Talk:Egypt

Archived discussions Talk:Egypt/Archive 2004-2013

Formatting and language conventions For articles about Egypt, please use the 12-hour clock to show times, e.g. 9AM-noon and 6PM-midnight. Please show prices in this format: LE100 — not L.E. 100, 100 LE, EGP100, E£100, £E100, nor 100 pounds. Please use British spelling.

Visa on arrival after May 15, 2015

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Egypt and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/africaandindianocean/egypt/11512069/Egypt-reverses-visa-on-arrival-ban-for-Britons.html the decision to discontinue visas on arrival after May 15, 2015 was reversed/postponed.

Hala'ib Triangle belongs to Egypt?

The w:Hala'ib Triangle is under de-facto control of Egypt and claimed by Sudan.

Wikipedia seems to be clear on this, however Wikivoyage maps show clearly the opposite - the Egypt map does not have this area whereas the Sudanese map does.

This seems like a straightforward case like Crimea where we recognize 'defacto' situations on the ground. Does anyone object to fixing this? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:00, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Has this been addressed since? Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:02, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

According to Sudan – Egypt (United Arab Republic) Boundary it belongs to Egypt as defined in the 1899's Anglo-Egyptian Condominium but the Hala'ib Triangle was administrated from Wadi Halfa, Sudan, since 1902. State (international) and administrative boundaries differ. Both borders should be shown on maps and the administrative border should be labeled as such a border. Now, Hala'ib triangle is under Egyptian military rule, but it is claimed by both Egypt and Sudan. --RolandUnger (talk) 07:23, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Our map shows this territory to be outside Egypt. Should it be fixed? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 08:31, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. If it's administered by Egypt, it should be included in our map of Egypt (and excluded from our map of Sudan). —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:22, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Currency notation

Unlike many countries, Egypt does not have a standard notation for its currency, but instead please use a variety of notations. Adopting a standard notation to use in our Egypt articles would make it easier for Wikivoyage readers to find and understand information here. Which notation should we use? Wikipedia says: "The Egyptian pound is frequently abbreviated as LE or L.E., which stands for livre égyptienne (French for Egyptian pound). E£ and £E are commonly used on the internet." Can anyone confirm what travellers will see most of when they go? Ground Zero (talk) 20:20, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

• Xe.com says £
• oanda says E£
• Currency converter says E£ or LE
• fx-rate says E£

Ground Zero (talk) 11:52, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

So if it is up to me, I'll go with "E£" as being something that will be easy for our readers to understand. While "LE" may also be common in the field, the symbol is easier to distinguish when scanning an article. But I'll wait to see if anyone else has an opinion. Ground Zero (talk) 21:04, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

I use LE, example LE 25, and pt. (piasters, example 50 pt.) at the German Wikivoyage because it is in reality -- in Egypt -- the one most used. Nobody uses E£ in Egypt. --RolandUnger (talk) 07:02, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

So unless we can convince the people of Egypt to start using the more readable E£, which would be a lot of work, we should probably use LE. Thanks for your input. Ground Zero (talk) 20:36, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Correct time notation

Could we agree on a consistent time notation for Egypt. I just spoke to someone in Cairo and he said, they are actually using both "15:00" and "3PM". However, he said, using "3PM" is more official.

What do you guys prefer? I am in favour for the "3PM" notation.

Cheers, Ceever (talk) 06:11, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree we should be consistent, and if the 12 hour clock is more "official", then let's use that. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:03, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

City maps

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T112948

These are in Arabic script, so of limited use to Western readers. Can we source versions in Roman alphabet? Grahamsands (talk) 12:50, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

I think this was discussed earlier, and Openstreetmap from where the maps are from only had maps with the names in the local script.

That said, I think it would be best to have the maps both in Roman and the local script, because the local street and road signs probably only have the names in Arabic (or in Chinese in China etc.). ϒpsilon (talk) 13:41, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

The problem is known, under investigation and has a high priority. --RolandUnger (talk) 08:21, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Antibiotics and AMR

The Hygiene section of Eat more or less recommends Antinal for intestinal problems. It warns against long time use, but says nothing about getting infections of resistant bacteria, which I suppose is a very relevant risk, as the antibiotics probably kills a lot of competing microbes. As I do not know the specifics of this case, I do not want to write warnings myself, but I hope somebody could make clear whether my fears are justified. --LPfi (talk) 07:42, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Litter

I added a section to the main page about litter, which was reasonably moved down to the cope section. I wanted to just start a discussion to justify its presence in the main article. I travel all over the world and like anyone else I see the scourge of litter and rubbish that affect so many countries. I am working in Egypt at the moment for a few weeks. The quantities of litter and rubbish here are so far beyond what I have seen any where else that I felt it needed saying in the article. Some of the tourist places are a bit cleaner, but even at the pyramids if you look the other side of some of the walls, there are plenty of discarded food and drink containers. The decent hotels keep their property clean, but a walk down the street and you are back to the litter. It really needs to be seen to be believed. Davidbstanley (talk) 05:18, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

I was in Egypt myself, and two weeks there did not leave this impression to me, and I was definitely off the beaten tourist track. Yes, it is dirty, but not particularly more than in other such countries.

If this litter section is considered a good idea, then let's also put up one for India, Nepal, Turkey, Morocco and such.

Cheers, Ceever (talk) 07:19, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

I am in Mahalla, north of Cairo today. The litter here is unbelievable. I have spent time in Turkey and it is nothing like as bad as here. I have not been to India, but I spend a lot of time in Bangladesh and even that is no where near as bad as Egypt. Davidbstanley (talk) 20:06, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

I remember looking out the window of my hotel in central Cairo and seeing piles of garbage on rooftops. I don't remember it being as bad in other cities in Egypt. I agree that Turkey is not comparable, but I can't comment on India or Nepal (or Morocco in this century). Ground Zero (talk) 22:08, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Really? We crossed from Nepal from India, and thought Nepal was dirty. But then we hit India and were shocked. 🤷 Ceever (talk) 10:06, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

History and culture

I realize this is a travel guide, but considering that Egypt has one of the longest histories of anyplace on Earth, it seems disrespectful and is certainly jarring to me that it has such a short history section, not to mention the lack of any section on culture. I'd propose mentioning Al Azhar, pan-Arabism and Nasser, the wars with Israel including the Suez Crisis that also involved the UK and France, the peace treaty with Israel, the troubled history of relations with Gaza and the Palestinians in general, and the conflict between the military elite that own much of the country and the Muslim Brotherhood. All of that should be dealt with briefly and can be, but let's see if we can agree on covering that, or whether there are other things to cover.

In terms of culture, Egypt is to my understanding the foremost source of movies, popular music and book publishing in the Arab World, so I think it's worth mentioning that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:53, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Also, even realizing that there's an article about ancient Egypt, I think that highlights like the Library in Alexandria and the Pharos lighthouse which was one of the 7 Wonders of the World should be mentioned. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:59, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Unavailability of tampons

It is not possible to find tampons to buy. It can save a lot of discomfort to simply know this before traveling. Do you have a good idea where to include this information? Best, --Marsupium (talk) 14:53, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

I'd say in Cope. –LPfi (talk) 15:20, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply! All existing subsections didn't seem to fit, put in under a new one, a bit strangely short. Still better to have this info in some way at least I guess. Thanks again! --Marsupium (talk) 15:31, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, certainly. Thanks for adding it. –LPfi (talk) 15:44, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

This is definitely information that should be included, and I agree that Cope is the best place for it. Are they absolutely not sold in Egypt in 2022, or just very hard to find? This article from 2018 says they "are rare outside of Metro Supermarket". Is it worth mentioning that pads are available (as of 2017), but that Egyptian women consider them to be "shameful" products. This was also interesting story. Ground Zero (talk) 15:49, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Ground Zero, thanks for the links and the dating. I'm not sure, maybe there are some rare places. I don't know about Metro Market. Even if they have them, Metro Market rather consists of a couple of stores in more expensive neighborhoods of bigger cities in the Delta and in Greater Cairo. But that would be already better than nothing. I've weakened the wording of the sentence mentioning it though. --Marsupium (talk) 00:26, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Visa on Arrival

As I read from the travel advice of the Canadian government (https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/egypt), Egypt will not grant visas on arrival to Canadians starting from Sept 3, 2023. From Egyptian newspapers (for instance Egyptian MP requests clarification...) I learned that this applies to US citizens and citizens of other countries, too. Is there anybody who has more detailed information? --RolandUnger (talk) 14:34, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Devaluation of the pound

The Egyptian pound had fallen against the US dollar from 31 in January 2024 to 47 today. I think this means that no prices we have quoted in LE are still valid and should be removed. Ground Zero (talk) 17:11, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

If the only factor is exchange rates, then prices quoted in LE would be fine. If exchange rate changes are causing price level changes (e.g. inflation) then LE quotes would be problematic. Brycehughes (talk) 17:19, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

I've been to Egypt recently and can testify that the prices in our articles are very obsolete. For instance, I recall paying LE1800 for entry in Sethi I's tomb, and LE2000 for Nefertari's. Ibaman (talk) 17:36, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Bryce: when a currency is devalued, the prices of imported products rise. The prices of domestic products produced with imported products rises. The prices of petrol will rise, and everything requires petrol to get to market. And what Ibaman wrote. Ground Zero (talk) 17:45, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not saying the prices in this article are correct. I'm saying that you can't make the leap "this currency fell against the dollar" -> "hotels, etc., denominated in that currency are automatically more expensive". If that's your logic, I'm saying it's far more complex than that. Brycehughes (talk) 17:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

If prices rose automatically in proportion to the devaluation, we could adjust them by some fdactor, but they don't, because, as you say, it's complicated. But they do rise for most products and services, but we don't know by how much. With a dramatic devaluation like this, we can be sure that our prices are out of date, as Ibaman reports. It would be best to remove them. Ground Zero (talk) 18:38, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

If a price is old or if someone reports (a la Ibaman) that it is out of date, sure. But if a price is from, say, January 2024 (the start of the time period you mentioned)... well Bloomberg reports an annualized core inflation rate of 35 percent in February, so the actual price change over Feb would be less than 1/12th of that (less than due to compounding) [not sure how they're reporting it], which isn't huge, and so I'd say we could probably not panic and leave recent prices alone. Brycehughes (talk) 18:44, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Do we have any prices from Jan 2024? Or is that a red herring? Ground Zero (talk) 20:01, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

29 percent annualized, core (so <1/12th of that wieghted-avg price change on monthly basis). Not sure if this is paywalled, but there is a chart of Egyptian inflation from 2018 to present. If we make the assumption that the prices we mention in this article closely track the prices covered by that chart, which appears to be the annualized urban CPI (non-core?) for Egypt, and we say that the margin-of-error we can tolerate for price incorrectness is like 15% (?), then maybe we could say all prices in this article older than 6 months should be obliterated. (Granted, given the state of global price levels over the past couple years this sort of reasoning could apply to many countries not just Egypt... a lot of shaky assumptions in this reasoning however.) Brycehughes (talk) 20:17, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't the article say the prices rose by 11% in February? The yearly rate doesn't say too much when there are surges like this ("a trend that may continue"). If most of the previous inflation (30% January to January) was in the summer, then 6 month old prices may be just 11% off, but there probably was some inflation also in the autumn, and the March inflation may also be high, so 15% is way too optimistic. Old prices can tell something about the price level, but are misleading if compared to current prices (and yes, we probably had some 8+8% in EU over the last two years, so 15% is quite optimistic overall). –LPfi (talk) 20:46, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

You're right – 11% for February. The article seems to mix year-over-year and annualized... I'm not sure what's going on there, makes it hard to figure out what they're reporting. So, forget that article, if you look at the CPI data and you walk back 6 months, you get about 17% change, so yes you're right a bit more than 15%. Close enough though... maybe we could obliterate anything 5 months old. Brycehughes (talk) 21:09, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't see them mixing anything, other than perhaps in the wording: 30% January to January (annual, not annualized), 36% February to February and 11% January to February this year means that January to February last year was 5% or so. But yes, the inflation terminology is quite confusing ("yearly rate in February" – uh?). But if the trend continues, then we are far from 15%. –LPfi (talk) 21:33, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Typically when you say "annual" in inflation reporting you mean annualized, but apparently in that article they mean year-over-year, and this is a strange way to report it. Regardless, we have the CPI numbers now, so we can forget that article! I don't think we should panic and throw out every price in the article based on February's bad inflation. We can say that prices are probably getting out of date (we don't actually know how well the CPI basket relates to the prices in this article) and that we should throw out older ones. Not sure what we define as "old". Brycehughes (talk) 21:47, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

I'd support removing some of the prices based on Ibaman's anecdotal experience. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 20:37, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

With a 50% devaluation since the beginning of January, something that won't show up in February's inflation figures, we can be sure that any prices added before 2024 are no longer valid. Ground Zero (talk) 00:25, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Is there a reason this can't wait for official inflation figures? What's the rush? Brycehughes (talk) 01:02, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Is there a reason why we would keep prices that we know are out of date? How does obsolete information benefit the readers? Ground Zero (talk) 15:20, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Devaluations have occurred several times in recent years. Therefore, price information should always indicate the time at which it was collected. So they can at least serve as guide values (as it was in the past). However, they should not be older than 5 years (as in the current Lonely Planet). However, the sharp devaluation did not lead to strong price increases in March because prices have risen continuously throughout the entire period. In fact, the exchange rate now corresponds to the black market rate.

Entrance fees to archaeological sites are set by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The last increase took place on December 1, 2023, after the current prices were set about a year earlier. I updated all prices in the German Wikivoyage because I had a copy of the ministry decree. Therefore, the relevant prices can be taken from German Wikivoyage. We already started to store the prices with its start time in Wikidata, too. See for example https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q201219 for the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Then, the listing module only has to fetch these prices as it can be done in German Wikivoyage. --RolandUnger (talk) 15:24, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

See for instance Sights in Cairo. --RolandUnger (talk) 15:27, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

GroundZero you might be right re inflationary pressure, but you also might not be. The Egyption Central bank purposefully initiated this devaluation to bring the official rate in line with the black market rate – this is not a currency crisis. They have also dramatically raised interest rates. We should just wait and see if there is substantial resulting inflation, and until then be relatively conservative in our price culling. The March CPI numbers will be published next month. Brycehughes (talk) 17:07, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘The March CPI numbers are out and it was not a big jump. It might still be worth culling some prices though, especially particularly outdated ones. Brycehughes (talk) 13:12, 29 April 2024 (UTC)