I made it to Dahab without any trouble. I took the 12:15AM bus from Cairo and arrived yesterday morning around 10AM. The bus ride was event less except for the numerous ID controls.

I found a cool hotel by the sea with a nice room with a view for a very decent price and decided to make the Penguin Hotel my home for my stay. The staff is quite nice, they have a restaurant on the sea-front and a scuba diving center on premise.

I spent yesterday roaming around the village. Most of the damages have already been fixed and it is difficult to see where the bombs exploded. Military and police presence is very high with dogs and metal detectors everywhere. The Coralia hotels located a bit further south was more a bunker than a vacation village with security all around and ID check at the entrance.

The town is almost empty though. Some of the hotels are totally empty. In the evening, the restaurants have very few clients. Business is very difficult right now.

Around town, you can see placards written in English calling for peace, for support or some claiming Dahab will rebuild and be stronger. It is nice to see that.

It is quite difficult to get an idea of how busy it can be. When all the cushions in all the restaurants on the sea-front are used, it must be quite amazing and maybe frustrating.

In the meantime, the other tourists and I are enjoying a great spot as it must be rare to get it.

The town has a great feel to it. They built a promenade on the sea front with restaurants between the path and the sea and the hotels on the other side. No building is higher than 2 floors and concrete has been kept to a minimum. The rest of the town is dusty and a bit dirty but almost nobody goes there anyway.

At night, the restaurants setup candles all around and it becomes very nice, almost magical.

In the evening, it was so quiet. Seated on cushions, drinking a nice freshly squeezed orange juice, in the dim light of the candles, a warm breeze in the face, looking at the limitless sea extending in front of my eyes, I felt so much at peace I thought I could stay here for a very long time.

In case you did not get it:

Come to Dahab, it is a great place to be!

[Edited on 5/19/2006 to add link to related pictures]

On Thursday, I took care of my visa since it was more than 25 days I was in Egypt and I got a 1 month automatic visa when I arrived on the 2nd.

I went to the Magoma. It is huge building housing around 20 000 state employees that is located close to my hotel downtown on Al-Tahrir square (very close from the Egyptian museum). It went better than I hoped.

I had some trouble finding the right window spending some time in the wrong line first. But I finally made it to the right place. It is window 12, 13 or 14 on the second floor. The information in English over these windows is not helping.

Buying the necessary EGP11.10 in stamps was a bit more chaotic since Egyptian people are even less respectful of lines than French people and one has to police a bit if he does not want to get trampled. I had Karim demonstrating the first day I was in Cairo when we bought my train ticket to Aswan so I knew it was not just because I am a foreigner.

Anyway, I finally got my stamps, filled the application, stapled a picture and submit the paper alongside my passport.

I got my passport back 1 hour later at window 38 with a new visa valid until October 1st! Well, I had asked for 1 month, they gave me 6. And all for the great price of EGP11.

I thought this made my day and the rest of it was spent taking it easy and recovering from my trip to Bahareya :).

Someone said that “to keep your readers, you should keep them happy” so I will try to do exactly that by replying to Siegfried’s request to talk about the Egyptian food.

I have been in the country for more than 3 weeks now and have tried many restaurants. First thing first, the restaurant industry is not extremely developed here. I see the restaurants as basically fitting 3 categories: the fast-food restaurants, the “traditional” restaurants and the high-end restaurants. Some people might find this reductive but sorry, this is my blog. You can also post a comment if you have something to say ;).

For reference, $1=EGP6 and E1=EGP7.

The high end restaurants usually offer European style foods geared toward tourists. The food is usually very good and you can find some places that don’t cost you a limb. You can have a great French dinner for less than EGP100. Something that would be 2 or 3 times more expensive in Paris. but this is still way out of reach for most of the Egyptians so you will not see them there.

The restaurants from the fast food category are not the McDonald’s or KFC or Hardee’s (Carl’s Jr here) that we can also find here. They are kind of expensive for most of the people (around EGP20 for a meal). In place, Egyptians have their own kind of fast foods with some restaurants or food stall busy with long wait from morning till late night. Some of these fast foods serve very distinctive dishes: Kochery, Foul and Taameya. They also serve more usual staples of Middle-Eastern cuisine like Shawerma.

Kochery could have been called the “Egyptian kitchen sink” since it is a mix of things you would not have thought to put together: rice, lentils, macaronis, some spaghettis, some fried onions and sometimes some chick peas covered with tomato sauce. Restaurants are usually specialized and offer different level of qualities based on the amount of good stuff in the plate. I have been eating it several times and I really like it. You would not think that from the list of ingredients but It is quite tasty! It costs from EGP1 to EGP5.

Foul are brown beans that are marinated in a mixture of oil and herbs for quite some time before being cooked. Very very cheap. A large part of the population seems to be surviving from that and bread. It is quite tasty and filling but I would not advise to go on that kind of diet… It costs maybe EGP1-2 for 2 small sandwiches

Well, actually, maybe a Foul diet would be ok if you have to choose between Foul and Taameyyas. Taameyyas is pureed Foul that is then deep fried! You also eat that in a bun bread. Quite tasty too but is it because of the beans or because of all that grease? Same kinds of prices.

In more traditional types of restaurants, you find the stapples of Middle-Eastern cuisine: Tahini, Hummus and Babaghanouj as well as shish and kofta kebabs or shish taouk. The big novelty is the Pigeon that you can find in many restaurants. I don’t know if it is as much appreciated by the Egyptians than Cuy (Guinea Pig) is by the Peruvians but it is everywhere. Maybe it is why you do not see any pigeons in the street of Cairo! Well, at least you do see many cats in the street and thinking about it, it is reassuring 😉 (OK, if you are Egyptian and are reading this, I am joking!). A dinner of a plate of babaghanouj, shish kebab or pigeon and some vegetables will cost you between EGP10 and EGP20.

Finally, you also can find some restaurants that are specialized in Egyptian pizzas and large sweet or salted kind of crepes called Fetir. The Egyptian pizzas I tried with Karim were quite good. It is really different. Nothing spectacular though.

To tell the truth, I am a bit disappointed with the food experience. I have heard many good things about home cooked meals but I did not get the opportunity to try yet so I cannot judge that. The restaurant industry is just underdeveloped here because most of the Egyptians do not have the means to eat out often or at least, not in fancy restaurants. All the travelers I have met that visited the rest of Middle East rave about Jordan and Lebanon. I will report later about that ;).