Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Hasselin'

So we are spending our last night in luxor. then we will go to the sinai coast to be on the beach again.

Luxor, famous for the Valley of the Kings and the Karnak Temple and of course a lot of people trying to sell you things.

Everyone we spoke to before coming to Luxor warned us about how we would be hassled and that there would be non-stop irritation. Honestly... it wasnt that bad. Or i didnt think so until I spoke to a man we met in Aswan and ran into in Luxor.

Apparently he had been hassled a lot. I say this because when he was provoked by a guy on the ferry in luxor he totally flipped his shit. It was amazing. He kept calling for the police, he threw stuff; he was so enraged that he fell and badly injured himself. To be fair he really was provoked. To be honest, there wasnt anything he had experienced prior to that one incident that was that bad. Anyone who had traveled in India, Ghana, South Africa, parts of South America, China... would find Luxor pretty tame.

This wasnt what startled me. What bothered me was that people got so upset about being hassled without noticing that all the tourist money was clearly being sucked into some void and that the people around us are really truly dirt poor. They are persistent perhaps, but rarely rude, and really really need the cash. i imagined that the government would provide more infrastructure for the tourist towns or that some how there would be more of a trickle out effect. instead the tourist disembark froim the cruise ships, enter the tombs, leave, and the people of luxor still live hard poor lives.

1 comment:

Whitney said...

Well you could change that...