I quit my job this year and secretly went to Africa for two months.

My friends asked me: "Of all the countries you've visited, which one do you love the most?" Without hesitation: "Iceland and Egypt." One is like a prism left by God on earth, where the flowing silence on the tundra can seep into your soul, and the aurora and glaciers strike the heart of an INFP. Here, time flows through me, but it doesn't engulf me. The other is the remnants of a civilization chewed up and spat out by history—ancient Egypt, founded in 3100 BC, yet in the successive conquests of Greece, Rome, and Arabia, its hieroglyphs and civilization were shattered into the sands of the Sahara. It's decadent, lost, and full of deception, but beneath the layers of deceit lies a certain innocent kindness. On my first day in Cairo, I was given a harsh lesson by Vodafone's inconsistent pricing. Fruit vendors smiled kindly while attracting customers, but then conveniently "forgot" to give me my change. I agreed on a price with an Uber driver, only to have him demand an extra 20% halfway through the trip. At that point, I swore to the Nile: "If I get scammed again, I'm a dog!" But at the same time, it's also full of warmth. Cairo is one of the most welcoming cities I've ever encountered. As an Asian face, the turning heads rate was 100%. I conservatively estimate that I shook hands, posed for photos, and forced smiles no less than 108 times. Strolling through the streets, I observed that their staple food is a kind of flatbread. I looked it up and it's called pita bread, yes, the🥙, the inspiration for Apple's emoji. Locals can wrap anything in pita bread. Let me put it this way: breakfast is pickled vegetables + fried falafel wrapped in pita, lunch is a "Middle Eastern taco" stuffed with grilled liver and onions, and dinner might be a plate of stew—with the pita bread casually tossed on the table like a rag. But after drizzling it with lime juice and sprinkling it with coarse salt, it surprisingly evokes a kind of primal joy. I highly recommend the prickly pear fruit! After the skin is peeled off, the fruit is as sweet as the lovechild of a kiwi and a fig. Three for 10 Egyptian pounds, which made me, someone who was once ripped off by 8-euro orange juice in France, want to cry tears of joy. One night, on the desert highway, we were heading to a friend's house to cook. After hitching a ride in a car, the white-robed driver smiled at us and disappeared into the night. Not to mention the restaurant owner who insisted on stuffing dates into my bag. But what touched me the most was in Hurghada, when I was sailing on the Red Sea, hands gripping the deck, about to throw up, a group of women in headscarves🧕gathered around to check on me. In the end, I received a piece of gum passed around by everyone—it was them who made me realize that the "bad" in Egypt is a clearly priced game of survival, while the "good" is like a wet towel suddenly offered in a sandstorm, unexpected and free of charge. Of course, there were also moments of breakdown: In Egypt, a guesthouse owner almost left me stranded by reselling my room, and in Kenya, I was threatened by a black cab driver with "Pay more or I'll take you to the police station"... But thinking about these mishaps now actually makes me laugh. Perhaps this is the magic of Africa: When scammers and kind-hearted people are both stuffing gold into your arms, the rough edges of humanity become more addictive than perfection.