Giving people the benefit of the doubt is something I try my best to go by. A few times I made the wrong decision and lost money or something else, but sometimes even when you are sure they took advantage of you, you can be pleasantly surprised. To climb Mount Sinai (where Moses received the ten commandments) for sunrise you are required to hire a local guide, for your own safety, pfft. Oh well, I budged and agreed on ~$5. However, the guide I got was too stoned to walk at my pace, and as I anyways had a map of the path on my phone we agreed he should go home and have some sleep instead. Unfortunately neither of us had any change so I gave him a 200 EGP note ($30). We agreed to meet up in the morning and he would give me the change. Once I descended the mountain, I waited, and waited. 2h went by and finally I accepted my loss. Egypt sank even lower on my list of places to ever visit again. But, even if I did not remember his name, nor his face (we met only briefly in the middle of night), he showed up in a car just as I was hitchhiking out of town. Even though $30 would have meant a lot to him, he simply overslept and luckily reached me just in time to reaffirm my belief in the saying, give people the benefit of the doubt. I hope everyone, especially travelers, strive to follow this. We are constantly given the benefit of the doubt. When we get invited into someones home, when a car picks us up on the side of the road, when the hotel management allows us to keep a tab, when someone approaches us while we are lost. Every day there is at least one instance.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 15:16:15 +0000
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