I would highly recommend Debbie Senters of Casual Cairo Detours. She is an American who has lived in Cairo for over 10 years, and posts here (giving advice, not touting her business) as Casual_Cairo.


http://www.casualcairodetours.com/

Debbie is great but not for a youngster, he wants a whole different experience and I doubt he will have much money. Buy him a copy of the Lonely Planet or Rough Guide. There are dozens of hostel/backpacker accommodation recommended in there and after his first night he will have meet a whole new group of people doing the same thing. It also has lots of other useful information about places to see, how to get there cheaply, etc etc. There are thousands of foreign students in Egypt. A good place to go to make friends is the American University in Cairo. The underground/metro is a great way of getting around, he might even manage a trip to Luxor where I live. The overnight train is used extensively by students. He will have a great time, make lots of new friends. At 22 it is time to cut the apron strings.

LOL! I was thinking Debbie would help "Mom" be less worried!!!!

lol well let him have her phone number as backup but FGS he is 22 not 17 he will be fine and have a great time. When I meet guests of the train I see streams of young things coming off the train. I had a drink in a backpacker place in Hurghada once and there was about 12 of them who hadn't know each other a week ago. I did not even suggest my own accommodation Flats in Luxor because I know these people, they like the Boomerang (run by an Australian girl), the Bob Marley Hostel, the Nefertiti and countless others of a similar type and price range where they will meet other young things. These are Luxor places but there are others in Cairo, especially around the university. the Lonely Planet has pages of them.

I second the motion for Debbie also.

Hi Grcxx3

Hiya, Percy!

I would recommend Ms. Heba Saeed heba_saeed2001@hotmail.com as a tour guide, she is excellent girl

hi Jayne, I can understand your fear but Egypt is a safe place. The best way to be calm and sure that your son is ok, is to hire the tour guide through a trusted travel agency. You can check this one: www.gattours.com They have great guides there.
Hope this be helpful for you!

Just wanted to note - Casual Cairo Detours IS a very trusted agency, and Debbie is an invaluable contributor to this forum.

(just don't want anyone to get the wrong idea)

Yes, Casual Cairo 'may be' a trusted agency but certainly will not be the only one.
I have a big experience in trips with this agency (GAT Tours) and I know many of their tour guides, who are really very polite and qualified, looking after their travelers, to make them to spend the best trip ever!

Staying out of this little word war with a new poster whose only posts are touting GAT Tours.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Hi everybody,
I dont want to enter in any "little word war" BUT i agree with Cc08.
GAT Tours (www.gattours.com) is a real trusted travel agency. Never they will let you alone, all the team is respectful and so professional. They take care about all your requests even the details you forget. During my trip in Egypt with my daughter (12 years old), never i mentionned to have specials activities for her BUT they added to my tour some activities (like the Pharaonic village) to satisfy the both of us, for me it means that they take care about their travellers to make them liked Egypt.

It is interesting that people who already touted that company (GAT Tours)by mentioning it in the message and who also promoted several times another company and tour guide are 'sensitive' about new posters comments.
Just my love for Egypt and the desire of recommending to other travelers (who requested it, by the way) one of the best ways to visit that country, and then be able to have a great vacation there as I did, make me, for sure, to advice the BEST travel agency, that in my opinion will give them the BEST service.
Allow me, (please!) to be proud of my lack of experience posting here.
As you are a more experienced poster, you should be kind of an example for new posters like me, and let me give my free opinion!

Thank you, Oceane! I hope you had a great time in Egypt! When did you travel here?

Yes it was an amazing trip in a wonderful country with a perfect program. I was in Egypt 2 years before.

<<It is interesting that people who already touted that company (GAT Tours)by mentioning it in the message and who also promoted several times another company and tour guide are 'sensitive' about new posters comments.>>

Note: I did NOT "tout" GAT Tours.
And I'm not sensitive. Just cautious.

Again - Happy Friday to all!
Drinks are on me!

I just am curious where Cc08 and oceane are from? Where do you come from and when were you in Egypt? Always interesting to know this stuff. If you are new to this board and you intend to visit us often, please tell us a bit about yourselves so we can get to know you. Most of us "regular" posters know each other pretty well.

We used Ahmed Hamed Yousif (amedhayo@yahoo.com) Depending on what he would want to see and do, this might be the guide for him. Are you looking for the complete service, driver, transport, and guide to explain the sites?

It can't hurt to ask. You have several leads, give them an email and see what the responses are like.

I had originally planned the "I'll get a guide from the hotel each morning - they must have a list; or get a taxi". As I said in my post - boy am I glad I went full service.

This is my thoughts from a very short observation of Egypt:
From what little I heard and read, taxi service is chaotic and odds are that a taxi driver picked at random might not understand where you want to go and you may not understand how to bargain the fare. (I heard that the new meters, like the road lines, are just decoration). A lot of the services like finding you a guide, the guide service itself, etc. operate on the "commission" model. The hotel finds a guide, expects something in return from him. The guide takes you to shops as well as the tourist site, he gets a commission.

Some of the hotels offer tours - "see the pyramids" for example. So, they already have that arrangement with a tour company, and that is what you may get if you ask them to find a guide.

So it's like wandering into a random restaurant. You may luck into the best thing in the world or you may regret your choice.

I hope he enjoys his trip regardless!

Sorry, fat fingers - Ahmed's email actually is ahmedhayo@yahoo.com - I can;'t figure out how to edit to add the "h".

Sorry MD but Ahmed was way too expensive for our family two years ago compared to the same itinerary from Lady Egypt whom he uses.I think that a young kid wouldn't be able to afford him.
I think that Debbie aka Casual Cairo is perfect for what the poster was requesting.

I'm not sure I understand. CC's email to us quoted a price far higher than Ahmed or Lady Egypt seemed to work out to. Plus, she did not/does not do hotel bookings; and seemed to be pointing us in the direction of doing our own flight bookings.

Ahmed took care of everything. He followed up on details. He arranged for all airport transfers, for the hotels rooms, the flights; and the guides and transport. Yes, he uses an bigger existing company to do it as you will figure out from many posts, he is just a facilitator (and our guide in Cairo); but for example, he has his favourite guides for the south Nile too, so it's more than just luck of the draw who is the guide. We had a young fellow (27) as our hand-picked guide from Abu Simbel to Luxor, he was very knowledgeable and we enjoyed his company.

This is not to put down Debbie, since I'm responding to you, not her. She obviously does a good job or she would not be still in the business how many years later. There are plenty of choices and options in the marketplace, and I can't tell you what your price would be.

The standard answer is: this is how the marketplace works. Ahmed seemed competitive to us, and we liked the full service deal. I suggest if you have the time, get several quotes. Don't take a 3rd party's word (dutyfree) that someone is too expensive, or (my) word that he's not or someone else is. Find out for yourself. Every custom trip comes with its own price.

Whatever you settle on, maybe your son can report back how it turned out and how he liked his trip, to help the next person just as all these posts helped us. Good luck! Enjoy!

Our travel agent used Sakarra tours.

I would like to make a suggestion that if your son doesn't want anything as 'organized', on our free days we privately hired a great young man, Fareed, through our Hotel, Grand Pyramid in Giza. He picked us up in the morning, and just did whatever we felt like but guided us since he knows the city so well and showed us things no one else would put in their tours. He stayed with us or gave us privacy as we wanted it. His driving was amazing considering the traffic. He is only 24 years old so I think he may be an excellent companion as well. I you are interested, call the hotel, ask for the taxi service and ask if you can hire Fareed. I'm not sure if that is the correct spelling for his name. You can tell him Elisabeth and Michael from Canada recommended him. This is just an alternative suggestion for Cairo

I am sorry MD about commenting on Ahmed.I was just going on the planning of the exact same trip between Ahmed and Lady Egypt tours(who is the agency he uses) and it was almost an extra $2500 for the four of us using Ahmed. I have read glowing reports on him and his service but for our family we had a budget so we chose Lady Egypt instead.

OK, whereas I liked the extra touches - Ahmed arranged for good hotel room with views, for example he called about 15 minutes after we got to our room to make sure we liked the room, had no complaints - he was still in the lobby, so he could help ask to have us moved if we found a problem... but in fact, his choices were superb. He and the guides he picked for us spoke very good English, were very well informed, friendly, etc. It's that personal touch - the bigger the company, the more you are a small fish in a big pond rather than the center of the business.

Actually, I found the entire trip not that much more expensive than some of the higher end bus tours listed by a local agent - for a completely private tour that went where we wanted to when we wanted to, without annoyances like the obligatory souvenir sales stops that large bus tours seem to make.

I remember at Petra (Wadi Musa) seeing the bus out the hotel window waiting to load - 45 minutes later when we were done breakfast, people were still milling about. We could not handle that sort of tour...

Plus, tourism is way down, business is tough and I think everyone is very competitive today.

For the best vacation we've been on, this was worth a lot more than what we actually paid.

Although I'm sure Ahmed is excellent - there are many good reviews of his services on this forum - we too went straight to Lady Egypt and felt we had similar service. Our rep in each city also waited in the lobby in each hotel until he heard from us that we were satisfied with out rooms, for example. We had a completely private and custom tour with an excellent guide. I personally never understood why someone would pay for what is basically a second level of "planner".

When we were planning our trip, we sent an email with a pretty good itinerary saying what we wanted to do. Of half a dozen responses, it appears only Ahmed read our email and responded to it point by point.

Lady Egypt responded with an email that said, for example, "be welcomed aboard your cruise ship" despite our request for no cruise. This appeared to be a result of bad editing, they mentioned the transfer by road next day, but still...

I'm sure all the players in the tour game are very good. In the age of the internet and Google, they have to be. I did not see the price difference you mention, and I still prefer to have direct personal attention rather than being one of many, a small fish in a big pond.

(Still the responses from the Egypt sources were better than the response from a co-worker's recommendation, a New York tour organizer, that responded to our detailed proposed itinerary with "We can arrange a trip. Tell us where you want to go...")

We may have been on a tour with Lady Egypt but it was just the four of us in our family-no one else,no souvenir stops and always private mini vans which my adult kids enjoyed immensely.

Ours was the same duty free - just us, our two adult kids and two of their friends.

Also, and I really don't want to belabor this, when we were planning our trip, I also sent an email to a few different agencies and tour arrangers, including Ahmed. I never heard from Ahmed.

I just came back form Egypt, i had wonderful guide in Cairo names Mohamed i will try to find his email address for you

MD-was your young guides name in Upper Egypt-Mohamed?? He was who Ahmed had arranged for us-He made that part of our trip. He had our backs. Did you have Bashir in Petra?? |He made our Jordan part of the trip. Again very fond memories. Chris

Yes, we had a guide named Mohammed from Aswan for our guide in Abu Simbel, Aswan, and down to Luxor, and the road trip to Abydos and Dendera. Yes, he was amazing too, just like Ahmed. As well as being friendly and helpful, he certainly knew his Egyptian history. He was very good, like Ahmed, which is why Ahmed said he often picks him for that part of the trip.

For the information of those new to these discussions - Egyptian guides are licensed by the government, and this means a university degree in the topic - they know the details. Maybe in some other countries anyone can be a guide, maybe take a quick course on their subject - but not in Egypt. Licensed guides are allowed to accompany tourists into the sites.

Mohammed explained the architecture and the events from Egyptian history. I still can't keep straight all the different gods (except Hathor, the cow goddess). But Mohammed knew the different gods, could point them out from the way they were depicted in the temple reliefs, and what particular actions were being depicted; plus demonstrate the heiroglyphics andd show how the various pharoah names were sounded out in the cartouche carvings.

Bashir in Jordan was also our driver/guide; however, mainly we spent a whole day in Petra with a local guide. I guess we were kind of quiet, so we didn't talk a lot with him; we also didn't want to distract him from driving. (In Egypt we had a driver as well as a guide).

USE Samir Abbass with Real egypt net!! He is excellent. We just returned from touring with him 10 days - it was like being treated like royalty. He and his staff of Egyptologists (notice I didn't say tour guides) were absolutly the best we've ever used. Feel free to message me with any questions
http://www.realegypt.net/