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That night was our first of two visits to the Old Market in downtown Sharm, which involved catching those blue and white taxi van things - quite a fun experience that one. They scream along the main road looking out for anyone hailing them on the roadside or until someone hollers to get out, sometimes the van door is closed while we're screaming along, and sometimes its not hehe (by the way, health and safety doesn't really exist in Egypt).
The Old Market covers quite a large area and all sorts of shit can be bought here (after the usual haggling process), not least of all a waterpipe (probably better known as sheesha particularly in Britain where they're everywhere although last I heard they're illegal in New Zealand).		And you can get a photo with this guy's poor camel, though of course he wants money for that so you grab a quick one while he's distracted (if you have Dutch in you like I do that is ;)

The market is bordered on one side by a small mountain with a few restaurants and bars overlooking it all, and a DJ pumping out the Arabic beats at the bottom hehe - sweet!

Like I said before, you'll never guess what we had for dinner after snorkelling with the marine life all day ;)
Egyptian ATM - crashed.		Egyptian keyboard - our alphabet and their alphabet combined. My Gmail suddenly gave me the option of writing in Arabic when I logged in to it here hahaha! Google huh, awesome.
We were in the internet cafe with that keyboard above because we had been told the ferry we were planning to get from Sharm across the Red Sea to Hurghada wasn't running thanks to the old girl breaking down several weeks earlier, and no one had really done anything about it hahaha - another fine example of Egyptian efficiency. Hurghada was only a necessary stopover en route to Luxor, so we decided to skip it altogether and just book a flight direct to Luxor instead (and in doing so skipped a lengthy and probably boring coach ride through the desert from Hurghada to Luxor). That gave us an extra night in Sharm, and so we came back to the Old Market again for food and drinks up the mountain.

View over the market from our bar.

On the stage below us (in front of the DJ) were several shows including these guys spinning round and round and round and somehow not falling over or vomiting (video here)...		...these guys with the fire poi etc...		...and this little girl dancing to it all hehe. There was a magician on stage earlier who used this girl as an impromptu assistant. It was all very cute until the magician 'magically' produced a pigeon out of nowhere and the girl freaked and ran back to her parents.

The last show of the night called for some assistants from the audience so of course I was happy to oblige :) Myself and the homosexual guy stood on a bed of nails on top of that hard-ass on the floor, and Kristina and that other chick stood on him while he was laying on broken glass (but he got a good view up Kristina's dress at least ;)				I and others then got blindfolded and it's a little hard to explain what the deal was, but it involved making out with a man in a gorilla costume hehe. Long story :)

This is our resort at 4:30am - yup we were up excessively bright and early (well, more early than bright) for excursion number two.		I noticed while in the vans betweens Naama Bay and central Sharm a lot of what looked to be police checkpoints, but the police not really doing anything other than standing around and watching traffic speed past. Even at 5am they were still there though this time standing around a fire - weird!

So, the early start was for this - quad biking in the desert for the sunrise, sweeeeet!				I could be an Arab.

Until that point it was maybe 20 degrees, but as soon as the sun rose you could clearly feel the heat coming from it and a breeze start to pick up. And this is pretty much how it looks, day after day after day after day - must be nice!
After we were done ooo'ing and ahh'ing over the sunrise we headed further into the desert.

In Marrakech I had my quad bike confiscated by the tour guides hehe, though after seeing what our guide today was doing on his I was pretty sure I'd get away with anything :)		Yup, welcome to nothing! This shot was taken in what is supposedly called Echo Valley. We each in turn yelled out our names at the top of our lungs, and sure enough it echoed all over for a good five seconds thereafter - pretty impressive.		It's bloody amazing how things still manage to grow and survive out here.

Everything from random shrubs to trees.		And it's bloody amazing that people actually live out here too! In this area (Sinai) it's mostly Bedouin who live here. About this time every morning the local Bedouin in the Echo Valley area probably wonder what the fuck all that yelling is!

Further in we go.		As we're hooning along I'm trying to take half-decent photos, which is friggin' hard while controlling a speeding quad bike on both rugged terrain and soft sand etc. Moments after taking the shot on the left (which I shot looking behind me) I look forward again and there's a bloody camel just standing right there which I had to avoid hahaha!

After almost taking one camel out, we got to ride on another led round by a local Bedouin. You wouldn't think that just five years ago several Bedouin were arrested for allegedly aiding in the 2005 terror attacks on Sharm.				After all that excitement we returned, got taken back to the hotel, and went back to bed.

Later that afternoon we were chilling by the resort pool when this guy started doing the rounds with what appeared to be a rocket launcher spewing out masses of smoke! It turns out this is insecticide though I didn't know it at the time (and probably shouldn't have wandered through it taking photos *cough cough*) - interesting.
The next morning, umm Tuesday, we were up at the crack of dawn again for the flight to Luxor.		Wow, Sharm really is just plonked in the desert.

In the time between the two shots above we had one of those experiences which in hindsight is bloody funny, but at the time when you're lacking sleep and not in the mood is just bloody frustrating. First of all, our cab driver. In Egypt (and anywhere of a similar vein) you need to negotiate a price up front for things such as taxis and the like so everybody is in agreement and understanding. Our cabbie to the airport was just one of several that loiter around hotels waiting for fares. He offered us a ride to the airport for E£30 (or €3.75) - a pretty standard rate given the distance. I accepted and we were off. Upon arriving at the airport the prick tried to get an additional E£20 out of me "for airport entrance fee". This sort of shit is also pretty prevalent - you negotiate up front but they'll still try it on afterwards. That pissed me off more than it should have given it was 6:45am so he got his original E£30 and told to fuck off. I would've had no qualms paying E£50 (or €6.25) but a) he made no mention up front of any airport fee for vehicles, and b) I'm pretty sure he was full of shit but I'm also sure a lot of dumb-dumb tourists fall for it.

Our flight to Luxor was scheduled to depart at 7:45am. When we booked the flight, I had the fella at the internet cafe print out the confirmation email for me. However, I didn't notice until later that what he printed for me failed to include both the flight number or any sort of reference number. Still, that shouldn't matter I thought - the flight was definitely booked so aside from our passport they shouldn't really need anything else. When we entered the terminal I looked on the departure screens for our flight, and it wasn't listed - there was nothing at all for 7:45am! Weird I thought but whatever - I know what I booked. Before you enter the check-in area of the airport you need to go through a security scan (as you also need to do again after check-in as per usual - clearly you can't be too careful in these parts of the world). The security folk asked to see our passports and tickets before allowing us through. When I explained that we had booked online and thus had no tickets, he refused us entry and sent us away! You can't tell me we were the first tourists in the tourism history of Sharm el-Sheikh to use a ticketless booking! So we wandered over the information desk to explain the situation and sort it out. Of course the first question he asks is what my flight number is. I said I didn't have it to hand but it's the 7:45am to Luxor. Information Man played with the computer for a bit with a funny look on his face before claiming he knew nothing of such a flight hahaha great! I ask if that machine of his has internet access, which it does and so I was able to log into my email to pull up our flight confirmation (complete with flight number etc). Armed with that he did another search, and found the flight number as being destined to bloody Cairo rather than Luxor! That clearly wasn't right according to the email I was sent, so he went to fetch his superior and figure it out. Superior Man rocked up, smashed a few keys, and found the flight immediately which was now correctly listed as bound for Luxor, much to Information Man's complete confusion. I think what had happened was the flight was entered into the system late, and entered incorrectly as heading to Cairo but then corrected while we were trying to figure it all out.

So, we go back to Security Man armed with some more info, but like an arsehole he still refused to let us through. Information Man them came along, those two had a long debate, and we were finally ushered through. Egyptian efficiency at its best. Thankfully at check-in we were given no such grief.

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