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AM I BOTHERED?
LOUISE TREWAVAS
"THEY'VE DROPPED THE BOMB IN DAHAB!" announces Marky Mark. "No, that was back in the '70s - they've cleaned up that hippy drug-scene thing," I retort. But he's right.
This gorgeous gem of a diver town deserves to be on TV for the friendliness of the locals and the beauty of the dive sites. Instead, I'm watching the contents of the Ghazala supermarket strewn across the bazaar, and the trashed remains of the Al Capone café. Death and injury dominate the news. It's heartbreaking.
So I book to go straight away. The bombing reminds me of how much I love the place. A few bombs: am I bothered? I live in London - prime target for terror attacks - and refusing to take things too seriously helps to get the situation into perspective.
Putting aside the lamentable human cost of terrorism, blowing the side off the Taba Hilton is arguably an architectural improvement. As for Sharm, much of it resembles a bombsite anyway, and the volume of the Russian roller-disco would drown out the noise of any blast.
Egyptian terrorists must be dedicated. This is a land where wasting your time has the status of a national sport. That's irritating if you're on holiday, but must be infuriating for the Al Qaeda operative with deadlines to meet and synchronised attacks to make.
Imagine the scene at the police roadblock: "You're not coming through until the serial numbers of all those AK47s are listed in triplicate, and the home-made explosives need two different permits and a special stamp to show that the correct duty has been paid."
Well, if only! As we long suspected, what passes for "security" is simply an Egyptian employment-creation scheme, with lots of officials staring blankly at documents they don't understand and painstakingly copying out information for another official to chuck away once the mountain of accumulated scribblings starts to slide off the desk. So, no different from Britain's Home Office then!
Let's see what's really most likely to kill you in Egypt:
- Taxi-drivers, the only people who actually appear to be in a mad rush. Getting into an Egyptian taxi is a bit like flying a budget airline. You wanted a door-handle? A seat-belt? I'm afraid that'll be extra, and we're all out of those today! As your taxi inexplicably leaves the road to take a small diversion through the rough desert and the back of building sites, you'll be wondering whether you'll also get charged extra for a scenic tour.
- Truckdrivers - the ones with the fatal attraction to your taxi.
- Using the roads by night. Drivers in Egypt religiously avoid using headlights in the dark until approached by another vehicle, when the custom is to flick your headlights on full-beam, dazzling (and occasionally waking up) the driver opposite.
- Airports: at Sharm or Hurghada, you could be crushed to death in the arrival hall as the man who stamps your passport on entry drifts into a slumber just as three plane-loads of tourists arrive. Let's not even get started about the departures...
- Running out of gas while diving - not you, the boatload of eastern Europeans diving the same site. No one likes to drown alone.
- Red Sea ferries: Most countries with an artificial-reef programme have the sense to take the passengers off first.
Frankly, when it comes to blowing things up, the Egyptians are amateurs. In Greece they've been dynamiting tourist sites for years. That's why Greece has no reef, and why any diver with an ounce of sense would rather visit the Red Sea.
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