The Iskandaraani Taxi Experience

Before spending the summer in Alex last year riding in taxis/cabs was a very new concept to me. I never take cabs in America since they are so expensive and al7amdulillah I have my own car, but I was told by several people that taking a taxi is quite normal in Egypt, even for poor college students.

In fact, I vividly remember that during the program orientation in DC the administrators made taking a taxi in Egypt seem like no biggie. They assured us that taxis are super cheap; you can get around anywhere in Alexandria within 2 dollars they said. They also added that it is totally safe. And lastly, we were told again and again that all taxi drivers in Alex are very well acquainted with the places we would be interested in going to, like the girls dorms, Carrefour (equivalent of Wal-Mart), the university, etc, etc.

So I relaxed a little bit about taking taxis in Alex. And on my 2nd day in Alex I decided to take one from the Qaitbay citadel to the girls’ dorms with Ashley, a fellow UT flagshipper. We found a taxi in less than 2 minutes of deciding to take one and so I moved on to the next step, i.e. stating our price. Our resident director had told us to always say our price before we got in the taxi. The main reason for this was to limit our chances of getting ripped off since we look foreign. Keeping our director’s words in mind, I said to driver,”Khamsa gineh wa bas.” And then I added our destination” Chatby, el medina el gaam3a’eyah lil binaat” (neighorhood Chatby, the girls dorms). He replied “meshi.” Ashley and I got in, we were so proud of our successful communication with the driver and very excited about taking a taxi in Alex for the first time. We were expecting to be at the dorms very soon and we couldn’t believe this would cost us less than a dollar.

Yeah, the ride back home wasn’t so smooth. We got lost big time. He took us to the wrong dorms. Who knew that there is another girls’ dorm 15 minutes away from the one we were staying in? After that he took us to this super shady part of town where there were no streetlights and not a single person was in the streets, which is very very very strange for Egypt. Then we drove through another really sh3abi part of town. After that we were going in circles in another shady part of town. Basically, this taxi ride was FREAKING SCARY!

Besides being terrified by the shadiness, we were convinced that our driver was a con artist and therefore, he might sell us into some kind of slave trade. We came to this conclusion because he talked about his random travels for “work” during the whole ride. Apparently, he was a laborer in Germany.  After that he chilled on the beaches in Lebanon. Finally, he went to America for “work”. When we asked him where he went in America, he answered “naseet”. Uhhh yeahhhhh…that was creepy.

Finally, I told him to take us back to where he picked us up since that citadel is a famous landmark and I thought we could hopefully navigate back to the dorms from there. Fortunately, on the way back Ashley saw the McDonald’s close to the dorms. So, we told him to just stop there. I paid him his 5 pounds and asked him why he agreed to take us to the dorms when he clearly didn’t know where he was going. He said he was sorry that he didn’t know where they were. I calmed down a bit since he sounded genuinely sorry.

So we continued on our mission of getting to the dorms after the con artist drove away. We asked people on streets, including a police officer, for directions to the dorms. No one could give us good directions. The ones that tried kept doubting themselves. We would ask them to tell us street intersections close to our dorms and everyone gave us the names of different streets. This was frustrating because I had been told previously that EVERYONE knew where the girls’ dorms were.

Eventually, we got another taxi and he took us somewhere near to the university. Ashley and I got off there and somehow found our way back to the dorms.

I told my story to the Egyptians girls in the dorms. They told me that I had made a HUGE mistake. They advised me that next time I should always always always tell Egyptian taxi drivers the names of two or more landmarks around my destination. Alex is so old that if you name a couple of landmarks eventually you will get to the right place. And when you ask people on the street for directions , DO NOT expect them to tell you street names and intersections. The names of streets are relatively new additions to some parts of the city and not everyone is familiar with them. People associate historical landmarks or really old establishments with neighborhoods. For instance, the extremely prestigious and old College Saint Marc is a good landmark to tell taxi drivers if you want to get to the girls’ dorms.

Ashley and I were pros at getting to our destinations after hearing that wonderful piece of advice. Soon enough I became quite confident with taking taxis with my friends in Alex, and I would insist on not paying more than 10 ginneh for a taxi. However, my Egyptian roommate was nice enough to inform me that at that fixed rate I was paying less than Egyptians for some rides.  So I totally underpaid some taxi drivers in the beginning, and learned that not every cab ride is under 2 dollars. A few weeks in the city will help you gauge how much you should pay to get to places. There is no such thing as a metered Alexandrian taxi, and factors like rush hour and gas prices make taxi fares go up and down. Of course this uncertainty only adds to the awesomeness of riding a taxi in Alex and might present an opportunity to haggle with drivers in Arabic!

So this is what I concluded from my first taxi experience:

Knowledgeable Drivers? Debatable, remember the landmark rule.
Safe? Uhhh…just hope your driver isn’t a con artist.
Cheap? YES.