Spent the morning debating whether to cancel our Petra trip on Tuesday due to me having such a rough day in Luxor. (I have to say that Luxor was amazing, but just took its toll.) We have been assured by the rep that Petra is much cooler than Luxor so the heat shouldn’t be such a problem so we’ll go. Our glass bottomed boat trip has been cancelled though – so no seeing the little fishes and coral for us as neither of us are really into snorkeling or scuba.
We went back down to Naama Bay for dinner. S agreed that the taxi driver should drop us across the road from the strip. WHY? I was thinking as he pulled in that these people drive like they’re rushing to meet Allah, go about a million miles per hour between speed bumps and don’t stop for pedestrians!! Thankfully there was an enterprising Egyptian waiting to escort us over the road and into his shop – he literally stood in the road and stopped traffic for which I was grateful…but not enough to get suckered into his shop. We did enough of feeling compelled to buy something we didn’t want in order to leave the other night. Egyptians seem to like a joke…someone rushed up to Stephen and said “Ah…short wife, long life my friend” and scooted off in fits of laughter at his joke!
We had dinner in a busy little restaurant then headed off to the Camel bar by way of a shopping mall where I got a really nice fake Chloe Paddington leather handbag for a few quid. Stephen did the negotiating, then discovered he didn’t have enough of any one currency to pay for it so our salesman whisked him off to the nearest cash point whilst I waited in the shop with his colleague. A Russian couple came in and he leapt up to begin the sales pitch, coming back to sit down a few minutes later when they left without as much as a smile. I asked him how many languages he spoke: English and Italian (which he studied in school), German, Russian and “some Arabic” (with a smile). I apologized for all my fellow countrymen at the lack of effort that we make to learn languages. We mostly get by with Hello and Thank you and talking very loud and s.l.o.w.l.y! But it seems that we Brits are not alone in this, and always are prepared to have a joke at least which he appreciated. He didn’t have a good word to say about the attitude of the hordes of Russian visitors and he wasn’t alone in that respect! They don’t seem to be well loved in Sharm, (apparently) because they don’t seem to be interested in spending money on anything other than booze!
We seemed to be the cause of a bust up in the taxi rank when it came time to go home. It’s essential to negotiate the price up front to save any problems and we were told to pay around 30-40 Egyptian to get back to the hotel. The first driver opened negotiations at 90 and wouldn’t drop past 80. The driver behind offered to take us for 50 so we agreed and leapt in at which point the shouting and standing in front of the cab began. I don’t know why – the first driver plainly wasn’t interested in taking us – but they were upset about something! It was a little frightening I must admit.
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