A Word on Touts

It is customary for there to be hawkers and touts hanging around all the sights. At the more formal sites (e.g. Valley of the Kings or Hatsuhtep’s Temple), they have a runway of small shops down which visitors must pass to get in or out of the complex. At other places, they just hang around the bus, or bother the walking tourists as they move from the bus to the sight and back. Usually, they’ll leave you alone fairly quickly as they move on to other prey, but sometimes they can be very persistent.

There are a variety of tricks that these guys (for they are all men, or boys) use. Primary is to offer “very cheap price; Asda price. Just 5 (Egyptian) pounds” (5 Egyptian is less than 1 AUD) for the tat they are selling, which is probably worth about 0.20AUD. Sometimes, they give you a “free sample”, which then has the catch of requiring money for some other purpose. Sometimes, the initial offer of pounds turns quickly into Sterling (a factor of ten increase!). Very rarely to never are there actual deals to be had, although I’ve taken the advice of our guide and bought some postcard sets, etc, to ensure I have good photos of the things I may not have recognised, or been unable to photograph.

I’ve developed a habit of looking busy, walking briskly, and saying “No, thank you” or even “La la, shock run” (which is Arabic for No, Thank you). Most of the touts don’t waste too much time on me as they focus on the English women in the group who are too polite to simply brush them off.

The most astonishing version of this was when we passed through the lock at Esna. Here, the boat slows to a crawl as it slips into a lock just a few feet wider than its beam. From some 200m before the lock, there were small rowboats in front of the river boat, with touts shouting “Hello! Hello! Hey, Rambo (not to me), you buy nice scarf for your wife?” They even threw samples on board in spite of no one engaging them in conversation. The samples are handed back by the boat’s crew after a short time, although one of my tour buddies, threw a couple of samples back to the tout vigorously. One of them, a towel, ended up in the Nile just beside the tout’s boat and he was very upset “Are you crazy?” We couldn’t believe the affront. When we got to the lock there were dozens of hawkers all shouting “Hello!”, “You want nice scarf/carpet/galabia? Very cheap prices! Asda Prices!” This was not really how I’d hoped to spend the time in the lock, but it seems to very much be the Egyptian way.

Now, I know that these touts and hawkers are only doing their job. They don’t have any other source of income (it seems). And most of them get the message pretty quickly. Apparently the Ministry of Tourism has instructed such touts not to be too persistent as it drives away tourists. I’m not sure how much that’s taken to heart. It certainly doesn’t heighten the experience for me, I have to say.