foreigners in Alrehab

I live here, and have been here since 6 months before the revolution. I see foreigners now and then, but not that many. As far as I personally know about, it's a handful.

To get to the daily life part first: when you live in Rehab that is a totally closed city, you will hardly notice all the trouble going on elsewhere in Egypt. This of course is as long as you stay inside the city mostly.

Going to 5th Settlement to visit the shops and malls there is also not a problem, as long as you stay away from darker areas. Stick to the main roads, and you will be fine.

City Stars is the biggest shopping center in Cairo, and it's around 25 minutes to drive there from Rehab when there is no rush traffic. Also a mostly safe place to go.

So, as you can see - it's kind of limited where it's really safe to be right now. But - I wake up every morning listening to the birds singing outside our building.

Media will of course always emphasize on the bad stuff, but we all live our lives here, and most stuff works pretty ok still.

Now - the political part of things:

It's a mess the whole thing. It seems to me as a foreigner that there is no particular direction of anything when ot comes to protests and such. It all looks like very coincidental and with very little planning. So, you can really never know where the next rage is gonna take place. This of course makes planning trips and such difficult, because you have to keep track of the event of the hour. And by the hour, I mean it in the literal way. So, we always check quickly on Twitter and in the news (my wife is Egyptian - so she checks the Arabic news before we go).

Since the situation is so fluid, we tend to not leave Rehab to much. Simply to not take to many chances.

I hope the above will give you a sense of what to expect in a realistic way.

Any other having different opinion?

sounds good basicus and thanks for the info.  I guess the whole world changed and there aren't that many safe places in more.  The sad thing is that Egypt was one of the safest countries in the world but considering that there is no police and the country is going through all the changes, it isn't really that bad.  I live in NYC and been living here for the past 25 years and NYC today in one of the safest places in the US but you still have to be careful of certain areas specially at night. 

I hope Egypt will be a better place in the near future because living in NYC is no fun any more. it;s too expensive, too much work, and no one has time for anyone. 

I own an apt in Madinaty and hope we can move there one day.

good luck to you and your wife,.

best regards

If you live in NYC; I guess you will not feel much of a difference if you wind back some years to when it was very unsafe there. It's approximately what you will get here right now.

Yes. Egypt was very safe before. I told my wife during the revolution "welcome to the rest of the world" referring to how Egyptians consider it so unsafe here now. To me, it's not that much of a difference from when I lived in Poland for 5 years and Spain after that.

Madinati will be a very nice place to live when it get's a bit more done. At least they need to get land lines working.

My wife and I went there a while back to look at apartments for sale, but we make a living of being 24/7 on internet, and can't live there yet.

Madinati is much better planned than Rehab though, and I would really prefer living there.

Keep your eyes open because there are a few people who wants to sell their flats for a much cheaper price.  try to join Madinaty Owners Union اتحاد ملاك مدينتي on facebook and they have the latest news and pictures. also Madinaty Anglophones. 


my brother and I were so scared about what's going on in Egypt, we were thinking of selling the apts. sad


talk to you soon,.