The Russian Belly (dancer)

Dance #1: Oddly-feminine-man!

For our last night in Dahab Mike and I saw a traditional Egyptian (Bedouin?) dance show, which included belly dancing and several other types of performance I couldn’t identify. It was very, very enjoyable…until…

Dance#1: The belly dancer and her new Russian..erm…friend.

…an old, bald, obviously drunk Russian tourist took a particular liking to the belly dancer. He jumped up on stage, ripped his shirt off, and proceeded to begin the most foolish-looking dance I’d ever seen. For the remainder of the show he just wouldn’t give it a rest, popping up on stage whenever any female performer began her performance. The audience’s disgust was apparent. I thought it was pretty funny myself.

I love me some military checkpoints!

The next morning we took a 9:30 bus inland to Mt Sinai. The one-hour trip was delayed by exactly seven security checkpoints, each of which required a passport verification. I’ve never shown my passport as often in my life than I have during the half-week I’ve now been in Egypt. Apparently the number of checkpoints was increased as a response to recent terrorist bombings that have occurred since the Gaza-Egypt border broke down.

How very settling.

(Note: This post was originally part of the previous, later split into two.)