Egyptian Dreams ?

Let me say before I write this blog that it is in no way reflective on my best friend Nadir and his greatness. As you will all know, the last holiday we had in Vegas was one of the very best, the things that I will go on to describe had nothing to do with him or his amazing girlfriend Princess Suha. Essentially this blog is tongue in cheek and it was great to be on holiday with 3 of my bestfriends. Anyway......

The Lord was not messing about when Moses took us out of Egypt, he supplied manna from heaven, and water from rocks, he repelled all attackers, and even forgave us when we started acting like retards and prayed to a golden cow. What i'm saying is he put a lot of effort into keeping us from going back to Egypt, and the first indication that a Jew going back was truly stupid is the only way to get there is via XL airways.

2 + 2 does not equal 3 and a 6 foot 2 man like myself does not fit into an XL seat for almost 6 hours. Never mind, the Hilton Dreams awaited! My friend that I was really looking forward to seeing had bailed, due to an unfortunate family member's illness and so it was Mash and I standing in a lay-by outside the airport as the cold wind and sand particles twisted around us as we stood negotiating prices down with the cabbies.

"But my friend I give you good price, the hotel is 30 KM away!" The taxi driver protested as he threw his arms in the air, palms open as if he was actually telling the truth.

Five minutes later we arrived at our hotel. "That was a short 30 Kilometers," I said to him.

He began to verbally assault me in arabic, I turned away and thought of my nice bed in the villa that Nadir had been talking of for a long time.

Mash and I excitedly asked the man at reception to call the room so we could speak with our welcoming party Nadir, Suha, Rex, Dave and some nurse that Nadir had found under a rock.

"I am sorry Sir, Dr El Sharawi is not in his room, but here are 2 keys, Mahmoud will drive you to your room."

After Mahmoud tried to show off what a pseudo-robin reliant car without the performance of one can do on a hill climb, Mash and I ran into the villa. We found our room and looked at each other.

Now for those of you that do not know, Mash and I became friends when he was my medical student when I first qualified as a doctor. Now when I was younger I imagined a very different type of medical student that I might one day take to bed, one without a penis for starters. We looked at the King Size bed and both of us shouted in unison, "NADIR!!!!!!"

We went to chastise him, maybe I could find an Egyptian that would flog him. For 100 Egyptian Pounds they would pretty much do anything.

The first 2 days it rained so we could not really do anything, I was expecting at one point G-d to send a sign like frogs pouring down as a reminder that my people worked hard to get the hell out of this place. Luckily that did not happen, but the water from the taps did turn brown half way through the holiday! The addition of Wasan, Mash's lovely girlfriend and friend of mine, improved my mood, but she left after a few days.

Then I was left alone for the second part of the holiday as everyone went diving, which I was not in the mood for after Nadir proudly explained that he had triumphed by under cutting the average going price for a professional dive school to take you down into the depths of the Red Sea. (Again the last time I had heard about the Red Sea was when thousands of Egyptians were drowned by G-d's nifty party trick the infamous parting of the waters).

Yes his new friend, Waleed would take you diving for about 10 quid a person for a whole day, I have no idea if that included oxygen in the tanks or just whatever gas was going cheap at the Dive Centre that day. Anyway I thought better of it, and I was to be proved right when Suha came back with 2 ruptured tympanic membranes and a burst nasal capillary. And Rex had done multiple emergency ascents to the surface. Sounded great! Not.

I did go quad biking which could have been really good fun if it had not been so bloody freezing at night and if the desert was not basically a rubbish tip, it was totally ruined by the fact the locals use it as a fly tipping area and we had an Arabic camera man filming us the whole time with a shoulder mounted camera, the ones you normally see Al Jazeera showing footage of terrorists holding when there has been a kidnap followed by a beheading.

The fact that the camera man thought it was hilarious to repeatedly repeat the name of Osama Bin Laden like a demented zombie did not help calm nerves that they might be leading our quad bikes into some hostage situation, I could not remember if Terry Waite was taken hostage whilst on a quad biking excursion!

The food the entire trip was awful, it was stone cold at every restaurant, despite multiple requests for hot food to avoid Ramases Revenge. The best Middle Eastern food I had in the whole last 10 days was when I got back to my home town of St Johns Wood with Brisi, how crazy is that?

When Jez picked us up after an almost 2 hour wait for our luggage at 3 am at Gatwick I was not sure if his TT was a super car or a rescue vehicle. Either way thanks.

And as the theme tune for the holiday went, will I be going back to Egypt ever? No no no notorious..................... NO!!!