Opportunity Knocks

“And when all was said and done, the lies a fellow told about himself couldn’t probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.” -James Joice, Ulysses

Hello. Let me ask you a question. Why are you still reading these? Do you believe me when I say I plan to go somewhere or doing something? You shouldn’t. You should know by now, that my plans never, ever work. I am not in India. I am not in Ukraine. I went to the airport this morning with every intention of landing in Delhi the next morning. I was excited for a change of pace, I was excited for India. I was slightly less excited when I was denied entry onto the plane. I had it on very good authority that an Indian visa could be purchased upon arrival. In this, I was much mistaken. As you can imagine, I was a bit upset. Still, it wasn’t like I could just stand there feeling sorry for myself, I now had a problem to fix. I did not want to go back into Kiev. The drive to the airport was about an hour, I was frustrated, I just wanted out. I approach a sales agent. Not really knowing how to phrase my question, I mumble something about–do you have planes leaving today? Of course they do, but where would I like to go? I say, “Anywhere, where do you fly?” She looks at me with a mixture of confusion and fear. She shrugs. I glance at a map of the world on the wall behind her and conduct the following conversation.
“Bangkok?”
“Sorry, it’s full.”
“Beirut?”
“We don’t fly to Lebanon.”
“Cairo?”
She types furiously at her keyboard. There is a flight, it leaves in 10 minutes, but it is delayed, so there’s time. So I went with that. I haven’t been here long. In fact, I haven’t left the hotel today yet. I wanted to tell everybody first. Sorry about that, it was not my intention to deceive you. Trust me, I was surprised too, but so far, it’s been great, at least as far as people are concerned. All very friendly. The roads though–there are crazy drivers in Cairo. The man who drove me from the airport to the hotel was incontestably the craziest. There was no regard for speed, or lanes. I’ve never seen anything like it. He forced his way between two cars on a two lane road more than once. It was like he was playing a video game. My face must have betrayed me sometime after missing the car next to us by a matter of inches, because he laughed and said, “You are afraid?”. I try to laugh it off, but I also say, “just a little.” “Don’t worry,” he says “Cairo drivers are crazy but we are also clever.” I don’t know what that meant. It did little in the way of consolation. But here I am now, and I can look back in amazement and hope never to repeat it. Right, well I’m off to see the Nile. Tomorrow, I’m thinking pyramids.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2006 at 04:56 and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.