Cairo - Dammam

That was a long day in the end. I finally arrived to my new temporary home for the next however many days it takes for me to find somewhere around ten to 6 local time (UK is three hours behind here). 

Cairo is not my favorite airport I have to say. On arrival we got off the plane and made our way to an area where confusion insued by pretty much everyone who entered it, including myself. 'International departures' it said, but was effectively a short corridor with an Egyptair check in desk down one side behind the velvet rope of which everyone stood in a queue to get their boarding pass stamped by a single operator before passing through one single door. To be fair I suppose considering the number of people being they must have had to handle the queue was kept small but the lack of direction either from the signs or terminal staff was certainly not helping anybody.

After passing through with my boarding pass stamped there was the most insignificant security check where bags were passed through a machine with nobody watching it and a continuous line flowing through the metal detector gate with no one on the other side. It was continually going off so this must just have been an extra precaution or something that they had not decided to use but not taken away either. There was an elevator on the other side and a set of stairs causing a choking point due to the considerable number of people deciding they would rather wait despite the backlog rather than look up and aim for the summit all of a single floor above. I took the stairs if for no other reason than it was actually quicker. Fortunately I found an empty seat to while my remaining two and a half hour wait and decided to watch a film. I had eventually succumbed on the plant there and watched half of one, so I finished that and then started another one. Having not taken any other currency with me on my journey than sterling I really didn't fancy taking out Egyptian Pounds just to buy a drink in one of the dozens of tiny duty-free advertised shops. 

I noticed at this point, while I was people watching as you do in such public places when your sitting there with little to do but wait, that the women wore any number of different types of faceless niqab (btw I know that the niqab is a very specific form of robed attire but I've yet to learn or understand the difference between them so until I do that is the only word I can really use I'm afraid). Some had all sorts of pinks and oranges, the kind my counsin Becca would wear if ever she decided to wear one. There were a few women with the traditional black niqab covering everything but their eyes but less than half a dozen of all the women I saw there.

Come the time to board I decided to wait an extra 10 minutes for the busy bodies to go through to the gate. I noticed a man standing near but not in the queue that was forming at the gate entrance wearing what reminded me of Aladdins outfit in the disney film when he became Sultan. I even thought at first that perhaps he was some kind of royalty and hence was waiting for someone to usher him through but that would later be dispelled when he walked straight through business class like the rest of us and sat on the same row as me. Once the queue for the gate had died down slightly I stood and and joined the back. As I did I was effectively forced to leave a gap in order to allw the passing foot traffic to pass providing the opportunity for an old woman and her son to assume that myself and the dozen or so behind me were in fact just standing there for no particular reason and cut in. When in a strange environment where I was literally the only white person in Cairo airport I didn't feel comfortable making a fuss - typically British. When she and her son walked straight past the security officer checking boarding cards and passports however she was quickly ushered back and ended up behind me anyway - karma I suppose, or whatever the Muslim version may be. 

Eventually it was onto the next plane, another 737-300 identical to the last one. This time I had almost exactly the same seat but on the opposite side. The hostess came round and asked me to read the emergency card because of my fortuitous position, which for some reason I again did even though I'd glanced it only 8 hours earlier. Glance it only I must though as I noticed this time that whoever translated from Arabic to English clearly didn't conceive what they actually meant. It clearly stated that the duties of anybody sitting in such a seat is to operate the emergency exit as you would expect, however it did not at any point say only to do this in case of an emergency! I sat there for a couple of minutes as we reversed from of the terminal pondering the implications on all the various people that would be effected from the pilot and passengers through to the airport manager who's tightly run schedule would have to be compeltey re-organised from gate G1 being out of operation unitl it was sorted. The things you think about when you get bored I suppose...

The meal options for this flight were chicken or beef so I opted for the chicken this time. Again the meat wasn't the best and it was heavily spiced with cumin but on the whole it was nice. The chocolate sponge pudding was to die for it has to be said and the coffe was as bad as the first flight. 

I continued to watch my film both prior to and after the meal had been and gone and still hadn't finished it before the plane began to descend and the captain turned on the seat belt signs promting the usual flurry to put everything back in the overhead lockers and stow the tray tables. My next door neighbour (yes I unfortunately had one this time) had been asleep under a blanket and I had briefly had to wake him to allow me to put away my tray table, as I had done to get it out. I'm not sure if he was unaware or the odd operation of these few emergency exit seats or he didn't really care about my need for access.