Na'ama

I spent one night in Na'ama, which is part of the Sharm El-Sheikh city in the Sinai Peninsula. It's a vacation resort for wealthy Europeans and Russians, from what we could tell by the crowd that we found there.

The prices there were exorbitant for Egypt, and even for Western prices they were really high. The supermarkets would ask for $7 for a bag of roasted cashews that were like $1.50 in China. Bottled water was a dollar when it was 30 cents in Dahab. A tall cup of signature hot chocolate at Starbucks is $4. 4 Gillette razors were $12.

There are some casinos there because gambling is legal. There's a beach promenade full of little enclosed areas for each hotel in a row that allow you to sit or lie down in the shade under umbrellas relaxing for the appropriate price. My friend Mario kept telling me that it looks basically like Cancun does.

The bar with a dance floor we went into had a $25 cover charge but we went in there before the cover started at 11:30pm. The bottles of Heineken in there were $4.

The cheap looking indian restaurant that actually had very tasty food was $10 for a dish. It seemed like so much money after backpacking through Egypt, but we sucked it up and ordered it because that's really the only type of options we had.

Na'ama is a place for *very* pretty people who have the money to come spend way too much on things they could get at home but here they can feel they are wild and on vacation. It's a very convenient local spot to fly into. The flight time is only 4 hours from most of mainland Europe. I saw hardly any Americans and Russians were all over the place.

I had some fajitas at a Mexican restaurant that were very tasty. I really miss my mexican food.