Terminal 3

Came early to beat the traffic. Taxi rides in Cairo between 2-4 are usually regrettable, especially on Thursdays (the Egyptian equivalent of Fridays in the West). So I took a cab at noon.

Terminal 3 certainly looks nice. Cairo’s airport situation was always fairly embarrassing in the past, considering that Amman, Beirut, and Damascus all have state-of-the-art terminals. Now Cairo is in the same league with the new Terminal 3 (and a very nice recent rehab on on Terminal 1, though Terminal 2 still reminds me of Sartre’s No Exit).

At first, they seemed to want a different culture in Terminal 3 as well. All the taxi hasslers were excluded from the arrival hall here, which was actually a bit unnerving at first since I didn’t know where to find them anymore.

But… Terminal 3 is already back in the swing of things, with soldiers holding my passport while asking for tips, pretending to wonder what that wallet in my pocket is so that they could make me take it out (for an ostensible security check) and make it the subject of conversation, demanding to hold my passport while I go into the bathroom so that they have some leverage to hold a conversation with me on the way out and raise the subject of tips, etc. And I gave them a few Egyptian Pounds each, and it’s nothing to me, but it does add minutely to the stress level of travel to have to think about such things.