Egypt Guided Tour - Cairo Arrival (Dec 2004)

Being slightly naive, we thought of having a "free and easy" day before our guided-tour to explore Cairo on our own. We were armed with only the Lonely Planet (Egypt) guidebook and our knowledge of English language. We did not took the tour's hotel transfer because we arrived a day before the tour started.

We were stuck at the Egyptian Customs for an hour plus! Apparently, this Customs officer seldom saw young (late-twenties/early-thirties) Chinese Asians with Singapore passports visiting Egypt for pleasure back in 2004. He took a very long time trying to establish that our passports were real, even to the point of trying to remove the photograph pasted on the passport!

Thanks to an English-speaking Egyptian tour-guide who noticed our uncomfortable situation, the tour-guide managed to convince the Customs officer to let us through.

We checked into our hotel and visited the Cairo Tower nearby.
We were surprised to see how developed Cairo was, with all the buildings, cars and roads. From the Cairo Tower, we spotted the Giza pyramids in the horizon. We could not wait for our "Wonders of Egypt" guided tour to start..