Blowing With the Wind

It’s a great feeling to wake up in the morning on Monday and to be able not to care about that. With a bit hangover from last night the fresh air is only two meters away through the door so why not to spend few hours just by sitting down under date palm trees on some pillows and enjoy the fact I have nothing to do.

And what is a great tool to make this feeling even better? Shisha!

Water pipe is and ancient device of Orient making which ancientnessness could be shadowed only by it’s awesomenessness!

You just can’t avoid them in Egypt. They’re everywhere. On the streets in shops for you to buy, in coffee shop for both you and locals to smoke them together in traditional way, in every restaurant. And in Bishbishi. I know only about two Islamic countries in which it is hard to find any water pipes.

First of those is Morocco. I actually don’t know why is that but my personal opinion is that the King is somehow against this non-healthy bad habit and his citizens, by which he’s so loved, are making it happened, obviously without any resistance (or much of it). Altogether I spent in Morocco almost 50 days and through all that time I saw one local person smoking a water pipe. And he was squeezed into the deepest corner of one of many coffee shops like he was doing something illegal (and maybe he did). In 2007, when we decided to buy some tobacco in Meknes and we couldn’t find any, we just asked a guy in one shop. He said something in Arabic, went off and after like 5 minutes he came back with a black plastic bag with 4x 50g packages and he even didn’t allow us to take them out. Like it was some kind of contraband (and maybe it was). Two years later in Marrakech those little boxes were sold openly in some shops selling cigarettes. Apparently business for tourists is little bit more powerful than the will to please your king. Still you can’t experience in Morocco the same thing as in other Arabic countries, to visit a coffee shop or restaurant and get yourself a water pipe traditional way.

The second country is Turkey, where only recently Parliament came (for no apparent reason) with a strict law forbidding smoking in restaurants and coffee shop. In contrast with Morocco, citizens of Turkey obviously don’t love their authorities so much and they are actually protesting. Let’s say the reason was to get closer to EU somehow, unknown is if the outcome was not much more drastic for locals than for relations with EU.

As time passes I’m learning many names different cultures use for a water pipe. Strange thing is, sometimes they can’t understand each other by using those different names :-)

In Czech Republic most commonly we just call it “a water pipe”. In Egypt you can come across term “Shisha” or “Sheesha” or any other version of that same pronounciation. Americans call it “Hookah” which, by the way, is the original name for the one type of water pipe most common in Orient, the standing-on-a-table one. And they know why they’re doing it because it’s the best way to distinguish it from “a Bong”, which is different type of water pipe (the holding-in-your-hands-while-used one) most commonly used to inhalate different stuff than tobacco. And only two days ago I met two guys from South Africa here and apparently they’re calling it “Hubbly Bubbly”. That would make Edvin Hubble so happy!

Anyway, if you want to get a shisha for your own home pleasure (or just to fill a spot at your place with a nice traveler’s trophy), there’s not better place than Egypt to get it. And to get it cheap there’s no better place in Egypt than Khan Khalili marketplace in Cairo. That fits also for the fuel you might want for your new toy – tobacco. For normal-sized Egyptian shisha (which in Czech Republic we call XXL for some strange reason), means about a meter high in total, 30 cm of which is the vase itself, you are asked about 400 to 500 EGP and if you make it down to 150 or even less be sure the shop owner still ripped you off your skin. Considering the fact same shisha bought in Central Europe would cost you approx 1400 EGP with no chance to bargain about it, that’s still totally awesome for you. See? You’re both happy! Greatness of Egyptian shopping.

So if you chose your new shisha to actually be you new toy and not only a traveler’s trophy you wanna get some fuel too. In 2006, my first time in Egypt and first time at Khan Khalili most of us were shopping n00bs. But we got to know the huge advantage of actually learning Egyptian numbers prior to the trip (which, I guess, is the thing many Egyptian businessmen won’t even consider). The price offer on 250g package was 10 EGP and we like knew we could take it down like to 5. Then at one moment we saw numbers on the package saying 3.50. Well you have no idea what that mean but you can always try. We just said to the shop owner there’s a price attached on the package and we want it for that price, it actually worked and I came back from Egypt with 5 kgs of shisha tobacco for awesome price. Next time I came upon the same shop again and without letting any chance for the owner to start bargain with me I told him “last time here 3.50 EGP, now I’ll give you 5 EGP. The guy was so stunned he just nodded and I came back from Egypt with another 3 kgs of shisha tobacco (actually with variations in exchange rates between EGP and CZK for same price as before in CZK). Well now something to compare… If you come upon a shop at the Egyptian airport, which is most common for better part of tourists, you pay 1 USD for anything between one 50g package and all set 12x of those (differs with you luck). In US you would pay 20 USD in internet shop for one 250g package. In Czech Republic the rate is about 7,50 USD for a 50g and 34 USD for 250g. One doesn’t have to be an Einstein to see how much you’d have to stock on tobacco during your Egypt trip (actually Einstein sucked at math if you didn’t know that). In Morocco we paid like 3,30 USD for one 50g package with no chance to bargain (was Nakhla, the most common Egyptian tobacco).

And there’s no better experience than to visit some local coffee shop full of local people and to get at least one shisha session with them. Be careful though with the tobacco, because sometimes you’ll come upon the plain black one which is a “brain-hammer”. That’s why for squishy tourists they have smoother flavored one, mostly fruity :-)