10 Egypt Culture Shocks I Had On My First Trip

10 Culture Shocks I Had On My First Trip To Egypt

1. Crossing The Street is Like Playing Mario Kart

The best phrase to describe crossing the street in Egypt is Free For All. You’ll see a 4-lane highway with cars going 60 MPH, and a little old lady pushing a baby carriage will just… cross. Often without even looking! And somehow, it works 🤷‍♀️. 

During my first week in Egypt, I remember waiting for the cars to stop on the Alexandrian Corniche for like 10 minutes so I could cross before an older woman took pity on me and, through hand gestures, told me to follow her as she just walked into oncoming traffic. And the cars all stopped for her! It takes some getting used to but this is how the locals get around in the hectic cities. 

In the United States, we wait for there to be no cars before we cross, or depend on crosswalks with timers and traffic lights to tell us when it is okay to go. In Egypt, there is a sense of personal responsibility that’s not really common in America.

Someone crosses the street because they’re responsible for getting themselves from point A to point B, and the cars don’t hit them because they don’t want to be responsible for hitting someone. There are crosswalks in Cairo but don’t be surprised if you’re trying to cross the street and the cars simply aren’t stopping at them. The cars will keep going up until the point they’re going to hit someone, there’s no concept of “pedestrian has the right of way” or if there is, it’s not strictly adhered to. 

2. Everyone Smokes Inside – Even At the Airport!

One of my top Egypt travel tips is to try not to get too freaked out by the smoking in Egypt. It was a HUGE culture shock when I arrived in Egypt and not only were the airport attendants not wearing masks, but they were also smoking – inside the airport! 

Smoking is big in Egypt: Every hotel room, restaurant, and even taxi cab will have an ashtray. I felt oddly nostalgic for the 1990s (which ended when I was around 5) my first night in an Egyptian hotel when I saw the ashtray on the bedside table – really no one smokes anymore back in New York, at least inside, so it definitely takes some getting used to. 

3. Be Prepared for the Endless Security Checks 

Oof. The security checks drove me insane initially since it was my first time traveling in a country that has experienced recent (and frequent) conflict in the area. Basically, there are checkpoints all along all of the highways – and if you’re in a car or bus that has foreigners in it you’re more likely to be pulled over.

Sometimes the cops just glance at everyone’s passports, sometimes they take your passport with them and come back in 10 minutes, and sometimes everyone needs to get out of the car and open their suitcases and show the contents to the police as well as show them their passports. It’s tedious. 

I visited the coastal town of Dahab at the end of my stay in Egypt – Dahab is on the Sinai Peninsula, an area known for both 5-star hotels and frequent terrorism issues. During the journey from Cairo, my overnight bus was stopped five times! I thought an overnight bus would be a nice way to catch some sleep en route to my destination, not in Egypt! 

4. Don’t Give Money to Begging Children 

This is a tough one to talk about but if you’re traveling Egypt you’re likely going to run into small children begging, often really young like ages 4-7. Basically, mobsters and con men employ small children to beg for them, and then they take all the money from the kids.

It’s not only a bad practice to support because the money isn’t going to the children, but also because the criminals are taking kids out of school to beg for them instead of getting an education. It’s so conflicting because you’re not supposed to give them money, but it is so hard to say no to a small child! But really, don’t do it!!!!! 

5. Everyone Hitting You Up for Baksheesh (Tips/Bribes)

Baksheesh is Egyptian for “Tip” (or sometimes, “Bribe”). Tipping is common in America, but the part of Baksheesh that is shocking to Westerners is that everyone expects a tip: bellboys, servers, taxi drivers – sure, but also security guards and airport staff! 

I’ve heard some stories about officers at Cairo airport asking to see someone’s passport and then holding it hostage for a “Baksheesh”, but that didn’t happen to me. However, something kind of similar happened. When I was online for security at the airport leaving Egypt a TSA officer beckoned to me to come to his row.

I assumed they were just opening a new row but then he said something goofy like “first-class service for our first-class girl” and took my bag out of my hand and started carrying it for me without my asking. He had opened the new line just for me apparently (again, without my asking) and expected a big tip for the “first-class service”. 

6. If You’re a Woman, Everyone Is A Flirt 

A major concern people ask me about is whether or not Egypt is safe for women. In Egypt, guys will come up to you, try to sell you a service, try to get your number, and then if neither of those two works they’ll just straight up as for some cash (or as Egyptians call it, “Baksheesh”)!!!

The level of confidence in these interactions is pretty crazy coming from a New Yorker who tries to not make eye contact with anyone on the subway, and saying “La!” (no) will only get you so far. 

Eventually, I resorted to just wearing a phony wedding band – anyone who looks closely at it will know it’s not real since it has the Eye of Horus on it, but it gave me the confidence to work “I’m married” into the first sentence of every interaction I had. 

Example:

Taxi driver “Hello miss where are you going?” 

Me “I’m meeting my husband at Luxor temple” 

This made 90% of my interactions in Egypt 100% easier. The remaining 10% were guys who just didn’t care about my imaginary husband and would flirt the whole time they were my taxi driver/waiter/ tour guide anyway 🤷‍♀️. 

7. Every Woman Is Shakira – Or Habibi (Egypt’s Favorite Catcall)

Every woman: old, young, fat, skinny, tall, short, etc – every woman is Shakira in Egypt.  Don’t ask me why, but calling a woman “Shakira” is the de-facto cat-call for all Egyptian men. I traveled down the Nile and from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea in Egypt and the one constant was being called “Shakira”. 

It happens so frequently that my friends and I made a joke out of it. The Arabic word for thank you is “Shukran” and since people were trying to sell us stuff all the time we would constantly have to say “La, Shukran” (no thank you). I thought it would be funny to start saying “La, Shakira” instead, and no one ever caught the plot 😂. 

8. Be Prepared to Barter for Anything & Everything 

Bartering/haggling is pretty common everywhere except North America and Western Europe, but the way they do it in Egypt is pretty funny. I was stranded my first night in Egypt because I arrived a day late, and even though I begged the hotel to not cancel my reservation (and said I would pay for the missed day) when my 12-hour flight landed and I received service on my phone, I saw that they had given my reservation away. 

I had to make a new one stat, and I saw on booking.com an okay airport hotel for $35 a night (Egypt is an inexpensive country to travel in), but it was past check-in time so I had to call them to reserve. The guy quoted me at $100!

For the same exact room, I was looking at online. I told him on booking it was $35 and he said: “Okay, for you my friend – $35 no problem”. That’s kinda just how it is – if you’re clearly a tourist they’ll try to charge you 2,3,4,5,10x the amount something is supposed to cost. You need to haggle in Egypt if a price isn’t posted.

9. Nothing Will Prepare You for Just how CRAZY Cairo is! 

Los Angeles traffic has nothing on Cairo! A 20-minute ride, on paper, can easily take hours, all the while you’re in traffic next to donkeys hauling carts next to 18-wheelers. It’s an experience. Cairo is the 6th most populated city in the world, and according to WorldAtlas, it’s the most densely populated city I’ve personally been to so far. 

It’s crazy – cars tend to drive with their horns in Cairo, everyone is screaming, and the air is kinda thick and hard to breathe from so many cars all trying to get to wherever they’re going faster than the guy next to them. But it’s an experience! 

👉 Fact: According to the New York Times, 95% of Egypt’s population is concentrated on just 5% of its landmass.

10. Nothing Will Prepare You for Just How Ancient Egypt is

America is not even 250 years old! Anything pre-1920s is almost de-facto put in a museum where I’m from, so it’s wild to go to an ancient Egyptian tomb and be face-to-face with writing that can easily be 3,000 years old. Not only is Egypt ancient, but it also feels ancient – which is not that common in the modern world. 

Sure, the Great Pyramids are next to a Pizza Hut, the Nile is massively polluted, and there are way more cars than camels in Cairo. But certain moments in Egypt, like when I was on the deck of our Nile Cruise between Luxor and Aswan, I looked out to the banks of the Nile and just saw endless palm trees. That, to me, could have easily been a view from 2000 years ago, and it’s something very special about Egypt.