Luxor Local Customs

A man kissing another man on the cheeks in the street is common cause this is the way Egyptian men greet each others.

The strange thing is a man kissing a lady hi or goodbye. Some of my foreign friends asked me weather i am a gay and i was completly surprised cause i am not, they told me why do you keep kissing your men friends.

Dont fall into this trap.

Again. I have to say that if u r in rome then do as the romans do.

Egyptians are not comfortable with the idea of men having sex with men neither women with women.

If u r so, then try to keep your affections till u r in your rooms otherwise you will be hasseled and loose respect big time.

This is not to say that there are no gays around; but they know this very well and are doing their best to hide it cause it is a shame here.

Sorry but thats how life is.

A Whirling Dervish is a unique dance - a "religious ceremony transcending into performing art".

It is a dance performed by an order of the Islamic faith, and it involves the dancer whirling around and around continuously for minutes.

The dancer starts off slowly turning and gets faster as the music picks up pace. They spin and spin, lifting parts of their costumes up as they go.

It goes on for so long that you start to feel dizzy just watching - you wait with baited breath for them to fall over.....but they don't...they keep spinning and whirling.

Amazing!

A very popular custom in Egypt is smoking a shisha.

A shisha is a small packet containing a rolled tobacco leaf, a small amount of molasses, and some apple flavour.

This is put in a type of 'water pipe' under a burning charcoal. You then inhale and the smoke passes through the water, cooling it.
The cooled smoke picks up the flavours of the shisha.

There are shisha parlors all over the place where people (mainly men) get together with friends for a quiet smoke and a turkish coffee.

I didn't try it, but wish I had.

Generally in restaurants, you tip 10% if service is not included and just give change if it is included.
We gave a tip for most services eg. Drinks brought to us round the pool (1 or 2 LE), service to our room (10LE at end of stay), having a taxi for whole day (10-15LE). It can get ridiculous sometimes what the young Egyptian children can demand a tip for, eg holding your elbow as you board a boat - no I don’t think so! I did not even ask for that service!

Egyptian people are great at craft-work and work wonders with their hands!

Kudos to the egyptian chamber-guys who are working at the Ms Royale Cruise Ship! They made wonderful scorpions, swans and i understand from my fellow tour-mates that they made cute penguins and snakes, out of towels!

So when you opened your hotel room or cruise room door, don't be alarmed to see these soft creatures on your bed.

=)

We met him on ferry when crossin the River Nile. He invited us in the wheel-room. Nice and interesting. What surprissed me – his really white teeth. He could be good image of some toothpaste advertisement :-)

Mahmoud was boatman of felucca. We called him “The boatman of the River Nile” :-))And our small group (of 4 people) really like to say thanks to him for felucca ride, fot these 2 magic hours which we spent on his felucca! Trip was really great! And the mint tea – excellent!! Thanks!

MahmoudAli20032003@yahoo.com
Home address: Egypt – Luxor west bank – baraat - elezba