Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
Image: Sunset over the Red Sea (Hurghada, Egypt)

Saint Paul, Minnesota, where I live, is expecting some kind of record breaking snowfall. I doubt that we'll get it, but, if we do, we're talking about nearly two feet of snow (24 inches/ 61 cm). Public schools have pre-cancelled classes through Friday, expecting that it will take that long for the city (which is well equipped with snow plows, etc.) to dig itself out of this massive amount of snow.

As I was at the grocery store buying emergency toilet paper, bread, and eggs yesterday, I started thinking about the fact that it's cherry blossom season in Japan. This reminded me of the virtual tour company that I discovered in the middle of the pandemic, HeyGo. I posted a bunch of "postcards" from the trips I took, virtually, with them last year. And, I suddenly missed it. There's something really special about touring this way. Because it's live, you can talk (via text) to the tour guide who responds back to you. Like, you can type into the chat function, "Hey, Eriko, what's that thing to your left?" and she will turn and look and tell you. Which is shockingly like ACTUALLY being here. 

So, after shoveling out the first few inches of snow that fell last night, I decided to see what tours I could go on. There was one this morning at 9 am in Hurghada, Egypt which promised a sunset view of the Red Sea.

Why not, I thought.

Okay, I'd forgotten a couple of things. First of all--the chat.  While, it is really cool as a way to connect with your host, it is also always full of "that one guy"s who come on to say, "Where are we?" and/or something vaguely (or overtly) racist. Luckily, you can hide the chat, which I immediately remembered and took advantage of.

Then, there's the host.

I want to be clear that most of the time, the tour guides on HeyGo are amazing. But, once a lot of countries opened again for regular tourists, the truly professional ones all seem to have gone back to working in-person tours (which makes sense and I hardly blame them. You gotta make a living!) However, his means that a good number of the people left running the HeyGo tours are not natives to the country and/or rank amateurs. Now, I have nothing against either. If I travelled a lot and had the kind of phone you need to be a HeyGo tour, I would LOVE this job. I don't believe you *have* to be native to a place to be a good tour guide for it, either. 

It's just that sometimes this combination means you get someone like the woman who did the tour in Egypt. First of all, she had an Eliza Doolittle accent that you could not only cut with a knife, but also which almost seemed fake, it was so exaggerated. Second, she took us to this pier in the middle of nowhere that had only one view and then proceeded to regale us with the story of her flight overseas, which started with "Four pound fifty for a mocha"--(pronounced as a very nasally "ma-CA") --"at the airport Starbucks," which she literally could not get over. In fact, she was so affronted by this price that I asked my house spy (Alexa) what the conversion rate was and it's $5.44 in US dollars. I don't get the outrage. It's not uncommon to spend five dollars for a cup of coffee in the US, particularly at Starbucks, but, really, I think I was regularly paying closer to six dollars for my fancy latte at Claddagh. and I don't think that's really noteworthy? Not really anything to complain about. 

I mean, her rant about the four pound fifty went on and on to the point that I started to find it hilarious, and I suspect that's what she was going for? The funny, complaining monologue? But, let's just say, she was no Joan Rivers.

Then she veered off into some rambling story about how she thought "some terrorist" had taken her spot on the plane because when she went to board they scanned her QR code and said that she was already checked-in. That's when I bailed. It would be one thing if we were seeing anything interesting at all, but it was still basically this exact same view:


Same view, only closer

This has not stopped me, however, from booking a tour of a garden in Japan this evening. I think for the next couple of days, particularly if we get snowed in, I will be posting a lot of pictures of ELSEWHERE.