laura.fo

I spent the last three days snorkeling on the Gulf of Aqaba. I feel guilty writing about a 'relaxing trip to the seaside' while a hurricane is hitting New Orleans, but we're leaving tomorrow and I want to get as many of these up as possible before we go.

Dahab means "gold," and is on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula. (This means I've finally been to Asia.) It's one of the lesser-developed resort towns in Egypt, popular with Egyptian bohemians and German scuba divers. Americans do go there but not as often as they go to Luxor and Sharm El-Sheikh. (My theory is because it's not hyped heavily enough in Lonely Planet.)

Germans, however, will skip Cairo entirely and spend two weeks in Dahab. When we left after three days people kept asking what was wrong, were we not happy, had something happened back in Cairo, why weren't we staying longer? I think it's the only time in my life so far that I was surrounded by English, Arabic, and German — the only languages I can muddle through in — to the exclusion of any others.

Getting here involves an eight-hour overnight bus ride, which in Egypt really means ten. Unfortunately K. wasn't feeling well, but she handled the trip beautifully. There was one baby on the way there and two babies on the way back. I know this because each one of them cried one time each. Meaning, a singular cry: "ahhhh." One time.

Why are children in most of the world, even infants, so much better behaved than American kids? I think it's because their parents aren't all pinched and tense. But who knows. Maybe it's something in the water.

The sea itself was incredible. I can't do underwater photography, but it looked like this.

I wrote about Dahab a couple years ago, just after it was bombed. I said then that one of the reasons I always had positive associations with it (although at the time I'd never been there) was because it catered to offbeat weirdo Egyptians as well as offbeat weirdo travelers from other countries. I like that kind of cultural blending; it doesn't seem as manufactured as most.

The hotel we stayed at, recommended to me by someone in my Arabic class, is run by an Egyptian man and his German wife, and known for its diving center. I now REALLY want to get my PADI certification. I love snorkeling, and in some ways think it's better than diving anyway because you're at the surface of the water where it's warmer and the colors are brighter, but outside of power kiting (which I'd also like to do) diving is the closest thing there is to flying — the only way to move in three dimensions without being inside machinery. And even with power kiting and other wind sports, you're dependent on the wind, which is fickle. Until someone buys me a personal jet pack, I want to learn to scuba dive.

I'm not particularly keen on the attire, though.

This was the view from our room (that's a playground there, between our terrace and the water):

Same scene, but taken from the terrace:

There's no beach, in the sandy sense — the water comes right up to that rock wall. Every now and then kids on horses would walk by on the sidewalk, and once, a camel on its own, with no saddle and no rider. Just moseying down the sidewalk.

The room had (what I think of as) Moroccan-style beds. I love the way these look. If it had been colder, I probably would have also loved sleeping on them. As it was the heat was oppressive, and being walled in on three sides was not helpful. If I ever build a house, though, I want to include these.

One of the ways I sold K on this trip was by telling her she could dress however she wanted, even though it was Egypt. Compared to what little most of the women had on, her outfit here is practically an abaya.

The beachfront is lined with cafes like this one: cushions, low tables, and thatched roofs, which end right at the water. In my previous post people who'd been to Dahab complained about Bob Marley on auto-repeat, but they seemed to have opened that up a little. It was a combination of mellow Arabic music (not pop), '70s stuff like Pink Floyd and Cat Stevens, and electronica.

The cafes stretch around the beach front. You can see a little of the mountains here. Most of the hotels offered Bedouin safaris up there, but at 140 degrees or whatever it was, we passed.

On the plus side, because most people know better than to come here in August, the beach was practically empty.

The "city" center ("city" in "quotes" because the town is so small) has a little bazaar area, which it almost tries to take seriously, but is mainly a sideshow to the sea, the diving, the sheesha smoking, and the drinking.

There's also token effort to keep the sidewalk pedestrian-friendly.

But no one really pays attention.

I saw this lamp and immediately thought of Connor. One of the things we've talked about is how, in the 'West', you learn to take it for granted that street lights won't randomly collapse on your head (and how this assumption is often incorrect in neglected neighborhoods like ours, and has eroded for everybody under Bush). In other parts of the world you can't necessarily count on the garbage being picked up, water coming out of the taps, the bridge you're driving on not falling into the river, the elevator you're riding on not stopping for nine hours while you suffocate slowly, the sidewalk beneath your feet not giving way and dumping you into a sewer, or anyone bothering to scrape your carcass off the roadway if you're run over by a public bus. Government is conspicuous in its absence.

"Street lamps" is our shortcut way of referring to the everyday safety that people take for granted when they bemoan too much government. So when I saw this, I had to laugh. It was our metaphor made literal.