Egypt is amazing but it's worth understanding what you get

Egypt | Jan 8 - Jan 19, 2023

I think KimKim as a platform is quite good - we had good responsiveness from the local agency.

Egypt is a truly amazing place and I think, overall, the trip was a good success. I would not really hesitate to recommend KimKim or Egypt Promotions (EP) to work with.

There were, however, a few glitches and recommendations I can offer. EP does a nice job of having a lot of people interact with us in terms of transportation - we had a glitch on the initial meeting at the airport and needed to have data and phone working to communicate with them. In our trip from Luxor, the rep was totally unaware of us not having tickets (booked by EP) and was completely unprepared to do anything about it - that was a bit of a shit show. Otherwise, the trip managers were cordial and helpful.

The guides we had were quite good. We had a private trip and the guides let us adjust as needed. Shahenda in Cairo and Muhammad in Aswan/Luxor were very knowledgeable with good English and good energy. Sha in particular know just what pictures to take and was really delightful to work with.

We did a driving trip to Alexandria - not sure that was entirely worth the extra time. The driver was almost falling asleep at the wheel at some points which was, obviously, disconcerting. We could definitely spent more time at the library in Alexandria visiting the planetarium, seeing the movie and visiting the exhibits.

Definitely do the dhabiya - it's a nice way to break up the trip between being inundated with facts and incredible sites and just relaxing and chilling along the beautiful Nile river. It would behoove EP to offer upgrades - we definitely had a luxury experience (the hotels were simply amazing) but one of our party would have liked the opportunity to book the "suite" room on the dahabiya and paid a bit extra.

We'd also suggest to EP to offer more details and options for the difference locations and let the guide work with the travelers to plan the day out. It seemed several days were pretty much planned out and then ended fairly early.

Tipping is always a bit of a mystery and, while EP gave us guidance for drivers/guides, we were less clear on who and how much to tip the trip managers and various other people. The tipping guidelines seemed quite a bit higher than what we read on the internet but I did not think they were unreasonable (e.g. $25/couple/day for the guide).

Lastly, I'd be suspect of the"government stores" and other places the guides take you - I don't really know what "government store" means and at least in Luxor, we bypassed the "cheap merchandise on the street" to go to a "reputable store with high quality goods" and I think that ended up being inaccurate - I believe we got the exact same goods on the street for about 1/2 the price as in the store. We bought an Egyptian cotton red sweatshirt that pills so bad it's unwearable.

So it may sound like we were not happy with the trip but that is NOT accurate. We DEFINITELY think you need to use a guide company to do this trip unless you speak fluent Arabic. EP was quite good, on time, provided good vehicles and very good guides, so I really do not hesitate in recommending them.