Seat belt crack-up, er, crackdown
Taxi passing by the Northern Cemetery
A friend of ours told us that a few years ago the police started cracking down on seat belt usage in cars. Well, lots of the taxis in Cairo are really old and beat up without such essential safety features like safety belts. So the taxi drivers got creative.
One driver installed airplane seatbelts. And one cabbie had seat belts stashed in the glove compartment for his passengers to lay over their chest when riding in his taxi. As the taxi driver pulled the seat belt out of the glove compartment and offered it to my friend he pointed to his bag and said, “No thanks, I’ve got my shoulder bag and it has a strap I can use.”
A very ugly day in Cairo
The taxi driver thought that solution was just fine and put the seat belt sash back into the glove compartment. Needless to say, the seat belt crackdown was just a fad and these days nobody seems to bother with real, or fake, seat belts.
Taxis in lush Maadi
admin
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:25 am
Hello!! How are you?
Found your blog completely by accident, I am completely fascinated with everything I have read so far. My girlfriend and I went on a 3 month backpacking adventure through Europe, then we flew to Egypt which we stayed there for right around 3 weeks. That was this last summer from may 6th till July 19th.
Egypt was simply amazing, and very much different than Europe. At first I was kinda put off by the people and the customs there, but I very much want to return now. I also want to do more extended travels.
Anyhow, to the point. I read in your blog that you stayed in Japan for 3 years, and you have been travelling around the middle east and other places for several several months.
Through my reading of your blog, (there is ALOT of it) I was not able to find anything about when you stayed in japan. Did you have a job there? Nor did I read anything about how you were able to do this extended travelling, did you save up for a very long time, or are you doing this on a shoestring?
What made you want to do this besides the pure love of travelling that I also share.
Just reading what little I have read about your blog has brought up SOO many questions and even more memories, especially of egypt.
And good job on the blog, very well written with many great pictures!
Please shoot me an email if you have time, i’d love to chat!