Post office hours are
generally daily except
Fri 8am-2pm (Ramadan
9am-3pm), though central
offices may stay open
until 8pm. Almost
invariably, offices are
closed on Fridays.
Airmail letters between
Western Europe and Egypt
generally take around a
week to ten days, two to
three weeks to North
America or Australasia.
Sending mail from Egypt,
it speeds up the
delivery if you get
someone to write the
name of the country in
Arabic. As a rule,
around fifteen percent
of one's correspondence
(in either direction)
never arrives; letters
containing photos or
other items are
especially prone to go
astray.
It's best to send
letters from a major
city or hotel; blue
mailboxes are for
overseas airmail, red
ones for domestic post.
Airmail ( bariid
gawwi) stamps
can be purchased at post
offices, hotel shops and
postcard stands, which
may charge 5pt above the
normal rate (80pt for a
postcard/letter to
anywhere in the world).
Registered mail ,
costing 15-30pt extra,
can be sent from any
post office. Selected
post offices in the main
cities also offer an
Express Mail Service
(48hr to Europe or the
US, which costs £E37-48
for letters under 100
grammes). Private
courier firms such
as Federal Express or
DHL are limited to a few
cities, and a lot more
expensive.
To send a parcel
, take it unsealed to a
major post office for
customs inspection,
weighing and wrapping.
The procedure -
explained in detail in
the Cairo section - is
much the same throughout
Egypt.
Mail
Receiving letters poste
restante is a bit of a
lottery, since
poste
restante is a bit of
a lottery, since post
office workers don't
always file letters
under the initials you
might expect. Ask for
all your initials to be
checked (including
M
for Mr, Ms, etc), and,
if you're half expecting
anything, suggest other
letters as well. To have
mail sent to you, it
should be addressed (preferably
with your surname
underlined and/or
highlighted) to
Poste
Restante at the
central post office. To
pick up mail, you'll
need your passport.
A better option is to
have mail sent to a
major hotel (anything
with three or more stars
should be reliable) or
c/o American Express
(branches in Cairo,
Alexandria, Luxor and
Aswan). The latter
service is officially
only for Amex travellers'
cheque- or cardholders.
Note that parcels
sent c/o American
Express will be held at
the post office (in the
case of Cairo, at the
branch on Sharia
Mohammed Farid).
Phones
All towns and cities
have at least one 24-hour
telephone and
telegraph office (
maktab el-telephonat,
or centraal) for
calling long-distance
and abroad. Many of
these feature orange
direct-dial phones that
take phonecards (£E15,
£E20 or £E30), enabling
you to avoid the old
system of booking calls
through the exchange.
This involves giving the
number to a clerk and
paying for the call in
advance, either for a
set amount of time or
£E30-40 for an open line,
and settling the bill
afterwards. Expect to
queue and hang around a
while. It's also
possible to book (and
prepay) a call that is
routed through to your
hotel or some other
number. Alternatively,
you can make calls
through a hotel with
a trunk or direct
international line (most
places with three or
more stars have them),
which entails paying up
to 100 percent above the
normal rate. Always
ascertain the rate first.
Regular phone
boxes really only
serve for local calls,
which cost 10pt (though
some kiosks only accept
the old 5pt coins). You
can also make local
calls on semi-public
phones owned by
shopkeepers or hoteliers,
who charge 25-50pt.
Phonecard booths (Menatel
or Nile Phone) are
becoming increasingly
common - shops which
sell the cards usually
display both companies'
signs. Menatel (£E5,
£E10, £E20 & £E40 cards)
and Nile (£E5, £E10,
£E15 & £E30 cards) both
charge 25pt for a
3-minute local call and
20-60pt a minute for
national, mobile and
pager calls;
international rates vary
according to distance.
Egypt on the Internet
There is currently an
Internet boom in Egypt,
both in terms of access
and in the number of
Egyptian Web sites. New
servers are constantly
being added to cope with
demand, even as
competing Web sites
merge or disappear
altogether - we've
listed those that...
read more >>
The media
As for other means of
staying in touch,
various British, US,
French and German
newspapers are
available in Cairo,
Alexandria, Luxor and
Aswan, as are
Newsweek and Time
magazines. Elsewhere,
however, you'll be lucky
to find even the
Egyptian Gazette.
If you have a short-wave
radio, you can pick up
the BBC World Service
, which is broadcast on
639KHz at 8.45am-noon,
3-5pm and 7-9pm; and on
1320KHz from 9pm to 3am
(all local time).
Reception is best in the
north. The Voice of
America broadcasts
24 hours on numerous
frequencies on the AM (medium
wave) or short wavebands.
Both services carry news
on the hour. In Cairo,
FM95 broadcasts English-language
news daily at 7.30am,
2.30pm and 8pm.
