Same Shit, Different City

Fitness fanatics! Take heed of my words!

Do away with your stomach crunches, your sit ups, your planks!

If you really want to work your lower abdomen then I recommend sitting on an overnight bus from Dahab to Cairo with a case of the shits.

My god. You will never clench like it again.

The shifting-in-seat, the utter churning fear that you might let slip a little ‘parp’ that could splatter everywhere - including over the neighbourly young French guy you’d been pleasantly conversing with in an odd mixture of Arabic, French and English.

I’d managed not to shit myself as we pulled into Cairo - just - but I was off that bus, grabbing for my suitcase, running for the nearest door to the main building as fast as my limpy legs would carry me.

‘Feyn il-twalet?! Minfadlak?’

‘No inglizi.’ I was in too much of a desperate clench-and-trot to point out that I’d spoken in some vague (albeit poorly-pronounced) form of Arabic, not English.

‘Feyn… il- aahhhh- twalet? Please?! Toilet??’

I was directed ‘that way’.

God bless that ancient and noble art of point and nod.

I found the toilet. Correction, I found the toilets. Shit, which one was the Ladies’?! Of all the damn Arabic phrases to learn by sight that was probably one of the more vital.

There was a bloke washing his feet in a sink visible from the entrance to one of the two rooms.

His presence, of course, shouldn’t be taken with any real sense of authority on the matter, but I knew this was going to be a venture which required some privacy.

My stomach churned, and throwing caution to the wind, I dashed into the adjacent set of toilets and looked for the nearest open door.

To my utter horror, I saw no toilet. Or, no Western toilet.

Rather, a dirty pit into which I was about unload the sloppy contents of my bowels.

This, I thought, required me to leave my dignity at the door, and take the alcohol gel in hand.

I rammed my suitcase against the door in place of a lock.

Imagine if you will - but you needn’t - a 20-something girl, squatting over a large pit that was once white, but now was covered in a thick layer of…various substances. Only she’s not squatting, so much as bent down hitching her trousers away from the floor, clutching at the walls for support.

Someone walked in, shuffling around, as the most hideous noise escaped my person. I will not pretend it was oral.

Finally, it was over.

Sweating, I left the toilet. For now, it was over and I started to calculate its rough half life as I was rubbing alcohol gel into my hands looking for the taxi rank.

I got into the first taxi that had the squashiest, most comfy looking seats.

‘Al’an faan da… funduk Bella Luna?’ And to my great surprise he understood me, driving off to my hotel with the chaotic speed of any good Cairene driver.

Mermaids & Coral Reefs

Bamboo chairs, I feel, should be an essential furnishing to any space in which one wishes to write or think.

I am sat in such a chair, on the Dahab shore of the Red Sea. The salty water is lapping up against the red sands as the sun retreats below the horizon, the call to worship is sounded and the Ramadan fast is broken for the day.

It is warm and a warmer breeze is lifting strands of my freshly washed hair.

Though perhaps I should call them the ‘remaining strands’.

Today, I washed my hair for the first time in 12 days.

Before you mock, it’s quite an achievement. My personal best, until 30 minutes ago, was 5 days.

I feel I should point out it was my intention to push back my hair-maintenance boundaries, rather than my usual case of incurable laziness.

I had been sadly informed that the water in Cairo didn’t make for an overly Herbal-Essence-Mermaid-esque hair-washing experience. And honestly, what is the point of a shower if you don’t come out shimmering, tossing your wet hair, surprised that seabirds aren’t singing praises of your newfound cleanliness?

I digress.

With my hair plaited into military-approved, tight and uniformed french plaits (Kim’s handiwork - not mine), I resolved almost immediately to keep them in place before arriving, 12 days later, at the Red Sea.

Aching, tired and blinking in the dazzling sunlight of the morning, we clambered out of the overnight bus into a taxi and within minutes swept up in a cloud of dust at The Coral Coast Hotel.

It was not long before I was in my bikini and marching (the whole 10 yards from hotel to beach) towards the water.

Unfortunately, there was no Baywatch-style running headfirst into the sea, but rather 5 minutes standing ankle deep in the water gingerly avoiding seaweed - a lifelong pet hate, and difficult, given I was on the edge of a coral reef - undoing the plaits that had served me so well for so long.

Having my hair up - almost along the same train of thought as dreadlocks - had made for much easier personal hygiene travelling through the deserts of Middle Egypt, but now it was time for some serious scalp rinsing.

The struggle - too long to be remotely poetic - did give me time to realise that it was the red hills of Saudi Arabia providing the backdrop to this beautiful view across the water. Then a majestic, voluminous barnet, redolent of the 90s, was released and wafted gently in the sea breeze.

Fannying about for a further few minutes, trying to locate an un-seaweeded patch of seabed on which to stand, finally, wonderfully, I bellyflopped in.

Cool water spread across my scalp and, for a while, I just lay on my back enjoying pretending to be a mermaid as my hair unfurled in the water. It was just fabulous.

But then I felt something move past my foot, and I hopped it out of the shallow waters with little grace and wobbly bits bouncing everywhere. Smooth.

On shore I regained some composure, and a towel, and returned to my hotel for a shower as a horrible thought dawned on me. If you’re meant to shed 100 hairs a day, and it’d been firmly held up for 12 days, how much hair was going to come out in the shower?

Well, I’ll show you.

Yes, I had liberated my own miniature coral reef into the shower.

Very un-Herbal-Essence-Mermaid-esque.

I will not deny that I texted my hairdresser in a minor panic asking for advice. I’m paraphrasing, but she promptly replied: ‘Rinse it, condition it, and stop being a twat.’

So. Yes. My hair is free, clean and sitting on my shoulders. However, the time I’ve spent bashing this out, it’s been getting in my face & tangling up like a bastard.

I should imagine they’ll be back in plaits by the morning, smothered in lashings of conditioner.