Tuesday, June 10, 2003 (Sharm El-Sheikh - Egypt)
Travelling with a travel bug. Travelling around
the local area. making friends with the hotel manager is always a good idea.
When does Oriental mean Egyptian? Time to crack open the emergency antibiotics.
Looking for a dive outfit. My horrible mood surfaced again. A countryman comes
to our rescue.
Day 90. Yesterday’s journal entry was cut
short, as I was not feeling too well. After settling into our hotel yesterday
morning, we all took a nap. Sandy and I went for a bit of a swim and spent most
of the remainder of the morning sunbathing by the pool. Shortly after noon, we
all took a walk down to the somewhat euphemistically named city centre, which is
really nothing more than a collection of tourist bazaars and restaurants, much
like all the other small towns here in Egypt. We were looking for a place to get
a bite to eat but none of the places we walked by looked particularly appealing.
We eventually decided on a place and went upstairs to sit. We had to have them
switch on the air-conditioning (although most places have air-co., it’s
almost always switched off) and our waiter took our order. He didn’t seem
to speak much more than the odd word or two of English and although we did our
best to make it clear what it was we were ordering, we never really got the
impression that the waiter fully understood. This was confirmed after a half an
hour or so when the food arrived and about half of it was not what was ordered.
Still we made the best of it.
Whilst
waiting for our food to arrive, I was starting to feel a bit queasy. At first, I
thought it was just fatigue and the after-effects of the bumpy ferry crossing,
but then it suddenly got much worse and I had to quickly excuse myself. Just a
few moments later, I was regurgitating the contents of my stomach in the
bathroom. I’ve had trouble with traveller’s diarrhoea since
yesterday evening so we think it must be some kind of stomach bug or something.
Several other people that we’ve been in contact with over the past few
days have also had similar problems. I felt much better after returning from the
bathroom but still didn’t feel quite one hundred percent for the remainder
of the day.
Our Australian friends
have decided not to stay in Sharm El-Sheikh after all. They don’t have any
SCUBA certification and so there is little here to keep them occupied. After
lunch, they went into town to track down the bus station to see about getting a
ticket to Dahab for later on today. Dahab has a much better choice of
snorkelling options and so this is what they will do for the next couple of
days. In the meantime, we tracked down a taxi that was willing to accept our
E£5 offer for the two-minute ride back to the hotel. The third taxi that we
asked finally accepted, albeit very reluctantly. All the taxi drivers try to
tell you that Sharm El-Sheikh is a much more expensive place and so the fares
are much higher. I suspect that there is a grain of truth to this but more than
likely this is a ploy to convince you to pay more that you would elsewhere in
the country, and I supposed this might work for most
people.
Back at the hotel, we lounged
around for the afternoon and even took a swim in the warm swimming pool. The
hotel manager came over and chatted with us a bit. We had cause to ask the staff
to fix a couple of things in our room earlier in the day and he wanted to make
sure that everything was OK. He was a nice enough character and suggested that
we go up onto the roof of the restaurant to admire the sunset over the
mountains. He was looking for ways in which to improve the property and we
talked about some of these with him. We told him that we were very pleased with
the hotel and that it was one of the nicest that we’ve stayed in so far
(which is quite true even though there are several things not quite right).
We’ve found that simple little compliments like this tend to come back as
rewards after the fact and it was quite fortunate that we had befriended him
since later in the evening, he told us that he would reduce our bill at checkout
time and that we were to ask for him when the time comes. This isn’t
something that we were looking for but it just goes to show that being nice can
and does has its rewards.
Just as it
was starting to get dark, the two Australians emerged form their room and we all
decided to have dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was ‘oriental’
again so there was little there for me to eat but this wasn’t a problem
since my appetite was surely suppressed by my condition. In fact, I was even
starting to feel some stomach
pains.
Dinner was nice enough and we
spent some time outside by the pool chatting afterwards, but my stomach pains
were growing worse and I eventually had to excuse myself again to go and lie
down after it got quite severe. We had previously talked about cracking open our
emergency prescription of Cipro anti-biotics (which are especially for
traveller’s diarrhoea). Since the headache tablet I took earlier was not
helping much, we eventually decided that this bout of illness was severe enough
to warrant taking the Cipro. We’ve always been very reluctant to take any
of the prescription drugs, which we keep with us for emergencies in our medical
kits, without the advice or supervision of a physician. Sandy was prescribed
Cipro by the local doctor when we were in Knysna, South Africa (although they
call it Orpic there – Cipro written in reverse), so that was fine but we
had much more trust in the medical health care system there than we do here in
Egypt. I took one tablet last night and one this morning and the stomach pains
have subsided quite a bit already. The regiment requires two tablets per day,
every twelve hours, for three days. The diarrhoea also seems to have been
suppressed so far.
I’d like for
us to get a good three days worth of diving in whilst we are here in one of the
diving capitals of the world. This means that we must start our diving tomorrow
already and therefore must choose a diving club by the end of the day. Since it
is already almost noon, this leaves us little time to make our choice. There are
a plethora of diving outfits here in Sharm El-Sheikh but we must take care to
choose one that we are satisfied has high standards and an impeccable safety
record. After the drama of the missing snorkeler the other day in Hurghada, we
are now particularly sensitive to these issues. I read through all the reviews
in the Lonely Planet guide and settled on a dive club that I wanted to talk with
further. I spoke with a Yorkshire lass from my chosen dive club for about thirty
minutes or so and generally got a good feeling but I still felt the prices were
a bit steep. Like many other operators here, they recently switched from Dollars
to Euros as the currency of choice. The prices are still the same, just in Euros
now. Since the Euro is much stronger than the Dollar at this time, this means
that the effective price is quite a bit higher all of a
sudden.
So, we spent the better part
of the afternoon visiting Na’ama Bay and grabbing some KFC. The ride from
Sharm to Na’ama should cost no more than E£1 per person on one of the
private cars (minibuses) and I gave the chap three pounds once we arrived. He
had the cheek to pester me for more, stating that the fare was five pounds, so I
eventually, and reluctantly, gave him another pound just to shut him up. He
seemed very pleased at this little victory and drove off with a smile.
Everything in Na’ama is just as dead as it is here and the streets are
largely empty. It does have a bit more atmosphere over there, however, and looks
a bit like a dormant holiday town.
We
tried one of the local Internet cafés but the guy there tried to feed me
the same line about Sharm El-Sheikh being more expensive than anywhere else in
Egypt and asked a significantly higher rate than the going norm so we
didn’t bother. He also tried to tell me that it would be even more
expensive than the listed price to hook-up the laptop – the cheek of
it.
With nothing in Na’ama to
keep us there, we left, after buying a scoop of ice cream, to head back to
Sharm. This time we got into a public car with several other passengers at the
same time. Shortly after getting under way, the driver mumbled something in
Arabic and everyone took a one-pound note out of their pockets and started
handing them forward. We followed suit. This was further confirmation that the
previous driver was just trying to scam
us.
We arrived back at Sharm and got
out of the minibus, this time with no objections or drama from the driver. The
plan was to walk to the dive club that I had phoned earlier and check them out
in person. However, since I had rather inconveniently forgot to bring the
guidebook, we had no idea which direction we should take. After wandering around
aimlessly for a few minutes, we eventually stopped in at one of the hundreds of
hotels in the area to ask for directions. The guy at the door seemed interested
only in directing us to the hotel’s affiliated dive club but the
receptionist was a bit more helpful and actually phoned them. I spoke to the
Yorkshire woman again and she informed that they were actually located in
Na’ama Bay, much to our annoyance. Neither of us fancied another trip back
there again as it is very hard work trying to move about in this heat and
humidity. I told the woman about the inconvenience of their prices now being in
Euros and asked if she could shave a bit off the overall price. Even after she
conferred with the manager, she wouldn’t budge an inch with the price. If
there is anything I can’t stand, it’s inflexibility in pricing
– particularly so in a country where negotiation is the name of the game.
Already a little aggravated by the heat and events of the day, I decided that
this inflexible policy of theirs would cost them our business and we cancelled
our plans to dive with them - their loss, not
ours.
We trundled back up the hill to
the hotel in the heat of the afternoon and this did nothing to improve my mood
or irritability. I spent the next hour or so calling all the other dive clubs
listed in the guidebook but was never quite able to strike a good deal with any
of them. Things might have been a bit different if I was in a better mood but,
again, I hate to be on the loosing end of a financial negotiation and pretty
much all of the dive clubs were inflexible with their pricing. With the clock
ticking and no still no diving arranged, things were starting to get a bit
depressing. Our hotel receptionist had given me the price list for their
affiliated dive club earlier in the day. I took it from him but only to appease
him since I was not too keen on going with a hotel recommended dive club. There
are so many dive clubs here and I was somehow convinced that a hotel recommended
one would be of dubious reputability. Since I was running out of options, I
thought I would give the hotel’s recommendation a call anyway, just for
the fun of it. What could I loose?
As
it turns out, the guy that answered the phone was a Dutchman and seemed like a
really nice, up-front guy. We talked, in Dutch, for a while and discussed the
prices and things. The price list that I had been given listed everything in
Dollars but he told me that they, too, had just recently converted over to
Euros. I explained to him our situation and the fact that we had been given a
pricelist in Dollars and, to my pleasant surprise, he was quite happy to honour
the Dollar rate – bonus! Additionally, his prices were very much better
than all the Lonely Planet guidebook listed dive clubs – another bonus!
When I asked him where they were physically located, he told me that they were
just a hundred yards or so from our hotel – yet another bonus! One of my
stipulations with the dive clubs that I had spoken with earlier on the phone was
that we wanted a private dive master (I was more than willing to pay the extra
premium for this) and that I wanted to speak with the dive master in person to
make sure that I was happy with them. I asked this same question to the Dutchman
and this was not a problem. In fact, their boat had just returned from sea and
the divers and dive masters were now on their way back to base so it was OK for
us to just swing by. After all the trials and tribulations of the day, things
were finally starting to look up.
We
walked over to the dive club, which is located in the second hotel up from where
we are and spoke with Henk, the Dutchman, and our dive master. Everything just
seemed to click and we got a very good feeling about them and their operation.
After we chatted for a while about the ins and outs of our plan for diving over
the next few days, our dive master slid an indemnity form in front of us. Now,
ordinarily, I would give a big sigh (internally) each time I’m hit with
one of these. They have rapidly become an everyday part of life and almost
nobody will let you participate in any activity with just the slightest hint of
danger without first making sure that you sign away any right to hold them even
vaguely responsible. I was actually very pleased in this case, however. With the
events of the missing snorkeler still fresh in my mind, it was refreshing to see
that this dive club was at least making sure that we were certified and free of
any illnesses that might affect our ability to dive, etc. It was a good
sign.
We stayed at the other hotel
for a couple of hours and talked at length with Henk about his business and life
in Egypt in general. He let me hook up my laptop to his network (which is
connected to the Internet) and I tried to solve some problems on his computer in
return. When we finally left, he didn’t want any payment in advance and he
sent us on our way with some recommendations for where to get a good
meal.
We tried to find some batteries
for the digital underwater camera but could only find the same, useless, low
energy kind that we bought the other day in Hurghada. They last for all of about
five or six photos in the underwater camera before giving up altogether. The
best we could find was a no-name brand that did not indicate that they were
anything other than the same, low-powered, alkaline batteries. They would
probably also be worthless but I asked the shopkeeper what the price was
nevertheless. His initial response was five pounds per battery (it was a pack of
four). Since we had only paid one pound per battery previously, I felt this to
be ridiculous but the lowest he would go was to twelve pounds for the packet. I
wasn’t going to pay more than ten so we left empty handed. Perhaps this
was one of those situations where stepping back and looking at the broader
picture was in order. After all, twelve pounds is only two Dollars. It
wasn’t the ‘high price’ that I had a hard time with,
it’s just that I can’t abide paying more for something than it
should cost. A lot of merchants here see us as walking Dollar signs and it irks
me to capitulate to this.
The events
of today have lead me to conclude that we are, perhaps, too reliant on our
guidebook. After a lot of pain and irritation of sifting through all the
recommended dive clubs from the book, we ultimately choose one just next door
for less money that isn’t listed – go figure.
Posted: Tue - June 10, 2003 at 08:31 AM