what is cairo like?

i've only been there once. jackie robinson was born there, willie harris too. apparently ozzie guillen gives willie harris shit about not being as good as jackie robinson. i love ozzie guillen.

Illinois or Egypt?

well, this was a disaster.

Joel Cairo?

Western style hotels are expensive.
Many parts are really dirty and there are a lot of building in various stages of construction and/or decay.
It has a very high concentration of mosques. The call to prayer in the morning will wake your butt up since there will be a lot of them going on at once.
The food is great. Mostly roasted stuff like chicken, pigeon and lamb. Ful/tamiya is very cheap. Shopping is excellent in the bazaars like Khan Khalili but you will have to bargain. The cabs will overcharge you but don't worry too much since the few Egytian pounds they charge you extra won't break you or make them rich. Remember, most folks there are very poor by our standards.
You may be driven crazy by everyone and their brother asking you for bakshish... that is a tip or bribe... mainly in the context they will be asking you it will mean tip/gratuity, even if they don't do anything for you except look at you kindly. Hey, it's the way it is over there.
The weather is much like San Diego. In the winter it can get a bit nippy. In the fall the outlying regions burn their fields so that there is a lot of extra polllutants in already very polluted air.
The Giza Plateau is not that far from the heart of Cairo. It is on the other side of the Nile and down some ways. You'll be surprised how trashed the area around the pyramids is, especially the area where there are irrigation canals. You'd think they have better upkeep.
The Mohammed Ali Citadel is a nice place to visit. You'll get a good look at the city from the top of the hill it sits on. The museums have a lot of shit in them but are not presented well.
You can smoke a lot of shisha in some cool places. I recommend a place called typhoon in a part of town called Mohandeseen. It is accross the river from downtown Cairo. Apple and peach are the best flavors. I do not recommend smoking unflavored shisha or shisha that costs under a 3 Egyptian pounds. Could be harsh and/or lethal.
If you want to pick up chicks hang out in Mohandseen at places like L'Aubergine. They are usually AUC (American University of Cairo) chicks that are willing to play with Westerners but not too much. Their game is a lot different than ours. You could also try hanging out at the McDOnald's across the main gate near AUC in downtown Cairo.
There are big expat communities in Garden City and Maadi. Go there if you need to find people who can speak English.
I can tell you a lot more but I have already bored myself to death.

Cairo is a madhouse. It's big. It's hot as hell, at least in July. You see donkey carts on the road right next to Western luxury cars. No one follows traffic rules or stoplights. The streets go on forever in an endless twisty maze.

Shisha and coffee bars are great. The central market, whose name I forget, is amazing...not for what it contains but for the sheer sensory overload of it all. Spices, donkey dung, smoke from coal fires and people everywhere. I remember running across one stall that had stacks upon stacks of beginning English books.

The gap between the richest and poorest is larger and more visible than in any city I've ever been to. You can walk down a street full of fashion boutiques and you'd swear you were in Western Europe. You walk done another and there's hordes of people with no hope on their faces.

And you can't get good beer anywhere.

F I R E F I R E F I R E

thanks, boys.

but i guess what i'm really trying to ask is, how close does 'the mummy' come to capturing egypt?

Can't say. Ain't seen it.

my gay friend is there working as a tour guide for australian backpackers. i dont think he's gotten laid in awhile

what's shisha? that tobacco that people smoke through nargileh water pipes?

awesome.