or more aptly titled: The Crucifixion of Jesus in 20 Minutes or Less *

We’ve been back from our annual (non lesbo romantic) holiday in Egypt now for a few days, but things have been hectic and I haven’t been up to writing the recap of our week long holiday. Until now that is. I have a few minutes to do a short recap of the exciting adventure that unfolded in Taba Heights, Egypt. Or perhaps I am lying a little bit because not too much happened during the week which was the entire point of the holiday, but I’m here to try to beef it up and brag a little bit to make you jealous.

Flew out of Gatwick on the 23rd. Imagine holiday travels coupled with the fact that most BA (British Airways to you good Americans) flights had been cancelled in the past few days due to heavy fog and add a package holiday deal with an unknown airline and you can only begin to imagine the frustration, rage and anger I was feeling on this particular morning. Made friendly with a few other angry people in the queue run by some moron who should probably be on a feeding tube because he wouldn’t be able to find his mouth if he were asked. Finally got through and after 5 hours of “brits on holiday” - ie families consisting of bad accents, spikey hair and screaming children - we landed in some remote desert land of Egypt. Exhausted.

Took a bus to our hotel - the Taba Heights Marriot resort. Taba Heights is an interesting (not really) place. It is basically a small area with 5 resorts, a golf course and NOTHING else. When you roll in on the bus you feel instantly secure when the men who are huddling around a fire with m16s strapped to their backs inspect your bus with a mirror for any possible bombs. Mmmn, safety first is what I always say. Fortunately our bus was not strapped with any explosives and we made it in safely.

The next few days were spent at a leisurely pace. Hanging out either poolside or seaside on loungers reading books, working on the tan. It is a strange saying “working on the tan” but this particular week in Egypt it really did feel like work. First off, it was slightly windy and slightly chilly with the temp. being about 19c/70f. This isn’t such a bad temp when you are coming from London so you throw on your bikini and you deal with it. Secondly, every time I tried to fall asleep in my lounger little stupid Egyptian flies would start landing on me. Their annoying little legs would tickle me just enough to piss me off and then the bastards would fly off. Either that or I was constantly twitching and hitting myself which made me look like a spastic. So, yes, I was working on my tan literally.

working on my tan

Obviously the Red Sea is known for its amazing diving so Arlie and I decided to do a day of checking out some underwater adventures. She went on a beginner discover the Red Sea course and I opted to refresh my scuba license with a course for grownups. Let me preface this by saying I haven’t actually gone on a dive since I got my license which was 10 years ago. You can begin to imagine how this was going to go…

just like a navy seal

I’ll skip the details and leave it at the point where I had a panic attack because I couldn’t breathe and ended up ditching my lesson and eating lentil soup on the beach with some damned good flatbread. Wussy move of 2006 for sure. I can say that I succesfully completed 10 of my 20 manuevers before my freak out. 50% isn’t bad…(ok, yes, wussy, I get it).

Apart from the tan working we did have one fun evening when the resort hosted a bedouin night in the grotto. Complete with roasted lamb, belly dancers, shisha and more hummus than you can shake a Mohammed at. Being so thrifty (since when?) and ghetto, Arlie and I cleverly disguised a copious amount of vodka in a water bottle and spiked our 7ups throughout the evening. This lead to some ridiculous participation in group dancing which in turn led to us ending up in the Regatta Club with our new found Palestinian friends.

dancing after vodka with whoppi goldberg

And then everything goes a bit deja vu for the Arlie and Stephanie adventure…

As we are sitting there sipping on our contraband vodka / 7ups the coverband at the hotel 2Fun4You (or something like that) starts to play an old familiar tune. We look up and realise that this Phillipino cover band is playing Sweet Child of Mine.

they keep following us around

This may or may not be weird for you, but for us it was exactly a year ago on the day in Shanghai that we were partying at a bar with a Phillipino cover band who was playing noneother than Sweet Child of Mine.

Coincidence? I think not.

Perhaps I am more impressed with this than you are so I’ll shut up now.

And onto the educational part of the trip. Our journey into Jerusalem (or as previously mentioned the Crucifixion of Jesus in 20 minutes or less).

Woke up to a 4.30 am wakeup call and jumped (not really, more like rolled) onto our coach with the 23 other people that were about to embark on our religious experience. Got to the border of Eliat and had to disembark from our original coach in order to cross the border into Israel and get on another coach. This was, I’m assuming, due to safety reasons.

Walked across the border into Israel and through customs. I had zero problem going through with my American passport, but when it came to our little Arlie something seemed to have gone horribly wrong.

She handed the customs officials her passport and then there was a lot of passing it around and giving the evil eye and ignoring her request to give it back. Finally someone took my passport (being her travelling companion I assume) and disappeared into a back room. They returned a few minutes later, handed my passport back and then preceded to interogate poor shellshocked Arlie for several fingernail-biting minutes. She was so confused that she actually started to give them completely wrong answers (not that they knew). I was personally convinced she was about to get the full rectal when they simply handed her passport back and let us continue onwards. The ironic part of the entire experience is that she was probably the only Jew on our entire bus and she was the only one that was stopped and questioned. Oye vey!

After a 4 hour journey in the coach alongside the entire Dead Sea with our tourguide who gave us the entire history of Israel (which I will not repeat here) we finally arrived in Jerusalem. And there was snow!

me in da hood

We rushed around the city and soaked in as many sites as we possibly could. I will list them here quickly: Mount Zion, Zions Gate, Tomb of King David, All Nations church, place of the ascension of Mohamed, Mount Olive, the 14 stations of Jesus Crucifixion, the dung gate, the Western Wall and, finally, some hot ass Israeli soldiers.

The most impressive place for me was by far the Western Wall. It was a good experience to be able to share with my best friend and something that I’m sure all my other Jewish friends would be proud of me for doing (I am such an honorary member). I am not a religious person, but I can honestly say that I felt very moved to be there. Especially thinking about all the crazy stuff that goes on in the world it is an interesting paradox to be in what is considered the most religious place on the Earth that esentially houses the three religions that all of these conflicts are based upon.

arlie’s hand after the jesus hole

And then we stuck our hands in the Jesus hole - or the 11th station - and then we were off back to Taba Heights.

The End.

Oh and somewhere in there was Christmas where we managed to get a few silly photos of us at Egyptian Santa’s casa.

Mohamed Santa’s house

* Thanks to Arlie for that title.