El Tur a weird place....

At the beginning of Ramadan (Early August) I met a guy in Dahab who knew a place that issued 1 year visas rather then the measly 1 month the Mogamma in Cairo were currently offering. I took him up on the offer and the next day we drove to El Tur, El Tur is the administrative capital of South Sinai, I didn't see much of it in the few hours we were there, but I remember thinking it would be interesting to see more of the city.
A month later I got that chance, more friends needed visas (it is really becoming a big problem in Cairo) so we decided to go on a mission to El Tur, we found a hotel that said it was on the beach and we envisioned a few hours doing passport stuff and the rest of the day at the beach.......
So the journey started at 8am, we rented a minibus and were all at the arranged meeting point early and excited. The actual trip there was uneventful, we sang along to the spice girls and ate lots of chipsy (why does traveling make you want to eat so much?) We stopped at a place called Moon beach, most normal people had a coffee, Me and another girl decided to have a beer which was a terrible decision as it meant we needed to pee 10 minutes after getting back into the bus. Anyway we finally got to El Tur and drove directly to our hotel... ha ha ha on the beach? It was situated next to a drainage pipe and the beach was nowhere to be seen, hmm great maybe we could relax at the drainage pipe, set up a few chairs and drink a pinacolada whilst dipping our feet in the waste.... we thought about finding another hotel and drove around the city for a while, the other hotels were shockingly expensive (why? who comes here?) so we ended up back at the original one which was really dismal, full of cockroaches, no toilet paper in the bathrooms and damp all over the walls.
We then decided to go on a bit of an adventure and looked for somewhere to have dinner, we drove around for what seemed like forever and finally found a meat place, wow and there was a real clash of cultures as we walked in, there we were a group of mainly blonde girls/women (do I have to call myself a women?), inside was a table of fully covered women wearing the niquab (burka), their bearded husbands sat a table away, they looked at us and we looked at them, a cross cultural staring contest ensued. We ate our meal and were overcharged (I assume) and then vacated the place pretty fast. We then decided to find beer, one women with us decided she wanted to go back to the hotel to relax and made her way back, on the way children begged her for money and when she declined they threw stones at her... (what a lovely place this was).
So back to the mission of finding beer, we asked around for a beer shop and kept on hearing the name Fawzy, we assumed that Fawzy would be a "Drinkies" style shop and not too hard to find I mean liberal Sharm el Sheik was only an hours drive away so there had to be some form of alcohol here?? We searched and we searched and we almost gave up hope when we got right to the edge of town and still hadnt found the elusive Fawzy, but then one of the girls spotted a tiny handmade sign with a bottle of wine on it attached to a hut. Stooooooooooooooooop we all yelled in unison and we hoped out to take a closer look. We knocked on the door and an old toothless women opened the door, "Fawzy" we asked "Yeeeeeeeeeeeees" she replied and ushered us in. The room consisted of a big freezer, a bed, an oven and her son sat eating his dinner at a tiny table, they obviously lived here, we took in the surroundings as she threw open the freezer; it was full to the brim of all sorts of beer and alchopops. We went for the super strength lager, this place was strange and we thought we might well need it.
Next stop was a beach... well we all had the idea that we would relax on a beach somewhere and watch the sunset, everyone had their bikinis/swimsuits on under their clothes and were ready for an early evening dip in the sea. We finally found a place but there was no way we could strip down as it was very conservative and all of the women were veiled if not totally covered. The strange thing was it seemed totally fine that we were drinking beer, some of the girls ordered shisha (water pipe) from the beach sales guy (nice title ha) and we sat until late eating more chipsy, infact I should probably rename this post "the chipsy weekend" or something.
The next day everyone got their visas and then we set back to Cairo... leaving the strangeness of El Tur far behind us.
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