Now this is more like it. I flew from Melbourne to the Sunshine Coast in the morning, arriving just after lunch. Despite the name, it was overcast, but still warmer than it was in the south, which is a definite improvement. A 15-minute shuttle ride later and I am at my hotel to check in. This place was recommended by one of the locals and is much more a condo than a hotel (so no maid service, but a full kitchen, bedroom and living room).

Just across the street is Coolum Beach, and as beaches go, it is amongst the best I have ever seen. Its at least eighty yards wide and stretches for miles towards Noosa in the north. I can’t resist taking off my shoes to feel the sand, which is the fine powder sort that squeaks under your feet. Even though it’s Sunday, there are only a handful of people as far as the eye can see.

Over the next few days (all of which are sunny and warm), I get to mix some business with a bit of pleasure as one of my business partners offers to show me around the area. Compared to the bigger cities I have come from, this area is downright rural. It swells a bit with tourists in the summer, but in the off-season, the whole area totals less than a half million people. I’m told though that it is the fastest growing area of Australia as the general population ages and retirees leave the cities in search of warmer climes.

In my original schedule, I had left a full day empty to try and do a short excursion, debating between Steve Irwin’s zoo and Fraser Island (a 90 mile long island a bit north of here comprised complete of sand that is supposed to make for an interesting). The Great Barrier Reef is still a bit north of here so that one has to wait for a future trip for sure. Unfortunately, this are a little chaotic back at the office, which appears set to keep me tied to the laptop instead.

With my flight back to Seattle starting on Friday, for the most part I’ve seen pretty much all I’m going to see here. It’s not a lot, but I guess will be something to start with when I have the chance to come on an actual vacation. From the limited time I’ve had here, there is enough to let me know I need to come back one day, and with my regular travel partner back in the mix (the word on the street is that we might also have some bushy-haired company) we can definitely get a little further off the beaten path.

Following a day of meetings and an early morning flight, my next stop is Melbourne. I have more meetings the day I arrive, but the next day is Saturday, so a free day to take a look around. My only exposure to Melbourne is an episode of No Reservations, which hasn’t given me a whole lot to go on, and of course, it is further south so a bit cooler even than Sydney.

I found a hotel called the Charsworth a few minutes south of downtown in an area called St. Kilda. It is near the pier and the beach, so close to a lot of cafes and restaurants provided you walk the right direction (which I didn’t the first night and ended up eating at McDonald’s). The hotel itself is a converted manor house, part of an eclectic mix of old Victorian buildings and new glass and steel construction that co-exist side by side throughout the city.

With my internal clock still a little off (and I admit I’m not trying too hard to convert completely to Australia time since I am not here that long), I am wide-awake a little after 5am. After catching up on a bit of email, I jump on the tram that runs in front of the hotel up to the Victoria Market. This is one of the few open markets I have seen outside of the third world, and is like Pike Place on severe steroids. There are hundreds of stalls selling fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, clothes, and most interesting to me, tasty snacks. I partake of a breakfast bratwurst and spend an hour or two just wandering around the market.

The rest of the morning I pick my way slowly back to the hotel, watching the rowers on the river, passing by the old Olympic stadium, and cutting through the gigantic botanical gardens. Like Sydney, Melbourne seems like a fairly pleasant city, and even on a Saturday, nowhere I go is very crowded.

After a few hours recharging at the hotel, I head back into St. Kilda to see the beach and find a place to eat. Down by the pier, I learn that Australia has penguins (who knew?) that have built nests in the various crevices in the rock seawall. I try to get a few pictures on my cell phone, but I suspect they will look like pictures of holes than anything else.

I’m back to the airport again in the morning to fly up to the Sunshine Coast (near Brisbane). It will be my last stop before heading home, but is also the one place where I have built in a few days to just enjoy some time here.

Much to my chagrin, this trip to Australia isn’t for vacation, but given it is my first time here, I figured it was worth dedicating at least a little ink to. I am without my faithful travel buddy as well, something she is not thrilled about since Australia is high on her list of places to visit. I did try to sell it as an opportunity to check the place out so I knew what places to see when we came together, but I don’t think she really bought it.

The flight over was on Qantas on an A380, my first experience with both the carrier and the aircraft. Aside from the length (about 15 hours), all was good and we touched down in Sydney around 6:30am, just it time to see the sun rise. The early arrival works out in my favor as passport control is pretty much empty and I sail right through.

From the airport, the metro train connects right into downtown Sydney, and having not been to a big city yet where that option doesn’t prove far quicker are more cost effective, I hop on for the 15 minute ride to the central business district where my hotel is. Since Ang is not with me, my accommodation choices extend a bit further that Sheraton’s, and I come up with a place called the Great Southern Hotel, which ends up being about 2 blocks from the main train terminal. It’s way too early for check-in, so I leave my bag and decide to explore downtown a little.

The first thing I notice about Sydney is that it is much colder than I had expected. It’s going into winter of course, but somehow I still pictured it being fairly warm and pleasant. It turns out that the temperature this time of year is really not much different than Seattle, and while that means I’m still quite comfortable in a light coat, the locals have broken out the wool coats and knit caps. Logically I can get my head around it, but still, in my vision of Australia I never imagined they even owned such things.

The next shock to my system is the cost of things here. It’s probably less noticeable if you have lived here all along, but with the weakness of the US Dollar of late, prices have far more in common with Europe than North America. After checking in, I stop at donair stand for lunch, with the only real difference between the meal I had here and the one a week ago in Cairo being the 1,000% increase in price (oh, and this one came with fries).

With nothing on the agenda for the day, I spend the rest of it wandering through town, seeing the sights like the Opera House, the bridge over the harbor, and the old town. Of the parts I see, it is a very pleasant and walkable city. People seem generally healthier (for a Wednesday afternoon there are a tremendous amount of them out running or exercising in the parks) and in far less of a hurry to get anywhere than the US (it only takes me a couple times jaywalking by myself before I realize that regardless of how little traffic there is, locals are fine just waiting for the lights).

Down around the harbor, there is a bit of a buzz with preparations going on for the arrival of the 16 year old Australian girl returning from her solo sail around the world. I recall a small bit of coverage back home about it, but here it is BIG deal. Unfortunately, I’ll be gone by the time she arrives, as it appears there will be quite the celebration.

By the time I get back to the hotel and get some dinner, it is a little after 8pm. I try focusing on a little work, but all the jet lag from the past week is taking its toll, and by 8:30 I am out like a light.

Well, we’ve been back in Redmond now for a few days (sort of anyways, as I have actually moved on to Australia for work), and I have been a little apathetic about putting together the usual post mortem for our trip. My body is on some crazy, mixed up time zone, so wide awake in the middle of the night in Sydney seems like as good a time as any.

In a nutshell, Egypt exceeded our expectations. Feedback was all over the map when we told people where we were going, so I’m not sure we knew really what to expect. We knew we had to go at some point in our lives, if for nothing else than to see the pyramids, but I think we were prepared for the trip to be more about history and less about enjoyment and relaxation, similar to how we felt about China. And if that was all we would have gotten out of it, it still would have been well worth it.

The words and the pictures are great mementos, but neither can really convey the impact of being there. Standing at the bottom of the Great Pyramid and tilting your head back to see two million blocks, each as tall as a person, stretching skyward is something that only works in person. That the same can be said for dozens of other things we saw, from the Ramses statues in Abu Simbel to the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai, to the coral reefs at Ras Abu Gallum only reinforces why we pack our stuff up ever year and head off somewhere new.

Ask us though what we remember most about this trip, and the answer may be a bit surprising. For Ang, I know it was the colors. No matter where we went, she always noticed how blue the sky was, or how blue the water looked. And I can’t count how many pictures we had to wade through of pink sunsets and red mountains to winnow them down to the still overwhelming number we kept. For me, it is a picture I took in Philae Temple where Ang is running her hand along the hieroglyphic carvings. These are everywhere, and its impossible not to reach out and touch them, letting your imagination go back 5,000 years ago to picture the workers creating them.

That said, like anywhere, there are things about Egypt that are unpleasant – the endless requests for baksheesh and vendors always trying to rip you off being near the top. And in the back of my head, when the voice that asks whenever we go somewhere if I could ever see myself living there, the answer comes back no. But would I recommend it for a trip? In a heartbeat.

After a short flight (about an hour) from Sharm el-Sheikh, we find ourselves back in Cairo. We have a really early (5:30am) flight back to Redmond in a couple of days so are staying in Heliopolis, which is much closer to the airport. It is a bit more higher end of an area (as higher end goes in Egypt), and is where many of the embassies and the presidential palace are. We don’t really have anything pressing on our list, so figure we can use this last little bit of time to try and find a few more things to bring back with us, including some cotton things like towels and such (what better place for Egyptian Cotton than Egypt goes the thinking). Other than a handful of souvenirs, we really haven’t found much to buy here (which is good both on the pocketbook and on my back, as my pack is still fairly light), leaving a bit of room yet in the budget.

Ever up for a challenge, Ang quickly rings the till in one of the shops in the hotel lobby, buying silver cartouche bracelets for the boys with their names in hieroglyphics. That’s just a warm up though, as the real target is an area of downtown where we’re told we can find good cotton. We figure we’ll just take a cab to the subway, but the doorman puts the hard sell on taking the cab all the way downtown and we finally relent. We find out later that cabs picking up at the hotels have to kick back 10% of the fare to the hotel staff, which certainly explains why getting somewhere from the hotel is always more expensive than getting back. On the upside, we end up with a hilarious driver, who ends up being out entertainment for most of the day.

Omar drives one of the typical beat up old Fiat cabs, this one about 31 years old. He calls it his Jaguar, and on the way downtown points out some of the buildings we pass like the presidential palace (where his cousin Hosni lives), the soccer stadium (where his cousin Mohamed Zidan plays) and the local Jaguar dealer, where he gets his car serviced. His English is quite good and he seems to have a fair amount of information on the history of Cairo, so sign him up to be our driver for the rest of the day, and to mix in a bit of sightseeing with our shopping.

The latter ends up being a bust, as when we say “we don’t want to go to the places the tourists go and get ripped off so take us to the places locals buy their cotton goods”, this translates to “we’re looking for dirt cheap stuff, so take us to the Egyptian equivalent of Wal-Mart.” We take a look to be polite, but its not really what we’re after so return to the car empty handed. A shopping district downtown is a bit better, but still off the mark (although we find some fantastic ice cream which makes up for it, at least for me).

On the sightseeing front, we spend some time in the Coptic area of Cairo, which is one of the oldest parts of the city and where many of the religions that came with various conquerors of Egypt co-exist. In the span of a few blocks, there are Christian churches, synagogues, and mosques, each hundreds of years old. The churches are the most interesting in terms of decoration (they are filled with artwork and stained glass), but the highlight is mosque, where Ang has to put on a fetching green loaner outfit to get through the door.

All this pales however to just sitting in the backseat of the Jaguar listening to Omar. Between destinations he tells us some of his philosophies on marriage: “all women in Egypt are fat, or waiting to be fat when they get married”; tourism: “Sharm el-Sheik is where the women who are 50 and 60 come from Europe to have the sex with the young Egyptian man who doesn’t care that they are old and fat”; and romance: “I buy my girlfriend presents from this store because the cost is low, but I will take them out of this bag and put them in one from a nicer shop before I give to her.” We also learn from him things that interest us like how their religion works, how difficult it is for Egyptians to leave the country, and how strongly the system in Egypt favors the wealthy.

As an example of the latter, he breaks down for us how his job works. For the full day he drives us around, we agree on a price of 300 Egyptian Pounds. From that, he has to pay the hotel 10% as their kickback. He then needs to pay the owner of the beaten up old Fiat 75% of what is left (the owner provides the car, maintenance and gas), making his gross about 68 Egyptian Pounds. From that, he also needs to pay the bribes to the police officers to not give him a ticket while we waits for us to go into stores and churches. At the end of it all, he finishes up with around 50 Egyptian Pounds, or roughly $9 for the effort, while the rest goes out the door as payoffs.

Our last stop with Omar is a restaurant for one final shawarma and one final falafel. Back at the hotel, we take time out for a drink, before packing up and turning in. Our wake up call is set for 2:15am, and shortly after, for us, Egypt will be just the memories.

In the last big hurrah for this vacation, we are spending our day on a snorkeling trip in the waters of the Ras Mohammed National Park. Our travel books all talk about this area being a great place to dive and snorkel, and the weather is sunny and hot, so some time on a boat sounds a whole lot better than staying around a hotel jammed with tourists. We are awake, dressed, and out front by our scheduled pickup time of 8:15am. After a few calls to figure out where our ride was and a bit concerned that we would miss our boat, it finally rolls up at 9:15. In retrospect, this works out in our favor, as sitting out front of the hotel for an hour still ranks higher than sitting in a crowded minibus for an hour.

After a few other stops, we finally get to the port close to 11:00 (the takeaway being that in the future, we should just ask about meeting our group there, as the $5 cab ride would have been an easy trade to have the last 3 hours to ourselves) and board our boat. There are about 13 people in our group, which means the boat isn’t very crowded. However, at least half of them have little, if any, experience in the water, and after being flippered in the face a half dozen times, I make the call to give up swimming with the guide and head off in a completely different direction just to find some space.

We make a total of three stops during the day, and by the third, we are pretty much snorkeled out. The reefs are in great shape, but Ang and I agree that the places we saw in Dahab were even more spectacular, so using that as a baseline, we are a little disappointed. The bikinis and speedos are out in full force though (or at least what shows from under the rolls of flesh), so we have that going for us.

By the time we finish up on the boat and get dropped off at the hotel it is after 5pm. We don’t have the energy to go back into town, so have a nice meal at an Indian restaurant in the hotel and head back up to the room to pack. Tomorrow we return to Cairo, which just doesn’t have a vacation feel to it, so for the most part, we’ve pretty much hit the end of the road.

OK, maybe I’ve lived in America a little too long and don’t see the big picture as much as I should. But honestly, if I asked you where you would find a city plopped down in the middle of the desert, far from any sources of fresh water, loaded up with huge hotels and casinos that would be virtually empty save for the planeload after planeload of tourists, what would you say? There’s really only one place they would build something so foolish, right? Wrong. Welcome to Sharm el-Sheikh, or the place I’ve come to call Vegas East.

We read a lot about Sharm while we were in Dahab, and how it is the Mecca of tourist spots for European travels in the same way that Cancun is for North Americans. Given that, we were prepared for a sterilized, pre-packaged taste of Egypt, but here, they don’t just turn it up to 10, they turn it up to 11.

Our car pulls in around 1pm, and the first thing we notice pulling into the hotel, is that it is huge (with acres of manicured grass, just like you would expect in the desert). Land is clearly cheap, as this place sprawls forever (which will come back to haunt us). As we are checking in, Ang asks offhand if the hotel is busy, as so far, it seems like we are getting into the start of low season. The desk clerk tells us it is Russian season in April and May, which means they are quite full. I didn’t realize there was an official Russian season, but once we walk to the beach we see what he means, as there are definitely Russians everywhere. The good news is that I no longer stand out because of my pasty, white skin. The bad news is I stand out now because I am the only one not wearing a banana hammock.

We wander up to the end of the beach to see if we can see any restaurants off the hotel grounds, but soon come the conclusion that one hotel just blends into the next, and that town is a $10 cab ride away. Now I’m starting to feel a bit like a hamster in a cage, where I can’t get out of the resort, and I’m not willing to eat $14 hamburgers. It’s not the money (OK, it is a little bit) as much as it is the feeling that you’re being taken advantage of just because you’re stuck.

Supposedly the place to go in Sharm is Na’ama Bay, where the restaurants and shops are, and there are some no shows on the 3pm hotel shuttle, which opens up some room for us. It is only a few minutes by car, but a world away from everywhere else we have been in Egypt. TGI Friday’s, Hard Rock Café, Baskin Robbins, you name it, and they are all here. With our hopes set on a gritty falafel stand that could take the place of Yum Yum’s, our choices look more like a strip mall in San Diego.

Hungry, but not quite ready to settle for a chicken wing platter, we take a taxi down to the old market, which supposedly is less westernized and closer to what we are looking for. We stumble through the streets a little, looking for some souvenirs here and there, when we spot one of the locals walking by with a couple of shawarmas on a plate. We ask him where to buy them and quickly find ourselves being led through the pathways of the market to a back alley, where a street vendor has his cart set up. They set up a table for us next to some old tires and its quite the romantic dinner – a scene pretty much straight out of Lady and the Tramp.

While at the market, we also book a day trip out on the water to do some snorkeling. The area around here is part of a national park and quite well known on the diving circuit, so we are looking forward to seeing it tomorrow.

I have been remiss in my postings the past few days, but in my defense, there has not been much noteworthy to report. After our adventure to Mount Sinai, we have shifted all the way to the opposite end of the relaxation spectrum and our days have settled into a very similar routine:

8:00 AM Breakfast/Locate beach chair
11:00 AM Shuttle to town
11:30 AM Lunch at Yum Yum’s
1:00 PM Shuttle back to hotel/Return to beach chair
5:00 PM Call the kids
8:30 PM Shuttle to town for dinner

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Our original plan was to leave Dahab on Thursday, make a quick trip to Petra in Jordan, and then spend four days in Sharm el-Sheikh, before returning to Cairo. However, inertia has taken a firm hold and we like it here a lot, so opted to lengthen our stay here, and shorten our time in Sharm. We also decided we weren’t up for the 5 hour trip each way to see Petra, so are leaving that one on the bucket list for a future trip.

This will be our last full day in Dahab, and while we will miss it, I think we are ready to move on and see something new. We’ve been around long enough that the locals in town are starting to recognize us, with one of them asking me last night why I’m not brown since I’ve been here for a week. I told him that unfortunately, I only come in white and red, and the sad truth is that after almost three weeks here, we both look like we have been on vacation in Minnesota ☹