A country of rich history and magnificent monuments. Also a country of chaos and turmoil. Tourists flock there because of the Sun, the Pyramid and the Nile. Tourists also avoid it because of the harassment, the bad hygiene and the occasional terrorists’ attacks. The affordable price made up of all the shortcomings, I eventually decided to experience it. It is full of surprises.
D1 Arrival
Airport
Luxor Airport is small and there’s no jet bridges. Upside is that both front and back gates are used for deboarding. Shuttle buses carried us to the terminal building.
Immediately after immigration, three locals sitting on a long bench asked to see my passport. The alarm in my head went off, this was odd. They saw us came through the border control, what’s the point of re-checking? After a short hesitation, I hanged over my passport. A big relief, when he handed it back to me without saying anything.
Out of the terminal buildings, didn’t see a single taxi. (We arrived at 17:30 local time). Luckily, we have booked coach to the hotel. It’s only 15-20mins drive from the airport to centre Luxor.
ATM
There were two ATMs at Luxor airport after exiting immigration: Crédit Agricole — charges nearly 15% fees for cash withdrawal and Bank Misr — doesn’t like my English bank card.
The next day I found out there are NBE (National Bank of Egypt) ATM near Luxor temple (facing McDonalds, a few doors to the left) and next to Academy of Art. They didn’t charge any fees, though had a maximum withdrawal limit of 4000EGP. My bank only charged £0.47 when I withdrawal 1000EGP.
All the museums in Luxor only accept CARDS. Most restaurants have card machines. We end up spent less than 5000EGP in cash for the whole 7 days.
Taxi
Indrive is the go-to App for Taxi in Luxor. Though I found it’s easier to just haggle the price with the taxi near you, once you know the fair price. As in December 2024, the taxi journey of 3-5km was 50-100EGP for a tourist. I hadn’t paid anything cheaper for a shorter journey, as anything lower than 50EGP was approaching local price and hard to find any willing driver.
On the west bank, it may be easier to negotiate a taxi for the day. As there were no taxis outside the sites that require tickets from the Antiquities Ticket Office. We paid 400EGP for 5hrs from the west bank ferry terminal to 3 sites and back to the west bank ferry terminal including waiting time.
Indrive is very useful for day trips, as it gives you the option to communicate to the driver and agree a price. The in-app message services translate your English message into Arabic.
Once you put down time, departure location, destination, the app may provide you a suggested price. Then you put down your offer. There is a comment box for you to write further requirement, such as round trip, via certain places or hiring for a day…etc. Hopefully you will get drivers’ counter offers within seconds. It will show their price, photo of their car, rating, reviews and which year the car was made. I chose only 5 star rating drivers with a car no more than 20 years old. Once you accept the counter offer of your choice, note down the number plate. There were incidents of cars drove up pretend they are the ones you ordered. For a trip in the future, confirm the details with the driver via the in-app messages. Pay cash at end of the journey.
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