GOD LOVES YOU - SEND MONEY

The unchanging nature of progress is still evident on the Red Sea, where the steady march of the tourism rouble has continued unabated since I was here eleven months ago. Back then I didn’t get to experience the twin terminals of the Sharm El Sheikh airport. From the outside they look like the kind of cathedrals to greed that charismatic preachers build in order to get extra bums on seats on Sundays from which to Hoover up even more of those readily available Jesus-dollars (I just read that sentence back and it sounds a bit like I’m inferring that the evangelical churches extract cash directly from the backsides of their parishioners. For the record I do not actually believe this to be the case).

In may ways though the Sharm terminals are shrines to the same God as the Southern Baptist Ministers and it has to be said the cheap airlines and package tour operators which fund these impressive structures are as ruthlessly adept at extracting alms from the touring hoards as any hot-stepping, devil casting, testifying – I SAID THANK YA JEEESUSS! – Minister of the Lord is at emptying the pockets of his gullible flock. The only difference really is that here in Sharm we don’t get the impossibly upbeat songs, the laying on of hands or the speaking in tongues. Actually, come to think of it, that’s not strictly true as there were a couple of Geordies on the aircraft. At least none of my fellow passengers felt the need to close their eyes, raise their arms as if doing the Y in the YMCA dance or adopt that ridiculous look of ecstatic joy adopted by those who want to demonstrate to their fellow parishioners that yes, they really, truly are feeling the awesome power of the Holy Spirit flowing through them and it feels AWESOME! AWESOME!!!!!!

Actually this afternoon was an interesting study in group psychology. On entering the arrivals hall passengers were ushered into three lines. No one was really sure what was going on but a man with a clipboard and a badge was issuing the instructions, so everyone unquestioningly obeyed. Our three lines snaked toward three windows. Over each of the three windows was the branding of the airline on which we had just arrived. To the right of our airline’s windows were another twenty windows, all branded differently but each with a sign offering the same service; Egyptian Visas for $15US. Those windows were empty of customers. The staff behind our three windows were processing a Boeing 777’s worth of weary travelers. Our lines were moving slowly. The other 20 windows had no lines at all. Yet none of us made a break for the unoccupied windows. Partly I think this was because no one seemed sure what we were queuing up for and partly I think it was because any time some curious soul tried to wander over to a different window they’d be rounded up by the clipboard and ushered back into line. To be fair half the English passengers were clearly drunk and a pretty heavy proportion looked like they’d been taught the hard way how to toe the line during a 10 to 18 month stretch in Wormwood. But the rest of us really had no excuse at all. We were like a bunch of queuing enthusiasts on a social outing. It wasn’t until I got to the line and discovered that my airline was charging £11 for the same visa others were offering for $15US that I snapped out of my ovine obedience and headed over to one of the other windows. Evidently I value money over my own precious – or not so precious as it turns out – time.

Interestingly, just as I was heading through customs a bunch of passengers from a rival airline arrived and a new man with a clipboard and badge emerged to usher them toward his company’s windows. This went unchallenged by the original clipboard, which I guess means there are enough cash-cows out there for everyone to fill a pail.

So, like I said, tourism companies are good at extracting cash for services that can be more cheaply and easily obtained independently. Listen carefully to the sound of the hills collapsing into the sea as a result of that earth shattering revelation.

I wrote last year of the Red Sea that the Russian’s were coming. I was actually wrong. They’re already here and, in a large part, it is their money which has paid for the magnificent new air terminals and the fresh, hard-topped roads which connect it to the cities that have burgeoned as a result of the growing tourism industry. Since last year a row of supersized power pylons have sprung up on the road between Sharm El Sheikh and Dahab and construction has started on what will one day be the northbound carriage of a shining dual lane highway. That this newly laid tarmac wasn’t already a fully-fledged part of a dual lane highway wasn’t apparent to me until about 30 minutes into my journey to the Sphinx Hotel, by which time I’d been travelling on it for about 25 minutes. It was only when I looked over at the other carriage and saw traffic on that stretch traveling in both directions that I realised that my driver was a massive Robert Frost fan. He’d been driving on an unopened, unmarked and possibly unsafe road, with no hard shoulder, no soft shoulder at something approaching 140kph. In fact, in many places, no shoulder existed at all bar clean oxygen and a two foot drop. Having bussed about India I was quite relaxed about this really, until we started to go around some blind corners. It was then that I started to calculate that if the road wasn’t yet opened, there was also chance that it wasn’t yet finished, and if it wasn’t yet finished then there was a chance that we’d hook around one of these blind turns only to find ourselves on a suddenly nonexistent stretch of road, with nothing beneath us but the shifting sands of the Sinai Desert and nothing ahead of us but the broken tooth outcrops of rock which rise from its surface. Disturbing thoughts. Needless to say my concerns came to nothing and I made it safely to the hotel, where everything’s pretty good.

Have you noticed how most of these bloody things are about the inherent terror of motorised transport? I’m starting to think that maybe I’m holidaying wrong.

That is all.
Dale Atkinson