The vehicles in the traffic jams ignored the existence of traffic lanes and trying to pushing in each of them just drove forward egoistically. I suppose they have no idea of what compromise is. Anyway it looked completely chaotic as too many cars don’t care about the other ones.

Incidentally, there are few traffic lights in Cairo city. There are actually some in the important spots but policemen also stand there all the time as nobody is willing to comply with the lights only. Besides, they were in only a few points and most of cars just go forward following the traffic. What’s more, this rule applies to the pedestrians too. When a person wants to cross a main road, he has to, with his little courage, make his step in to the heavy traffic and run through the road. Otherwise, a lot of cars just charge him with noisy horns. I'm not joking here. However, I noticed many local people just crossed the road as if they didn’t have any problems despite the shocking condition. I tried to observe them and finally found out a trick they are using.

The key point was finding slow cars. On the heavy traffic, there are some really junk like old cars and way too heavily laden buses. They are apparently slower than the others and we have to make use of the difference. Once we find the slow vehicles, we must dash out without hesitation and we can make it. I guess there was an old video game something like this. Though I finally got used to this situation, I'm now afraid of myself if I do the same in the other developed countries afterwards.

Too much traffic means too much air pollution. This was the first time for me, who had stayed in the middle of Tokyo for years, to feel "I can't stand it!" with the air. After walking around Cairo city for about 2 hours, my throat began to feel sore and even I found myself dizzy too. What’s more, there were shockingly no bubbles when I used shampoo. This is all because of the vehicles belching black exhaust all around the city. For the global environment, I'd like to suggest developed countries invest in countries like Egypt to reduce the dirty exhausts rather than squeezing themselves to cut their own already minimized emissions. This might be bit difficult due to the diplomatic interests though.

Another problem in Cairo was in fact people there. There is a Japanese travellers saying that there are three worst annoying countries in the world; India, Morocco, and Egypt. Although Cairo is regarded as rather mild as it's a sort of urbanised city, many people tried to stop me, saying "Hey my friend, what are you looking for. I'm your friend and I can take you anywhere you want." Oh, we can be friends with a single eye contact in your country? Besides, there is a person saying to me, "Are you Egyptian? I thought you are a local person. What are you doing here?" Well, I think I heard this phrase before.

There are also too many demands of tipping too. They simply said "Don't you give me any tip?" with smile but their eyes seemed very serious too. Even though I did give a humble amount of tip to the driver of the taxi organised by my accommodation from the airport, he furiously complained like "The tip is too small! Even the petrol I used costs more than this!" I have never been complained about the amount of the tip before. Anyway the cost of petrol should have been covered with the regular fare from the accommodation.

I must say that not all Egyptians are as annoying as them. Most of local people are in fact quite nice. However, regarding the people who are in the tourist industry, it is indeed their job to rip the tourist off as much as they can. Therefore, it is very natural to them to present shockingly expensive price for the first time and demand some tip after the deals. Common sense, good sense varies from the places you are brought up, fundamentally. Well, I realised that I'd come to a very tough area.

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