We found ourselves amongst a psyched up mob at the boarding gates of London Luton airport, waiting to board the 6-seater/unlimited-standing bus and watching our fellow travellers exhibiting all the tactical posturing rituals that are now employed when you are in the final moments before the every-man-woman-pensioner-corpse-and-child-for-the mselves scramble across the Tarmac and up the staircase and into the seats of the inevitable Easyjet flight.
The usual silent inner-monologue-bickering simmered but never boiled, and everyone took their seats, safe in the knowledge that this is an Easyjet aeroplane, and they're cheap, so the flights are short, and they'd all be going their separate ways in safety pretty soon.
This time though, and I'm not making this up, about half of the passengers audibly groaned when they seemingly discovered, thanks to the anxious-looking cabin crew, that this time, they were having you survive an exposure to Orange for 5 hours.
It takes 5 Hours to get to Egypt, because Egypt is in Africa, don't you know?
They didn't.
I actually enjoyed the flight, as my personal pet hate on flights is when the dwarf in the seat ahead of me reclines to the fullest and most unnecessary of degrees.
Sit up straight man! We are not going to the moon! Is something I've never said out loud.
Easyjet resolve this issue ingeniously by welding the seats in one position.
"Hinges are clearly more costly, sell them on ebay. But we'll leave the buttons in the chair arm anyway, because that'll be more fun".
5 hours of Ipod Shuffling and one pre-packed lunch later we landed on the smoothest runway I've ever known. Which was despite the Pilot's best efforts to gouge a dent on the touchdown, or more accurately, just 'The Down'.
3 inches shorter, we were feeling under prepared for what was facing us, even after the wild melee to board the aircraft at Luton.
That was a mere appetiser for what we about to be launched into at Sharm-el-Sheikh cattle market. AKA Arrivals.
I knew we were supposed to get a visa on arrival for around £10, and the mushy queues at the various desks informed us that most other people in the airport had also been told they'd need a visa too.
What they don't tell you, is which window from the choice of 20 or more are you supposed to go to, and when things involve windows and passports, I always like to know I'm not signing up for the local armed services.
We eventually settled on the only window that was displaying a price, $15, before we stood behind a Russian family who either didn't know how to queue efficiently, or were some sort of KGB blocking party, as they proceeded to allow half of Moscow to go ahead of us in the line, thus turning our short line into something resembling the queue outside the Leningrad branch of Greggs in 1989.
Lumbered with nothing but large value crispy new banknotes, I handed over 400 Egyptian pounds, roughly £45, and got a sum of change that could only mean the GBP was worth less than a dollar. There were Russians around, and I didn't want to make them wait any more, and the Visa window man's job description also meant he was allowed to have a gun, so I opted to grumble quietly rather than harrumph out loud and turned to be faced with another crowd of people, waiting to get the Visas we'd just bought, to be stamped.
It's still unclear to me as to why the man who sold me my Visa, and was entrusted with firearms, wasn't also able to be entrusted with a rubber stamp.
Half an hour on the transfer coach saw us dropped off at our base for the next 7 days, the Park Inn Hotel, located in the utterly unpronounceable Nabq Bay area of Sharm el Sheikh.
Considering that Sharm el Sheikh was little more than a village in 1982, the area has undergone an outrageous amount of development into the beast it presents these days.
Our hotel came with it's own waterpark and it's own private area of beach. It was apparent that many of the guests here were entering through these gates of the resort with no intention of leaving them again for at least the next seven days.
Our room was on the third floor, the highest you can go, and was one of over 400 others that made up The Park, described as a 5 Star, but the facilities and fixtures were more equivalent to a Spanish 3 star, on the basis that Spanish 3 Stars are the same as English 2 Stars, or Greek 8 stars.
First impressions of the immediate area that surrounds the resort, and pretty much every resort in Nabq Bay might explain why the leatherettes wouldn't leave the free bar.
Aside from a few tourist-trap trinket shops, and several supermarkets that were so tidily presented it hinted toward the fact that perhaps opening a shop surrounded by All Inclusive hotels was possibly not the best business decision, there was almost nothing but sand and mountainous vistas for daylight hours, and nothing but inky darkness at night.
There is essentially one road that runs through the centre of Sharm, with resorts on either side, and the majority of bars and shops are in Na'ama Bay.
Na'ama Bay has shiny shopping centres and a few indoor markets and we took the hotel bus one evening for £5 each, after being quoted a cost of £40 by a man in a leather jacket who hung around the hotel lobby and called himself a 'Limo Driver' - Limo in this case being stretched metaphorically rather than actually to include a Toyota Avensis.
Right in the centre of Na'ama was unexpectedly familiar, as from the roof terrace of the rather marvellous Camel Club bar, you can point to a Mcdonalds, a Hard Rock Cafe, a Funky Buddha and a Pacha Nightclub, and then walk to them all within 2 minutes of descending the stairs. A true home away from home for the Sloane Rangers. Funky Buddha is also a club/bar, there wasn't a monk playing bass guitar.
Separating these western names were several shisha pipe cafe's - shisha pipes being hugely popular in Edgware Road, North London, and the idea has clearly travelled well over to here too, because they were all at it, even the waiters, who (altogether now...) would hook a hookah pipe a up for you, demonstrated their undiminished lung capacities by inhaling from the giant bong contraption and exhaling tremendous amounts of smoke. Or steam. Or whatever it is.
I had Melon flavoured mist, and it was as weird as I hoped it would be, but my tongue did taste like a rancid Galia for the rest of the night.
On the days where we weren't on a boat pursuing turtles and diving certificates, we spent by one of the 3 pools that were around the hotel, and it was here where we discovered why the Russians couldn't queue properly. They were posing for photographs. With hindsight, the Airport experience probably means I'm part of several KGB Family portraits.
All around the pool, there were Russian women reclining on the grass or lifting one leg up and leaning a bit, or turning their heads in odd ways, whilst their speedo clad boyfriends took pictures on his SLR camera. All the poses gave the impression that there are more sequences in their collection of photos that haven't yet been taken.
The hilarity of our soviet cousins photography habits pales into insignificant disbelief when you are amongst an 80/20 minority and the complexity of standing in a queue outfoxes the 80% contingent once again, and there is a somewhat haphazard arrangement to the buffet restaurant whereby the 20% of British guests form a rudimentary and sporadic queue while the Russians interject randomly to pile onto their plate whatever the selection on the end of the spoon might be - traditional food combinations are not adhered to, such as Jelly and bread with chicken wings and rice, nor are painstakingly carved displays sacred. One night, one man with a short neck and square haircut had to be physically discouraged from tucking into the giant watermelon that was carved into a boat.
Entertainment aside, the food in the hotel wasn't fantastic, so we elected one night to eat at a restaurant in Na'ama Bay called Pomodoro, which served italian, and with delicious quality that meant we went back for a second go the very next night - both meals with drinks coming to less than £30 for both of us - and not a food fight brewing anywhere to be seen.
Excursions into the desert were available, and readily so from the gaggle of reps in the apparently one-stop hotel lobby, by either quad bike or camel, depending on your Laurence of Arabia or Mad Max aspirations, followed by an evening with some surprisingly immobile Nomads, and some star gazing at the unpolluted night skies, or to the nearby St Katharine's Monastery, which sounds like an oxymoron, but it actually exists, both for around £15-£30 each, or for slightly more expenditure, there's Cairo by aeroplane, or for the geographically naive, Cairo By Bus. In a Day. A 23 hour long day trip, with less than a third of that in Cairo itself.
Once again though, the fact I was underwater most of the time meant we did none of these, much to some dismay of the valiant sales people.
As a destination, Sharm El Sheikh offers little more than the Red Sea coastline that it stretches along, and if you're a diver, then it is highly recommended, although in summer, the boats, and consequantly the popular dive sites, are very busy, and overcrowded, like Stoney Cove on a Bank Holiday Weekend. We were there in March, when the waters are more quiet, but the coral is less vibrant than in the summer months.
If you're not a diver, or someone who likes snorkelling, then either expect to spend a lot of time by the beach, or on a boat, or by the pool, because there's not much else for you to do.
To experience Egypt properly, you would have to travel to Cairo for longer than a few hours, or by a cruise from Luxor.
Sharm el Sheikh is a product of modern tourism, and lacks a heart on dry land, relying instead on the milking the pockets of self contained underwater breathing enthusiasts.
I could have loved it.
Funky Monk Seeks Soul Of Party. No Time Waters. Some Russians. 
