Baksheesh

“Baksheesh” means tip in Egypt. Some Egyptian accustomed to ask for Baksheesh for whatever reason. Asking the direction of train platform, reading some texts from the museum exhibit room, passing toilet paper in washroom and whatever reason they can think of.

I personally dislike the statement of “$$ LE is nothing to you but this is lots of thing to us”. Definitely $$ is something to everyone, money will not drop directly from the sky. Everyone needs to work hard to earn the money and Baksheesh is not free!

They can ask for baksheesh, but we can choose to pay or not. The baksheesh should be paid base on the service provided and they shouldn’t demand for it. Furthermore they shouldn’t ask for how much we should pay for it. Sometimes they take Baksheesh for granted, they have predetermined a minimum amount of Baksheesh base on some actions they did. If the amount given is not up to the limit set, they will start nagging. We have been rejected by someone by giving 10 LE. We can remember clearly, the guy told us do not treat him like beggar when we gave 10 LE as Baksheesh.

How ridiculous is this? Even 10 LE is a big deal. In our country, some people need to work around 4 hours in the fast food chains to earn 10 LE.

Of course, those people that we met during our travel in Egypt are mainly surrounded in tourist business. We cannot stereotype that every Egyptian have the same behavior against Baksheesh. We truly believe those people that we met are only minority in the country but this is definitely carried some bad impression to the country as a traveler.