t'Getting away from it all

So, we did go to Egypt. We came back last Monday night, and have been collecting our thoughts and washing our shorts since then. Going back to work is always a drag, but processing the pictures we took has brightened my evenings. For this review, I thought I’d categorise and ignore chronology.

t’There and Back

We set out from Leeds at 5am on a dark, cold, windy and wet Monday morning. Did I mention it was windy and wet? The journey over the Pennines was horrendous, and we were buffeted about like a heavy four-seater leaf. Upon arrival at Manchester Airport we found that our bags were pretty overweight and we had to swiftly stuff our heaviest clothes into our hand luggage to reduce the excess payment. The 757 was packed full of seats, and each one was occupied. The flight was therefore cramped, but the 150mph tailwind thoughtfully reduced the flight time to something approaching reasonable.

The return journey felt like a kind of hollowed out version of the above; we were pretty tired from all our holidaying and wanted more than anything to get back and have a cup of tea. Upon our return, we fell gratefully into clean sheets and slept.

t’Hotel

We booked a package holiday via Thomas Cook, something we have not done before. We opted for ‘allocation on arrival’ for our accommodation, and we pretty much lucked out in being placed at the Sheraton, a five star hotel on a spit of land between the airport and Naama Bay, the local town. It felt new yet a little dusty, and strangely Disney in its existence on the rocky nowhere of the Sinai Peninsula. The hotel is built into a cliff, so that the lobby, ground-floor at the front, leads to restaurants at the rear with amazing seventh-floor views into the Red Sea.

We chose only to pay for bed and breakfast, and this was the correct decision to have made as the food certainly was not five star. It wasn’t terrible, it just wasn’t great, and it was pretty expensive. We mostly eat out in town. The Egyptian staff, all male, were on the whole very friendly but a little too deferential and this felt weird.

t’Getting About

I reckon it would have been possible to walk to Naama Bay from the hotel in around 20 minutes, had there been a coast path. But the only walking option available was the unattractive and dusty inland route via the Peace Road. The hotel ran an irregular and over-subscribed shuttle bus, with which we were seldom able to get involved. We mainly caught an expensive hotel taxi the couple of miles, and returned using an unlicensed but more reasonably priced taxi back.

Even during our first short sojourn onto the Egyptian roads on the transfer from the airport we were shocked by the standard of driving. I was going to make a list of all the British driving rules that are flouted, but this proved impossible. Basically there appeared to be no rules, and this was confirmed by our guide when we when to Cairo, who explained that there is no driving test in Egypt, drivers simply buy a licence. He also told us that the only rule of the road is ‘if you see a gap, get in it’. The horn is the Egyptian driver’s best friend; it is a multi-purpose tool that warns, greets, alerts, invite, or simple proclaims that ‘this car is fitted with a horn and I’m going to let the world know it’.

t’Weather

The average temperature of both the Red Sea and the south Sinai air is around 22°C in January. This was very pleasant, thank you. During the central portion of our stay, it was pretty windy and this took the edge off the temperatures. During the last few days it became increasingly cloudy, and on the day we left it began raining.

t’People

As I mentioned above, the hotel staff we friendly but a little too subservient for my liking. Yet they were a welcome relief in comparison to the shop-keepers and restaurateurs of Naama Bay, who seemed to be powered by the same instincts as mosquitoes, homing in on the naive pale-skinned tourists and putting up a sheer wall of small talk in almost any language. Actually, not at all like mosquitoes. For approximately 3 minutes it was a novelty; the next couple of days were spent working out the best tactics for avoidance, the final week was spent employing these ploys, which essentially involved politely ignoring everyone.

The main places where the tourists were from, in order of attendance, seemed to be Russia, Britain, Germany and Italy. We had quickly gleaned from our Egyptian hosts that the Russians were disliked, but we were unsure why. I regret to say that we eventually came to the conclusion that all of the Russians in Sharm el-Sheikh were rude, miserable and without style.; many of the males sported mullets.

t’Food and Drink

Not all of the hotel food was poor quality; just most of it was. The exception was the Lebanese restaurant, where we dined but once. Here we had a variety of Mezzah, and it was good. The fare available in Naama Bay was a lot more varied but only moderately better. Highlight meals were the Italian and the Indian restaurants either side of the Camel Diving Club, and the Mexican near Little Buddha, which was in fact my meal of the fortnight. We mainly drank water and cola, and occasional Stella, the local beer. Tap water was strictly off limits, and our stomachs were certainly glad of our restraint and care in this matter.

t’Entertainment

The hotel-based disco held no interest for us, nor did drinking until the small hours in Naama Bay. We like the quite life, us, and tended to stay in the hotel of an evening. Spurning the initially reassuring yet ultimately rubbish CNN, we tuned into the Showtime family of channels, as it delivered to us Bones, CSI: Miami, and Napoleon Dynamite.

Gemma’s iPod provided general music, whilst my new ZEN Stone gave me up to 3 hours worth of songs. I was especially digging the Ride best of, Midlake and the new record from The Broken Family Band, as well as a bunch of ace compilations made by my friend John. I completely read Waterlog, The Undercover Economist, and Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew, and we both read snatches of Charlie Brookers’ collected writings in Dawn of the Dumb. Small gaps were plugged by Mojo and National Geographic.

t’Celebs

One day we took a stroll further along the beach, and stumbled upon an extensive film crew set up in one of the hotel bars. Dozens of Egyptian cameramen and technicians buzzed about the place, and at the centre of this activity was a couple of Eldorado/Hollyoaks-style young actors waiting to ‘put one in the can’, as they definitely say in televisionland. Also of note in this category was the fleeting visit to Sharm el-Sheikh by President George W. Bush of the USA; he met briefly with the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. We saw neither them, nor Air Force One.

t’Shopping

The shopkeepers must have developed some kind of instinct to home in on green tourists who have not long stepped of a plane. On the first evening, we went for a wander around of the hotel. A charming gentleman got chatting to us, and upon discovering we were from England invited us into his perfume shop to ‘sign his guestbook’. He then ordered his colleague to get the tea on, and chatted a little about the state of the world. Ultimately, he managed to sell us some essence for a price so vastly inflated that I am shy to reveal it here. Suffice to say that our new friend most likely took the rest of the night off.

We learnt our lesson quickly, and although we would be once more led semi-willingly into an shop, we did not pay too much again. Shops mainly sold one or any number of the following goods: essences; fake-brand clothing; ‘traditional’ middle-eastern clothing; jewellery; souvenirs; papyrus. Walking down the street was very tiring, as we had to fend off the advances of every single proprietor. And having to haggle over the price every time we wanted or needed to buy anything quickly got boring.

t‘Sharm el-Sheikh and Naama Bay

Sharm el-Sheikh, Sharm to it's friends, is the city nearest to where we stayed. It is known as ‘The City of Peace’, even though it was bombed by terrorists in 2005. Historically a minor fishing village, it became a major naval base for Egypt during the middle of last century. It lies on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, which is a rocky, triangular land bridge between Africa and Asia. The Sinai was occupied by Israel between 1967 and 1981, who renamed Sharm el-Sheikh ‘Mifratz Shlomo’, though this never caught on. Naama Bay is a slightly scruffy, vaguely dusty Disney town, and does not represent Egypt. It is entirely tourist orientated, and is full of un-Egyptian restaurants, bars, and shops.

It is rare to find an Egyptian in Sharm who comes from the area; most are from Cairo. Those who are local are likely to be Bedouins from Arabia, Jordan and Palestine, who settled on the Peninsula because it was on the trade route to the Nile.

t’Trips

We didn’t confine ourselves to the hotel for two weeks, no sir. We opted to go on a number of trips. The shortest of these was an hour and a bit on a glass bottom boat, which scuttled around Naama Bay and afforded us pretty amazing views of some coral and some tropical fish.

I got closer to the coral on the ‘adventure safari’, which first took us into the desert to a Bedouin camp for tea and bread, and a camel ride. The crazy driver then bounced us to Dahab, a rubbish approximation of what Sharm el-Sheikh was like about ten years ago. Near here we snorkeled. Getting into the sea was painful on the feet, and Gemma in fact gave up and went to get a drink. But I stuck with it and the rewards were immense. Breathing through a fat straw took a little getting used to, but supported by the Red Sea (the saltiest living sea on the planet) I began to enjoy floating across the coral and the fish. My only regret is that we didn’t buy an underwater camera. After we got back to the hotel, I realised my mobile phone was no longer in my pocket. I can only assume that it was teased out of my pocket by the insane driving of our Bedouin host.

Also on Sinai, we took a ride up to St Catherine’s Monastery, which holds the title of the worlds oldest continuously function Christian monastery. It is also the sight of the ‘burning bush’, which is an actual bush through which the fictional character God spoke to Moses in the popular book ‘Bible’. I enjoyed deliberately confusing the burning bush with the talking tree at the West Bromwich branch of McDonalds.

We left Sinai twice, both on long and tiring trips. First, we went to Cairo. We opted to be taken there by aeroplane, as the alternative was a seven-hour coach journey. I went to Cairo when I was about thirteen as part of the Dudley Schools Cruise, which delivered hundreds of Black Country teenagers to numerous Mediterranean destinations at the end of the 1980’s. The city was just as I remembered it: big, loud, busy, dusty, chaotic. We firstly visited the Egyptian Museum, where we saw thousands of things that were thousands of years old. I am actually not at all interested in ancient history, but it was impressive to see artifacts from this advanced civilisation from 4500 years ago, and it was mad to think that they just faded away over time. The tomb and mask of Tutankhamen was pretty amazing.

After a buffet lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe (where the Egyptian staff danced uncomfortably to YMCA) we headed out to see the main event – the pyramids of Giza. The Giza bit is important, as there are hundreds of pyramids in the north-eastern corner of Africa. These though are the pyramids everyone knows. They were actually more impressive than my teenage self remembered; they suddenly loomed above the suburbs like alien spaceships.

The three pyramids here were the tallest man-made structures on the planet for 43 centuries! Inside the Pyramid of Khafre, it was small and hot and airless, but incredible. The annoying woman from Stoke on our coach told us later that she hadn’t bothered going in (entrance fee £2.50) as ‘there’s no point, there ain’t nothin’ to see’. Quite. We also squeezed in a visit to a papyrus ‘museum’ (museum is an Egyptian word for shop, I think), where we were given an interesting demonstration in the art of making papyrus, and an opportunity to buy some product.

The longest excursion was to Petra, which is in Jordan. The total journey time was around sixteen hours, yet we were only at the site of the Rose City for a little over three hours. We were very tired and a little grouchy when we got back to the Sheraton. Our trip took us by coach to the small port city of Taba, near the Israeli border. Here, we queued for around two hours at the inefficient border control, before boarding a ferry full of Russian tourists for the thirty minute crossing of the Gulf of Aqaba to the Jordanian city than gives the country sea access and its name to this particular branch of the Red Sea. We were initially worried when our passports were retained here, but we were reassured by our guide that this was normal, and would speed things along upon our return. A fresh coach took us north into the mountains, and soon(ish) we arrived at a visitor centre which featured reasonable toilets for which we didn’t have to pay baksheesh. The decent into this ancient hidden city was awesome; each step bought the red rocks narrower and higher, until we popped out in front of the treasury (made famous in that Indiana Jones film). It put me in mind of an out of control Kinver Edge.

t’Summary

We took some pictures of our holiday – they can (soon) be seen on my Flickr page. We wouldn’t go back to Sharm el-Sheikh; not because we had a bad time, we didn’t, but because we don’t normally take package holidays and we pretty much exhausted our options as far as seeing the sights went. But it was just really nice to get away for a couple of weeks and do not much.

Comments

[Katherine]

Your description of yourselves and t'Entertainment sounds like us. I don't think we're package holiday people either but I can see how convenient they can be and you don't have to think too much.

[tom smith]

Yeah, it's not what we'd normally do, but it did allow us to book a whole holiday just a couple of weeks before we wanted to go.