By the way, if you want to contrast why Billmon is a proper writer and observer, and Totten a stupid wanna be hack, contrast Totten's writing on Cairo (search me archives for one of my rants on the superficial hackdom of it) with this:

I wasn’t in the right mood to appreciate the slice of life I was seeing (22 minutes left) but I realize now I was getting a quick peek at life as it is lived in hundreds of megapolises across the global South. It was the same combination of poverty and resourcefulness and squalor and dignity – and above all, the human capacity to endure -- that Dominique Lapierre portrayed in his book about the Calcutta slums, The City of Joy. It was also a scene one might have found on the Lower East Side of New York a hundred years ago, a reminder that most of the world still lives in the grit and the crowds our grandparents and great grandparents struggled to escape.

Well, the Global South nonsense and the dignity bits are overdone, but I think the selection makes the point.

I would add that his follow-on re the train trip is equally good, although on one item:

There may be better ways to see this truth than to ride a long-distance train south from Cairo. Cruising the Nile in a steamer, Agatha Christie-style, probably provides a better sense of the river’s timeless sweep, while the view from an airliner cruising at 30,000 feet shows the slender ribbon of life in more vivid contrast against the sterility of the deserts on either side.

But the view from a steamer deck or an airline porthole won’t give you a very good feel for the land of Egypt and for the people who live on, and in, and with, that land.

Maybe not, but on the Nile cruise ships - I especially favour the period ones - one can spend an entire solid week fucking plastered on the top deck writing hostile diatribes (for sheer style I wrote some of mine in Arabic, perhaps not particularly excellent in terms of rhetoric but readers agreed that towards the end I was developing a real flair) against the Big Fatso's government, Egypt in General, Cairo and the like in relative peace, and towards the end when one has spent almost as much on rhum as one did on the actual cruise ticket, one even can derive some enjoyment out of connivial anti-Egyptian discussions with the Nubian crew members. Of course, your fellow passangers will begin to think you a bit mad, above all for refusing to leave the ship to see any monuments. I still have to revisit a few places for that little conceit, but it was worth it at the time.

Indeed in looking back, I have a certain fondness for this period. I think, though, it marked me descent into really dangerous drinking habits.

POSTSCRIPT:
I have no idea how to contact Billmon but someone should inform him that fellow (the word itself is derived from fellaheen) is a false etymology. Fellow comes from a perfectly Anglo Saxon root.