ayd

What exactly are you saying. She did not have enough money to purchase anything above the cost of the tour?

She did have enough money, I'm saying she opted out of the extras so he couldn't make up any of the money he was losing on the bad exchange rate from the bank. The bank would not cash the checks in dollars so he had to take the hit. I suspect he tried to make them hit the ATM and have the lady take the exchange rate hit but she wouldn't budge. She simply wanted to give him the $210+extras in travelers checks. We had to wait around 30+ mins in Alexandria for them to sort it out.

Relax, I thought you did a great job as the organizer, despite this being your "first time outside North America".

$17 to $22 is about a 30% difference, currencies just don't move that much in a year let alone overnight. The dollar has been up about 10% this year and that's extreme. The problem I had is that he was refusing to give out dollars for egyptian pounds at the end so he was using the exchange rate to his own advantage.

I didn't say anything about it because I obviously didn't care about the $3, I'm just posting here so that folks can make an informed decision to use the tour "extras" or opt out and buy on their own while they're already at the museum etc.

Point taken on the transportation for the Nile cruise, still, did you really think you were getting an "upgrade" and that the Maxim was only sailing at 10pm?

I've yet to see a negative review so I was expecting a lot of heated feedback. I'm simply stating some facts that I see as someone who's been outside North America quite a bit.

I was the organizer of the tour ayd was on, and I must say, for the most part that is a load of CRAP.

 

-The cost of items, they set the prices in advance to make it easy, $20 US for Mummy room, sure it could be actually $17 today, but tomorrow could be $22. This way it is very easy and we don't need to carry exact change. As well, we don't have to wait in line for 20 people to get tickets everywhere, that would have added significant time. If you want your $3 back you should have said something then, not wait to post on here, that's a bit lame. There were also armed guards at the pyramid entrance, I wouldn't be trying to sneak in.

 

-Papyrus institute to some of us who were actually planning on buying some while in Egypt was awesome, I feel we got a great deal, we bargained a lot and our guide helped get us even more savings. I Papyrus' isn't for you that's fine, but the prices were good, good quality and backed by the Gov. Not sure what he problem is there.

 

-The dinner cruise is also something else I don't agree with your comments, yes, the Nile Maxim is what we were supposed to get and we didn't, that did suck. But about the prices, even if the face value was $30, that is fine but how would you get from the Hotel to the boat? do you remember how far it was? A taxi would have cost a lot of money to get there so I don't think we got ripped off at all.

 

-The money exchange, I would like to see you go to the bank and try this, buy 10 Euro, say it costs you $12USD, then right away cash in your 10 Euro for USD, you will not get $12 that's the way it works. Different rates for buying and selling.

 

-The Travelers Cheques I agree with you, we were told that you could use them, but this was NOT Gouda our guide, this was George at Ramses who told us this. Gouda apologized, felt bad, and when they went to the bank he took the Egyptian Pounds that the folks got as exchange from the bank no problem and he said he would ensure that no one would be told they could use travelers cheques again.

 

All in all, I thought (as with most people) that our tour went great, it was very informative, Gouda was flexible especially when we mentioned we were supposed to go to the Bazaar and it wasn't on the schedule he made it work. George was my contact and he was very responsive, some of the items we wanted wasn't communicated to our guide but we worked it out no problem.

 

Perhaps if some folks would rather save a few $$$ they could do it on their own, or take the ships tour which was a lot more people, a lot more money and still extras to b e paid.

Thanks for the reply. Again, I had a great time, the main point was that there was some compulsive lying going on i.e. lying with a straight face about river cruises, exchange rates, etc. I understand that the prices are stated in advance and that there's a lot of research already on here. I went under the assumption that we pay museum tickets and such at face value. Some of the information I provided is also at a point-in-time so no matter how many hundreds of posts I could have read, the dollar ascent and the skewed exchange rate is a relatively recent event (since the Greek debacle). I will take your advice and write George about this. Just to clarify, I gave the guide full tip and it did not deter from the experience.

We just got back from a 12-night cruise (Royal) stopping in Alexandria for 2 days. We used Ramses for Cairo overnight. Most posters covered the logistics really well and the culture but a few commented that there's not a whole lot around cost and things to watch out for in that department. Here's a quick review in that aspect.

Base cost:

Cost of the daytrip Cairo tours through Royal: $150

Cost of the 2 day Cairo overnight through Royal: $500 w/ double occupancy, $600 with single occupancy

Cost of the 2 day Cairo overnight through Ramses: $210 + add-ons

Now this is where it gets tricky. Egyptian tourism is the #1 economy in Cairo and beyond the tipping and the bartering there's a few things you need to watch out for. Ramses seems to have a low intro rate that includes most entry fees but then the add-ons and the upsells are mostly up to your tour guide. Ours was Gouda, an interesting guy who spoke pretty good English and had good overall knowledge of the sites we've seen but was a bit of a compulsive liar; I'll explain shortly. We were on a bus of 20+ tourists and my main priority was to get back to the ship safely and not really expose the guy since our organizer already had these agreed upon prices. Let's talk about some of these add-ons.

Extras:

Going inside the pyramid: I swear that no one checks tickets for this and you can go in for free. Our ticket said 30 LE (egyptian pounds) which is about $5-$6 and the "group rate" we got was $10.

Mummy room: 100 LE on the ticket, $20 for the "group rate". In short, watch out for exchange rate scams because with the dollar up so much lately, 100 LE is $17 and the guides try to charge you in dollars. Buy it on your own if you can.

Camel rides: It's $1 to get on the camel and unlimited money to get off the camel! One guy apparently panicked on an official tour and paid $40 to get off the camel. The camel ride brokering is a professional scam. Every tour guide does this. They save you the trouble out of negotiating and they get you a "group rate". The official cruise tour had $10 as the going rate, our artist Gouda had us at $15. Our friends on another tour paid $5. In reality it's $1 to get on and $1 to get off if you can pull this off. This is the only extra cost I opted out of.

Nile river cruise: Perhaps the biggest scam of them all, most tourists ask for the Nile Maxim which is operated by Marriott Hotels and seems to be booked solid most of the time. Instead they get cheaper so-called upgrades for same price. A friend of ours asked for it 1 year in advance with another tour and didn't get it either. Our tour guide told us we got a "free upgrade" on the Pharaoh which was not bad but we weren't convinced. The Nile Maxim is 190 LE and the Pharaoh is 150 LE or basically under $30. We paid a "group rate" of $45. We were shocked at the compulsive lying; Gouda was saying the Nile Maxim only ran at 6pm and 10pm so we couldn't make either one while in reality the boat runs at 7:30 and 9:30.

Other merchandise:

Kartoushes seem to be a good deal, personalization costs a lot so I suggest you get one but if you pay for sterling make sure it's real.

Papyrus Institute is a scam, they don't make the artwork there but if you want overpriced paintings on the world's oldest paper and that's your thing, go for it.

The bazaar was neat. Barter and spend at will and get used to being solicitated for anything. This was the same place where a bomb went off in Feb '09 and in '05 and there's a lot of locals around so explore at your own risk! I personally enjoyed it and smoked some hooka and drank egyptian tea.

Other money matters:

First off, let me say that I had a great time and spent a lot of money so none of the scams above really detracted from the experience. What bothered me the most was the compulsive lying. Gouda would pretend he's busy when a lady tried to exchange him LE for $ 1:5 with him on the losing side (actual rate is about 1:5.6) while he was openly providing folks with egyptian change. He went as far as to say that egyptians trick you by giving you back change in egyptian so you must have egyptian on you for the little purchases. He was probably right but he pushed his scam a bit too much.

One woman came on the bus with a party of 5 and $1200 of travelers checks and we had to stop by the bank for her to cash it. The bank can only cash them in LE and the woman wanted to pay exactly what she brought in so Gouda got screwed big on that one. She also did not pay for any of the extras so he was red-faced when they got back from the bank.

In the end I had a great time and I found it all very interesting to see how the tour guides maximize their profit within the tourist bubble. In 2 days we ended up hitting Giza, the Sphinx, Sakkara, Memphis, the Egyptian Musem, the Alabaster Mosque and the Citadel. Personally I had a great time on the Nile river cruise and even got a $5 photo with the belly dancer!