The entrance to each of the tourist attractions in Egypt is heavily “guarded” by the tourism police. These white-uniformed police look intimidating with their badges and guns, but after a few stops we realized they’re more for show than anything else. You are supposed to walk through a metal detector and put your bag through an x-ray machine at every entrance, but we quickly learned no one’s actually watching the monitor (one guy was even reading a newspaper) and even if you beep in the metal detector nothing happens, so we stopped putting our purses on through the x-ray machine and just walked them through. We decided the best way to bomb one of the attractions was to have a white tourist just carry the bomb through because we didn’t once get hassled or stopped for setting off the detector. My favorite guard was at the Valley of the Kings, where he was sitting at his post behind the monitor but was reading a newspaper. Side note: Our hotel also had one of these security stations at the entrance, and afforded the same level of protection.
The funniest thing that happened in Egypt was when Cas went through the x-ray machine at the entrance to Luxor temple. Yes, you heard me right, Cas went through the x-ray machine. By our third day in Egypt we were well aware that the security stations were a joke, and we were the only tourists entering the temple at that time. Cas mentioned how he has always wanted to go through one, we told him he should do it, he looked at the guards and kind of sign-languaged that he was going to go through it, and the next thing I knew all I saw were the bottoms of his feet as he was conveyed along the belt. Our tour guide was buying our tickets and saw only the end of this commotion, but he was startled and I’m sure none of his other tourists had ever done something like that. Afterwards, we all had a good laugh, especially when Molly pointed out the sign on the machine that read, “Caution! Do not put any body parts in the x-ray machine. High levels of radiation!” When we asked Cas what it was like, he told us it was like going through the Christmas tree wrapper at his parents’ garden center when he was a kid. Who does this kind of stuff!?!
At the Cairo airport each gate had its own security station, and when Cas tried to get through with the bottle of alcohol he purchased from the duty-free shop the guards wouldn’t let him. A guard took him aside, mad the hand signal for money, and Cas bribed his bottle through security for about $20 USD.
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