THREE MONTHS ON

            It’s now the beginning of June, three whole months since we arrived and its flown by. This gives substance to my theory that metric time is shorter than its imperial equivalent. I’ve mentioned this before in my blogs from France.

It’s a constant, like the law of gravity, or of taxes, the things I write in the first weeks of being somewhere turn out to be questionable. They feel sagacious and insightful at the time, but exposure to new surroundings soon underlines the folly of having had opinions. So, here is chapter two, things I now know I didn’t know.

OF ADDRESSES, MAPS AND HOME SHOPPING.

Finding ourselves was an unexpected challenge. Used as we are to living in, as the Ordnance Survey likes to remind us, the most mapped country in the world the discovery that large swathes of Hurghada are without addresses comes as a bit of a head scratcher. When we asked the landlord for our details, he scrawled on a slip of paper

Puilding 219b, next to Petro market, Hurghada.

His handwriting and the initial P meant, for a while we had no idea what he had written. When we finally worked it out, and asked around it appears that this is a normal address in this city, as are, near, behind and opposite.

We could not buy a street map of Hurghada. They do not exist. The best on offer is a schematic of the coastline showing hotels, fast food outlets and other enterprises with an advertising budget. They are on sale but the map in a free Senzo Mall brochure contains the same information.

Using Google Earth I started the process of trying to figure out where we live in the Hurgahdian universe. There is a coffee bar 300 yards from the flat, which prints a road name on its menus. Google puts it a mile and a half away to the northeast. Next door to the coffee shop is a nursery; Google’s confident little red flag shows it a mile to the west. I eventually figured out where our building is and marked it with a pin of my own.

I had a look at the home shopping sites of Metro and Abu Ashara supermarkets. It’s impossible to get through the registration process for Abu Ashara, every attempt brings up an error screen full of programmer’s code. I did finally figure out Metro’s site. They asked for the floor, apartment and building number. Does that mean they have access to a secret store of town plans? Their website asked for a landline number, which of course we don’t have. Its inclusion is compulsory and it checks the format of the entry without giving any clues as to what it is expecting. It wants, trial and error eventually revealed, a local number without the local area code.

The site proved disappointing, with a very meagre selection available to buy on line. We won’t be using it, that’s for sure, even though the delivery charge is a wallet busting 60p.

*****

The time it takes an unskilled man to earn the price of a Big Mac around the world, they say, tells us much about a countries economy. Similarly, we have observed on our travels that internationally, mobile phone operators offer discount packages at different times of the day and week. This data says a lot about the social life of a nation. Here in Egypt calls are at their priciest between 6pm and midnight. Evenings and nights are when Hurghada comes to life. Many shops stay open until 10pm or later and don't open until midday. Small grocers open 24 hours and we have passed Metro supermarket, on the rare occasions we have allowed ourselves to be out that late, at two in the morning still trading. We met a musician who plays in one of the local clubs. He doesn’t start until midnight. Mesh Mesha finally gets tired of its customers at about 3am. You can shop, drink, coffee or alcohol, and party 24 hours a day if you so choose. The other side of the coin, Old Vic Beach closes at 6pm and the dive centre likes us to be away as soon as possible after we get back, between 4 or 5 pm usually. The microbuses do not run all night. We had to meet the dive centre driver at 4am, the day we went to dive the Thistlegorm. They weren’t running then. You can always find a taxi though, but may have to walk to one of the main roads.

*****

We noticed during our property viewings that someone always tuned on a tap to demonstrate, we thought that water was present. Only half the story, good water pressure is a selling point. In our flat flushing the toilet means washing up has to be postponed until the cistern has filled.

There is a small window in the flat, between the bathroom and bedroom doors and exterior lights from the building next-door stream in during the night. It’s too bright to ignore as we leave the door open; it keeps the air fresh. It has become a nightly routine to hang a towel over the aperture.

*****

My initial assessment of taxi and microbus fares was hopeless. For a mile or so in a cab, we pay 10LE, or £1. This is too much, 5 LE, 50p is nearer the mark. Trouble is, I can’t climb out of a taxi and pay so paltry an amount, cultural baggage I guess. Some drivers still try it on. From our nearest alcohol vending establishment, a bar called Mesh Mesha, about 20 minutes walk from the apartment, we pay 10 LE, which is more than enough, but the occasional tourist exploiter still asks for 20. If you have read my blog “Finally Diving The Thistlegorm” you will know our dive centre paid for a cab to get us from the marina to Mesha, around 5 miles. They gave the cabbie 20LE, the rate locals pay, but the driver still managed to extract a further 30 LE, some are honest, some know how to work the tourist.

To get to El Dahar on the microbus, half an hours journey, I hand over 5 LE for the two of us, which feels about right. A short hop to the beach, five minutes drive, I pay 20 LE a head, probably double the going rate.

The scam with 4 two euro coins and the request to change them is apparently another switch con. Whatever you hand over for the 8 Euros, the fraudster will field a 50 piastres (5 pence) note claiming you gave him the wrong money.

******

Paying the monthly fee to Vodafone for pay-as-you-go internet access has proved tricky. For a while, I couldn’t register the account. I have an unlocked USB modem, which uses Huawei Technologies Mobile Partner connection software. Registering the account involves filling in a form on Vodafone’s site and waiting for a message to the software. It took hours for the message to come through, and because in the meantime I’d closed the page, the verification number became invalid. It took several attempts to get the information in a sensible timeframe and I didn’t manage it until after the first renewal date. Going to www.vodafone.com.eg/usb/home.html brings up a screen that monitors my usage and where I tried to renew the account.

You can buy various denomination tickets from the many phone shops here to top up your credit. I tried first using the “Buy 1GB for 20LE” option and this somehow scuppered the whole process. The second time around, having a registered account I tried to top up using my credit card, a seemingly sensible option. I worked through the process only to be told my credit card was registered outside Egypt and was therefore invalid. I then bought a top up ticket, but this didn’t have the desired effect either. On both occasions, I rang Vodafone who were very helpful and sorted me out in minutes. As far as I can work out you have to enter the voucher codes before the allotted period expires, on the account manager screen, and ignore the registered account. The alternative is to go into a Vodafone shop, one of their proper branches rather than a street corner dealer and I know of only two in Hurghada, Senzo Mall and Sheraton Road. If you have your data line number with you, they can top you up there and then. Vodafone get top marks for their helpful call centre but none for their website, which doesn’t explain the top up procedure. It’s not by the way the fastest connection on the planet. The USB modem took 6 minutes to buffer a 2¼-minute YouTube video.

Vodafone send text messages in Arabic. If there is a way of changing these to English, I haven’t found it. Maybe all I have to do is ask, but it doesn’t seem to be an option offered on their website. My cheap phone, £15 pre-loved, won’t display the messages in Arabic script.

5 * 7 #  .

is one message I received.

            Realising I could download the messages to my laptop, I did, just to see what would happen. They magically transformed back into Arabic. I then used Google’s Translate to find out what gems I had been missing. Here are a few of the results.  

If not a Maak balance with Aalnoth service from Vodafone as possible operate a call for 3 minutes to any number in Egypt with 60 penny deducted upon shipment. Ask any number you want to have the word without balance

Km # 13 * and know Er gathered with View (Charge collection and earn). Charge the night of the first 10 C and collecting awards earned extra fee. Thousand won and Lessa. Further 800 km

Enter عالنت of mobile freebee for two weeks up to 3 MB per day. To subscribe Order # 2053

To activate your free online km 5090 or +201064777700 B 1 c. AD. From abroad

Dear Customer, operating code is 729 261. Please treated as confidential, and Vodafone Egypt will not be asking you forever

ID is now available, you can connect to it. To prevent المعاكسات km # 7 * 5 piasters

Now all is clear.

*****

SHOPPING
Nothing much has changed apart from finding out it’s simple to get to Senzo Mall. We’ve only been three times. It’s simple but time consuming, but its time we have and appointments and urgent schedules we lack. It’s a twenty minute walk to the Senzo bus stop, a wait of anything from a couple of minutes to forever and a half hour journey. We could have waited forever the day they closed the road, something we didn’t realise for a while, but it eventually dawned on us that the bus had been rerouted and wasn’t going to appear. Instead, we took a microbus, which dropped us seven minutes walk from the Mall. The fare on either the Senzo or the micro bus is 2.50 LE each, each way. The bus comes back a different route and drops us a 10 minutes walk from home. We are limited to what we can carry, so avoid watermelons and garden furniture.

           BEACHES
           Let’s go to the beach we said, thinking of the English seaside where you turn up with a towel and a bucket of whelks, pick a random place on the vacant sand and make your pitch. There are a few public beaches here, and no whelks. These free beaches are unequipped with draught ice cream shops, public conveniences, parasols or waiters. Most of the coast is in private hands which means access to the sand is a commercial transaction.

          Old Vic Beach, a half hour walk, 5 minutes in a cab or a microbus, is two hundred and fifty yards of golden sand, lapped by the ridiculously azure-blue waters of the Red Sea. Permanently planted parasols range along the shore, maximising the revenue from every square metre. Perhaps once, a chic place to be seen, a must do on the Hurghada social scene its grandeur has faded, the white metal posts of the sun umbrellas are speckled with rust, the wicker tops in need of a trim. The loungers’ need a coat of fresh white paint, and much of the metal that prop up the back rests needs bending back to straight. The white and blue mattresses, obligingly put onto the sunbeds as each guest arrives have foam poking out of the corners and are faded after years in the sun. Long redundant signs hang from the rims of many of the parasols , “reserved” in red ink, pale after too long without attention and little yellow and blue arrows with the number of long deserted apartments. These run along the back of the complex, the two storey blocks, empty holiday flats, full, if you peek through the patio doors, of distressed furniture and curtains half off the occasional rail.

          Entrance to the beach can be secured for a seemingly reasonable EGP35, not bad for a lounger under sunshades, on the shores of ones of the worlds most remarkable bodies of water. Most days the place is full, but it never feels overcrowded. Today as I write this, it’s not noisy either. Cliché it may be, but I can hear the sea lapping the beach, muted conversations in Russian, German, Arabic and the Esperanto of children at play. If I listen carefully, I can hear the distant growl of traffic and the occasional car horn. The club’s single loudspeaker that usually plays decent music at a non-intrusive level is silent. The resorts speedboat circles the bay towing an inflatable settee, throwing its occupants around like denim on a spin cycle,

            It’s an eclectic mix, ex pats on a budget, Egyptians who aren’t offended by the bikinis of the tourists, and holidaymakers staying cheaply in apartments without access to a beach. Cairo may be in the midst of post revolutionary anti-fun fervour but in Hurghada Egyptian woman can choose to “go western” and swim like the lucky holidaymakers, others following tradition enter the Red Sea fully clothed even the head and shoulders shrouded in cultro-religious observance.

            You have to buy food and drink from the resort, and they search your bags to make sure you aren’t smuggling in contraband cucumber sandwiches or bottles of water. Its not pricey, a 1½ litre bottle of cold water is 6 LE, a kofta sandwich with chips is 15 LE, coffee 10 LE, and they sell beer. Nevertheless, a day here, with a modest lunch, water, fizzy drinks and a coffee or two can come to £20 (English) for the two of us. This becomes a significant budget item if regularly indulged. We can get away for about 130 LE if we stick to H²0 though.

Despite the prosaic description above, it’s an OK place to be, the faded magnificence isn’t as bad as it sounds, it’s just not a 5 star experience, but then you aren’t paying five star prices. Waiters bring food and drink to your lounger, and a dip in the sandy-bottomed shallow sea is a few paces away. They do, unfortunately have a habit of miscalculating your bill, always too much. We write down everything we order with its price, and tot it up before paying. On more occasions than feel like mere oversight, we have had to correct the venues arithmetic. We still go regularly though; it’s a decadent day out.

STOP PRESS

          The big news though is an argument I had with Mr Ali over the electricity prices. We took a photo of the meter, and asked Sad, the caretaker if we had read the Arabic numbers correctly. We had. When it was time to pay the rent, I handed over 1550 LE, the rent plus Sad’s bakhshesh, but nothing for the water or power. Mr Ali walked me to the meter cupboard, pointed at number 8, ran his finger along the readout, made some noises designed to convey the clunking of his mental processes, and marched into Sad’s room, doorless, unplastered, concrete floored and equipped with a desk and a homemade wooden bed knocked up from miscellaneous pieces of wood and a desk. He found a school exercise book, and started, again to run his finger down the handwritten Arabic text, He stopped at a random place, and again made noises to tell me he was adding up and calculating. Eventually he said, 723, that’s 700, you have used 700 kilowatts.

Of course, I knew this was untrue. We had though decided that paying 150 LE, £15 English for our utilities, which here include a wastewater charge, was acceptable. He was overcharging, but we hadn’t negotiated the price when we signed the rental agreement. He wasn’t going to come clean, and we were taking perhaps, £5 (English) a month too much, not enough to get truly angry about. “I will go get the money” I said and started up the stairs. Despite the walking stick he was carrying and the slight hesitancy he had shown walking up the steps to the foyer, he bounded after me. I gave him the money. “But why” I asked, “do you tell me its 700 units, when the meter says 320?” He rattled on about charges being higher for this building. I tried to explain that I wasn’t questioning the price per kilowatt, but his reading of the meter. They say kilowatts here when they mean kilowatt-hours. He left.

          A few minutes later the bell tweeted. Mr Ali was there with a companion. “I am a tenant here, He has asked to translate, his English it no so very good” the stranger said. Mr Ali trotted out the same line about charges in this district being higher than elsewhere. I went to my laptop and found the two different pages from two different sources stating the price per Kwh was 0.11 piastres. More irrelevant blustering was forthcoming. “You took me to the meter, you took me to Sad’s, room, you worked it out, and said 700 units, but the meter shows 320.” That’s not right. And the government rate is there on my PC, from two places, and a friend says that is the price.” We had met a property agent at Mesh Mesha, a down to Earth lady from Newcastle who looks after apartments owned mainly by the British, renting them out for holidays. She had confirmed this price. I wasn’t arguing about the money, I wasn’t refusing to pay, I was just pissed off that he was trying to pass off his meter reading as fact. Mr Ali was now backed into a corner; in front of another tenant, I was demonstrating an unexpected knowledge of the actualité. “I don’t want you here”, he said “at the end of the month you will go”

This was a tad unexpected, but not unwelcome. It's noisy here, the dogs continue to howl thorough the days and nights. The building has no exterior doorbell or intercom, all that stuff is inside the locked gate. You only get one gate key from Mr Ali, and thinking nothing more of it, we found a locksmith so we could have a copy each. This is not the custom here, the building has a Bowab. In many apartment blocks, he is outside, in a little wooden hut, or sits just inside the gate. Here he is tucked around the corner. This means that anyone requiring access needs to shout, and at 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 in the morning they do, increasingly loudly until he responds. The gate bangs loudly as Sad throws it shut. This means that we haven’t had a continuous uninterrupted nights sleep since we have been here. We also like to sit outside to eat and the flats balcony despite being a short distance from the adjacent block promised this. The dogs and the dust from the nearby building works put paid to that idea. There is too our mistaken optimism that the building works were calming down. They have a habit of starting early, 6am, when it’s cool. It’s a problem when you pile this on top of a night of gate slamming. Maybe we are getting old, our tolerance levels falling, but we have lived in other similar places. The problem is lack of respite. If it’s not the shouting its, the construction works, or the daily coming and goings up a soundbox of a stair well.

We, as I have already said decided to move, but hadn’t got around to doing anything about it. We’d also promised a minimum 6 months stay and had signed contract to that effect. “Give us our deposit and we will” I replied. “After I inspect the flat I will pay it, on the 24^th.” We reminded him the date we signed the contract was the 27^th. And that is where we are at the time of writing, we have to find somewhere else to live.

           Mr Ali, the big businessman, who, he has told us, imports furniture and curtains from China and has land on the Red Sea, where he will be building a hotel, and who is buying a coffee shop in England spends his evenings sitting in the dust out front, on a makeshift wooden table. He ignores us now as we walk past, a sulky 50-year-old teenager. 

           Some things in Egypt are difficult to achieve, renting somewhere to live isn’t one of them. The day after our altercation with Mr Ali we found ourselves passing one of the many compounds in Hurghada. These conjure up images of oil workers surrounded by armed guards, fearing an immanent rebel onslaught. They turn out to be horseshoes of apartment blocks surrounding swimming pools. We wandered in on the off chance. It was like a two Ronnie’s sketch. “Yes,” “is there an apartment free?” “Yes”, “can we see one?” “2300 LE,” “how much?”

           If you are building a stack of apartments constructing them just to face inwards, to the pools and the calm zone makes no economic sense. The price they had given us, 2300 LE, was for an outward facing flat. We didn’t want to be exposed again to the harsh realties of building works and poor pet control. We saw, and liked an apartment on the inside, on the third floor. It had a washing machine but no cooker, 2600 LE plus power and water, two ring electric hob included. We decided to decide by the next day in line with my not always heeded philosophy of never appearing too eager and of never making important decisions off the cuff. After all, such impulsiveness had landed us in our current predicament. We went back the next day to sign the contract but we'd missed the boat. We were knocked sideways I don’t mind telling you, being gazumped and losing our dream home. They said other apartments would soon be empty. We waited in vain for the promised phone call. A few days later we popped back. They had an outside apartment available. On the theory that once in and on the client list we'd have first dibs on other accommodation as it became free, we agreed. Liz wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect of facing other blocks of flats possibly full of yapping hounds. We had seen too, water tankers decanting in the street outside. They make hell of a racket with their pumps and fifty year old truck engines sounding more like Spitfires taking off than trucks pulling away.
          
           We went back. An inside ground floor flat, they told us, "will be available in one week." similar one was temporarily empty. The receptionist unlocked the door and we stepped into a darkened apartment and a horrible stench. Our guide retreated into the fresh air, but keen to look around we ventured deep into the blacked out cavern. The power was off. We discovered a large side of meat rotting away in the fridge, visible because the door had been propped open. “That’s five months” he said when we told him. If that happened in the UK Facebook would have been inundated, environmental health officers mobilised, and someone fired. He just shrugged, not indifference, but a practical reaction to circumstances. What was he do, he hadn’t known it was there, the will of Allah. Appearances are important and when things go awry the admission is a loss of face greater than the original mishap. Perhaps though, it’s due to communication difficulties, expressing remorse in a foreign tongue a linguistic step too far. Whatever the psychology, the resort's standards were better than this. The asking price, 3100 LE plus utilities for a flat a few steps from the pool, It had no washing machine. We needed to pay a 1000LE deposit to secure the contract. The logic behind this payment is perplexing. Should we change our mind we could demand it back. It demonstrates, I suppose, trust between the parties involved.

           Our contract with Mr Ali was to end on the 27th of the month. We decided to move on the 22nd, a compromise between our hearts, that wanted the move immediately, and our brains that said paying for two units of accommodation at the same time was illogical. This gave us about three weeks in the company of the Hounds of the Baskervilles and it felt like forever, like waiting for Christmas when five years old. Needing to buy ancillary cooking equipment we went to Senzo Mall. We found microwave sized electric oven, spit and grill units, from 500LE to 1000LE. We looked too at washing machines and found a baby top loader, one that washes but doesn’t spin for a remarkably reasonable 300LE (£30 GBP). How to get it home?

           When we paid our first visit to Spinney’s Supermarket we had investigated their delivery policy, hoping we might have groceries brought to our door. We learnt they only deliver electricals and furniture. Problem solved, I thought and went to find out how much they charged. My habit of mentally converting Egyptian Pounds into Pounds Sterling means I forget whether the number in my head is the original or the arithmetically adjusted figure. Was it 50 English pence or 50 Egyptian pounds? I went back to check. “It depends”, I was then told, “where you live.” To El Kawser they make no charge. I checked too they could deliver on the Sunday after we had moved, “of course, whenever you like.” Word had now spread that someone wanted to buy a delivery item and previously invisible salesmen glided into view. When we pointed to the object of our desires, they told us, “You have to need a minimum of 1000LE to free deliver.” This we could achieve if we added the oven unit, bought an iron and a couple of knick knacks. “No, no, delivery is only for big fridges and like things” they said. We gave up.

            The next day Mr Ali’s builders started chopping marble outside our window, in the narrow space between the two buildings. Acoustic engineers’ intent on creating a passive amplification zone couldn’t have done a better job. The angular concrete surfaces reflected the whine of the cutting equipment to levels I last heard when my job took me to a military airfield where jet fighters were taking off. Liz and I weren't able to talk to each other. We went out to the pub, or rather to Mesh Mesha bar. It proved an entertaining diversion. We met a German lady who had run a restaurant in Hurghada but “now the tourists aren’t coming enough.” They are coming, the tour reps and the hotels are busy and we regularly see full coaches growling down Village Road, the newly built tourist centre of Hurghada. They are coming on all-inclusive packages and are staying in their hotel complexes. We had been told that the pre-revolutionary president did a deal with the Russian Government. As part of an armaments deal he either persuaded existing hotels to give generous discounts to Russian tourists or allowed Russian tycoons to invest in hotels here. Whatever the facts, it seems that during his tenure Russians got cheap flights and accommodation in Egypt. All that ended with the revolution and the word on the street is Russian tourist numbers fell by75%. There are still a lot here though, many intent on reinforcing their national stereotype of drunk, rude, fight prone and execrated alcoholics. We chatted too, with a tour rep, the conversation more about diving, living in Marsa Alarm, and the ability of a particular language to be able to express some things better than others. A pleasant interlude.
          
           When we arrived home, the angle grinders were still screeching. I nipped around the corner. “Can we move tomorrow?” I asked. "Any time after three" they said. We endured another hour or so of ear shattering construction work before the builders went home. It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. The next morning we were busily packing. This wasn’t going to be a big move; we had only as much as the airline allowed two people to bring, minus our scuba kit which we leave at the dive centre. We had bought a few extra kitchen things, but the boot of a modest family saloon would swallow it all. The phone rang. It was our man at the resort. “Can you come see another apartment, very good, very better.” He showed us to a first floor flat and introduced us to the owner. The apartment had a washing machine, an oven, remarkably like those we had been recently examining, and beautiful furnishings, the sort that turn a whitewashed box into a home. We agreed 3500 LE including bills. This means we can if we so choose run the air conditioning 24/7. We signed a one page contract, in English and Arabic, paid a month’s rent and the same again as a deposit and shook hands. That was that. One hour later we moved in. We have unrestricted use of the swimming pools, there is a lift for Liz’s knee, diligent security and for the first time since we arrived

can get an uninterrupted nights sleep. The place is full of kids playing, but this is nothing compared to the eternal cacophony that surrounded our previous abode. The other big plus is the balcony. We can now read, eat, compute and vegetate outside, a far, far better way of living.

           The day after all this was written, the place turned into a kid’s playground; from about three in the afternoon to four in the morning. It took a couple of nights but security appears to be on top of things now. This is we are informed the pre Ramadan holiday rush, and the resort will revert to its more tranquil self when the feast begins, which this year (2013) is July 9th. There is a post Ramadan holiday too. The kids playing wasn’t the problem, they were screaming and shouting around the place until the wee small hours.

Assurances from the resort that things would calm down at the beginning of Ramadan were not worth the oxygen consumed while telling us this rubbish. Kids in Egypt are part and parcel of life here. This resort promises a peaceful time for the relaxation of its guests. An untrue statement. It OK if you know, I guess, just don’t believe the hype.