buzzlog

We recently came back from a 7 day tour of Egypt. My wife and I were very excited and nervous going to Egypt but Memphis really came through for us in making sure that everything went smooth and we got to see everything we wanted to see. They worked with our schedule, made sure we were properly picked up and dropped off from sites to hotel and airport. Egypt is NOT easy to travel on your own, unless you speak Arabic and know how to get around their roads and transportation. Their infrastructure is still 10 years behind other developing countries and if this is your first time in a developing country, definitely be ready to be shocked. So I highly recommend working with a tour company like Memphis. We worked with Maged from Memphis to setup our itinerary. For the most part Maged was responsive to our emails and questions. He answered all our questions in a timely and professional fashion. Hasan, came to pick us up at the Cairo Airport and from the very first second he's very helpful and accommodating. We had our own private car and driver (Ahmad) dedicated through out our trip. Hasan's English was very good and we had no challenge communicating with him. He provided us with a cell phone with his number in case we need anything during the trip. Mahmud was our tour guide while we visited the Pyramids and Cairo. He's very Knowledgeable and patient in answering all our questions. He takes good photos too. During the 4 day Nile cruise on the "Sonesta Moon Goddess" (look for my review later), Eid, was our tour guide. He was also very knowledgeable about the sites we were visiting but sometimes his accent made it difficult to understand what he's was saying. The only thing I didn't like about him was that he told us who to tip ("Bakshish") and how much to tip. In Egypt every other person will expect you to tip them, even though they didn't do anything extra for you or even interact with you. We didn't feel comfortable to be put in a position to give tips to people who didn't earn it but Eid insisted that we should tip the third party vendors and their employees too. Many times we were not able to enjoy the sites because we were too busy trying to figure out who to tip and how to tip without offending Eid or anyone else. The Nile cruise itself was very good but the ship we were on, The Sonesta Moon Goddess, was not a good experience. They are supposed to be a luxury cruise but there was not much luxury about it. The service was very poor for a luxury cruise. The food was below par. We are vegetarians and usually on other cruises there are always decent options to eat but on this ship there's hardly anything to eat other than rice and tomato soup. The manager did make some effort to provide us with decent food but it was after our third day there and it was only after we are ready to eat and then they actually decide to make some veggie soup for us. There were only two times when they actually had something for us to eat that was good and filling. The staff didn't seem too motivated. The only good thing about the ship was our room, which had a balcony and all the other amenities of a hotel room. We also took a side trip to Abu Simble. The Abu Simble temple is pretty magnificent but the drive there was a little scary. We knew we were going with a convoy but didn't realize that there were only three cars in the convoy and that we'll be accompanied with machine gun carrying police through the desert for three hours without any stops. I am sure the risk of anything crazy occurring was very little but I would've liked to know ahead of time what was going on. Once we got to Abu Simble, we realized that we were the only two people there since it was very hot and July is not the best time to visit Egypt. The entire town seemed deserted and all we saw was military/police with guns and couple of locals. We got a little anxious thinking, "Is there something we don't know about this place? Armed convoy, deserted town, no tourists and so many guns??" It turns out that there are some areas of Egypt that the government might not have control over and they might have experienced some problems in past where the tourists got in trouble. Everything went okay with us though, we got out of there in an hour back to Aswan. This this the convoy consisted of ONE car!! Just us. So the policeman with the machine gun got into our car and escorted us back to Aswan. Little scary but no incidents to report. Overall, Memphis is a great company to choose to travel in Egypt.