I cannot overemphasize how friendly the Jordanian people are. If you’re like me and constantly lose things you reach a point where you just accept it’s going to happen so your best bet is to minimise the potential damage. Because of this I don’t carry any cards in my wallet and never more currency than €10. Anyway when I got out of the taxi in Amman and checked my pockets my wallet was gone! I dumped my bags in the door of the hostel and ran down the highway after the taxi man. Someone in a Mercedes pulled up beside me, asked what was wrong then I uttered the immortal line: “follow that cab”. It was too late though and I gave up pretty quickly. Then walking back to the hotel an old man with no ... read more

Getting from Luxor to Dahab is a serious trek. There’s nowhere really worth stopping along the way so I decided to do it in one on the overnight bus. I’d heard some serious horror stories about the bus taking up to 20 hours. Someone even told me to get my hands on some Valium. To add to things my iPod died just last night. There was a large red X on the screen saying to contact Apple support. Not particularly useful in Egypt. So I set forth with a bag of food and the acceptance I wouldn’t be getting any sleep. I ended up sitting beside a young Egyptian kid with no English. The conversation prospects weren’t looking too good! But the kid had a bag full of chicken fillet rolls which he insisted on sharing! ... read more

Since the terrorist attacks in southern Egypt in the 1990s there has been a wide range additional security measures in place. There are armed police at all tourist attractions and foreigners can only officially travel in convoy between certain towns. This whole situation seemed pretty strange to me. Although it's fair to say every man woman and child in Egypt will try to scam money from any tourist who sets foot here, I haven’t really encountered any anti-western sentiment. The restrictions mean there aren’t many options in heading south. So I took the last night train to Aswan (one of only a handful of trains tourists can take). It was mostly locals at the train station along with the usual herds of middle-aged tourists on package tours. I’m quickly realising when you travel on your own ... read more