Regent House Hostel: A truly unique experience

If you thought that you could only be harassed so much in Cairo, you haven’t met Atif and his henchman, Ali. It is not the fact that they persistently tried to sell us a horrendously overpriced tour down to Aswan and Abu Simbel. After all, if you go to Cairo, everybody in every hotel will try to sell you that. The difference is that when they learn that you understand the game, they usually stop and become nicer people. Once the prospect of doing business is gone, they allow themselves to relax and become nicer. Nothing of the sort happened with these two. Seeing that we wouldn’t buy the whole thing, they pushed to the unbearable in order to get us to buy a one-day tour to the pyramids in Gizeh, Dashur, and Saqqara. We agreed because we knew there is no way you are getting to Dashur and Saqqara by public transportation. Ali was in charge of driving us; and indeed he drove us…. Crazy. First, the unbearable arab sounding music of Miriyya or something of the sort tortured me for 4 full hours (he only had 1 cassette that kept rolling over). But that’s only a minor thing: as usual he tried to take us to all the trinket-selling shops in order to get a premium for his services. The Papyrus “Museum” (better called, “Fake-papyrus outlet”) was first. After wasting 30 minutes, we figured it was enough and asked him to take us to Gizeh. Unexplicably, he drove us to a camel-ride shop in which they wanted us to taste a little bit more of the never-ending Egyptian “Hospitality”. I got pissed and firmly request him to take us to Gizeh, to which finally he agreed. (BTW, as a general advice, never buy services beforehand, you get it much cheaper at the spot. E.g. the camel ride that costs 130 pounds, became only 30 pounds inside the pyramids.)
But these detours had important consequences: We missed one of the pyramids in Dashur. We agreed to pay for Ali’s lunch (some 15 EGP) and we didn’t think we should give him any other tip. After all, his manouvering to extract money from us left us without the pyramids at Dashur.
When we returned at night, Atif was furious. He made a joke about us being stingy and not giving a tip to Ali. Furthermore, as a means of intimidation, he let us see that he had a gun in one of the drawers of his desk. We weren’t scared at all; we thought it was somewhere between tragicomic and hilarious. Still this gives you an idea of the kind of person you would be dealing with. The final attempt to put pressure on us came when he insisted repeatedly that I should publish this review while at the hostel. He pretended he understood that with only 2 hours to sleep before we left back to Europe, there was no way I would use my time writing a review. Furthermore, I thought it was ridiculous to even ask for it at all. In my opinion, if you know you’ve done things right, you don’t need to be scared of the reviews. He knows perfectly that his behaviour is, quite frankly, on the verge of being criminal… and I guess he is scared of what I was going to say.
Our last contact with these people came when Ali drove us to the airport as contracted. Well, that ride was a hell of a ride (in a bad sense). He was dangerously manouvering between the cars at a high speed, while at the same time he sang with Miriyya, loud as usual. As he figured there was no way we would tip him, he invented a 10 EGP parking fee. He even had to pretend he was paying it, as because he screwed up with the terminal he had to exit the parking (still with us) to go to the international terminal. Of course, we learnt that such a fee does not exits.

In order to be fully fair, I must recognize that his hostel was Ok for the price. Above all, it is extremely well located. Also, it was as clean as you find them in Egypt. Furthermore, whatever Atif promised he would do, he did… in some loose sense. If you decide to strike a deal with him, keep in mind that whatever is not explicitly stated is going to be interpreted against you.
My short advice is: Go to some recognized place, like near Lialy hostel (recommended by Lonely Planet; I went there my first time in Egypt) and save yourself some hassling and… possibly, some pounds.