Jalan-jalan cari makan: All about foods (Part 2)

Cairo, Egypt [Kaherah, Mesir]

We really enjoyed our trip to Cairo, Egypt last Dec 2006. Apart from the immigration hassle at the Cairo Airport on the way back to London, the trip was a happy one and we were really grateful to Man and Sofi. Man particularly had made our trip so enjoyable in this unique but confusing city (I have reasons why I said this city is confusing and I will blog about that some other day). He is a soft spoken guy but very resourceful about the unique stories of the mosques, Egyptian culture and important places around Cairo. As for the Cairo Airport and the hassle at the ticketing counter, it is not just us who complained about this. You can read here some complaints by other tourists.

Nevertheless, Cairo is an amazing city. We will definitely visit Cairo again in the near future. As for the eating places around Cairo, we did not get many opportunities to explore the places and to taste the authentic local foods. The traffic system and the public transportation in Cairo city are quite poor and confusing and therefore we relied on Man to bring us to few places to have our lunch and dinner.

As for breakfast, the cafe at the Malaysia Hall Abassiah Cairo (Dewan Abassiah) had few choices of Malaysian foods. So instead of fully immersing ourself in learning Egyptian culture during our stay in Cairo, we were actually enjoying ourself eating few kinds of cucur like currypuff and seri kaya, and few other malaysian dishes. On top of that, Man brought us to the Malaysian flat village (Rumah Malaysia) in some area in Cairo and again, we had a nice lunch at the small cafe at the village there. I had 'ikan keli sambal' and even 'tapau' some foods back to our room in Dewan Abassiah. You can check the link here to know more about the life Malaysian Students in Cairo and Egypt.

I recalled we had our lunch at KFC near the Great Pyramid of Giza. The view was nice and we could see the Great Sphinx of Giza through the KFC restaurant window. However, we did feel a bit uneasy eating there because through the window, we could also see small kids and old people were busying selling tissues and stuffs to tourists. This is part of Cairo and everywhere you go, you will see small kids are working so hard to sell anything useful to the tourists.

Around the Cairo city, Man brought us to most of the attractions such as the Citadel of Salah al-Din. There are two beautiful mosques in the Citadel. The Mosque of Al-Nasir Muhammad and The Alabaster Mosque (Muhammad Ali Mosque). We also visited the famous Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan, Al-Azhar mosque and the Mausoleum of Imam al-Shafi'i (makam Imam Shafie). We had a quick lunch at one of the bazaar area near the Al-Azhar mosque. I think we ordered rice and roasted chicken. Besides the usual souvenier shopping, I also bought some foods back to London.