Who is Farhan Lalji?

As regular readers and friends may know the wife and I spent 7 days by the Red Sea just after Christmas and over New Years. The holiday was a veg out, lie by the beach, get some rays time holiday and we did just that.

The bad – although the hotel promised wifi the connection was slower then dial up in 1995, pretty much non existent. The food was kind of iffy, the weather was up and down (between 19 – 25 degrees Celsius, when it was down we avoided the pool and wore a t shirt), and the hotel was full of Russians (who for some reason butted in line / refused to queue, were loud and wore the most audacious outfits) and Speedo’s – one of my favourite pics is of a man wearing a Speedo with a t-shirt that said illegal missing an l so it read ilegal. New Years Eve was a bit of a nightmare which included a British singer who had a mullet, wore a leather vest and sang Barry White, Lionel Richie and Hot Chocolate! The last point should probably go into a category called the down right weird!

The good – we relaxed, the food was decent enough that neither of us got sick, I had a lot of desserts and barely any vegetables – although the wife would say that was very bad. The weather for 5 out of 7 days was just right; I was able to swim in the pool and the ocean. And we met some interesting people and had some interesting conversations.

The great – Petra was beautiful, we took some amazing pictures there and felt like we had traveled back in time, our guide was amazing with three degrees under his belt we gave us theology and archeological insights. The people are unbelievably friendly across the region. And the entire time I felt amazed to be around the foundation of the religions of Abraham.

Were we to go back we probably would avoid the package holiday crowd and stick to our usual tactics of booking things separately and figuring stuff out as we go along. Never the less, we relaxed, enjoyed ourselves and took some great pictures!