‘Drained my soul like a vacuum on turbo mode’: Redditor details ‘nightmare’ Egypt experience, post goes viral

A traveller’s furious Reddit post detailing three difficult weeks in Egypt has gone viral, setting off a massive online debate about tourist safety and the growing frustration many visitors say they face in the country.

The traveller said he was writing the post while seated on the flight out of Egypt, explaining that his experience “drained my soul like a Dyson vacuum on turbo mode.” He claimed that the problems began immediately at Cairo Airport, where a $15 “fast immigration” service placed him in the same queue as every other passenger, despite promising quicker processing.

Shortly after, he said he was stopped by a man demanding another $15 for what was described as a “registration fee,” which he believed had been invented on the spot. According to him, several other passengers walked out of the terminal without paying any such fee.

The user also wrote at length about what he described as intense, nonstop staring from people around him, saying he felt watched everywhere he went. “Men, women, whole families staring at you like they’re trying to download your data with their eyes,” he said, adding that it left him feeling uncomfortable and disrespected throughout his stay.

He then recounted an incident with a taxi driver at Saqqara. The driver, he said, agreed to a fare of 950 EGP but later demanded an additional 3,000 EGP for “waiting time” once the trip was over. The traveller refused to pay the extra amount. But the most serious moment came at the Saqqara ticket booth, where he said the card machine processed his 1,525 EGP entry fee as 1,525 USD. He described it as an “almost $1,500 loss” that he caught only by accident. “If I wasn’t paying attention, they would’ve robbed me of $1500 with the confidence of someone ordering a latte,” he wrote.

The frustrations continued in Cairo. The traveller said a restaurant at Point 90 Mall failed to honour his reservation even after he waited for an hour. According to him, staff dismissed his booking entirely, offered no apology and simply told him, “No reservation,” as if nothing had happened. He also described the traffic as “endless chaos,” saying that honking was constant and felt more like a reflex than a response to anything on the road.

By the time he boarded his flight home, he said he felt “completely cooked.” He described Egypt as a place that made him feel like “a walking ATM with legs,” claiming that if he refused to hand out money, he was treated as the rude one. “Egypt unlocked a brand-new category of never again,” he said in the closing lines of his post.

The comment section quickly filled with travellers sharing their own experiences. One user wrote that visiting Egypt felt like “being at war with every single person there,” saying every interaction felt like a battle.

Another commenter, a woman who travelled with her husband, said the harassment and dishonesty were constant and described being exhausted throughout her trip. She added that she returned home with food poisoning, calling it a “parting gift,” though she acknowledged the country’s beauty and said she might return only with a professional guide or group.

A third user said bluntly that Egypt sits on a short list of countries they would never visit again, adding, “You couldn’t pay me to travel to Egypt.”