Issue 7 Dry Sharm Dos and Don'ts from the Archives of the Tanked Up Magazine

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25 April 2024

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	ISSUE 7 ARCHIVE - DRY SHARM DOS AND DON'TS Hotel Breakfast Traveller Remember the eighties jingle... "Start the day with an egg". In Sharm it can be different, even at the poshest hotel. Start the day with a queue, a fight, frustration and utter disappointment sometimes. So for the first timer going out there, or even the old lag who sees brekkie through last night's beer goggles, let's look at the dos and don'ts of your start to a day's diving.
	Breakfast dos Do realise that as a single female with bare shoulders, your tea or coffee will come to you a lot quicker than if you are a 19 stone bearded fattie diver. This is because of a rumour spread in the kitchen that the words "tea, please" is a prelude to sex with the waiter. Do realise that because of 200 years of forced orderly queuing under Stalin, the Russians have now got fed up with it, and see a congenial line of Brit divers awaiting seating as a challenge. "Move it Tommy, my wife needs muesli urgently" is the first English phrase they learn in Moscow schools.
	Do realise that they call it an "Egg- Station" because whatever you order will be late, with long queues, taste dreadful and seem to cost too much. Do realise that "Turkey Sausages" taste exactly the same as the pork ones we get back home. This is because neither actually contain turkey or pork meat. They only contain the eyes and knees of the animal which chromosomally are the same - hence the similar flavour. Rest assured your Frankfurter experience will be the same as back home where meat is concerned. Realise that the "baked beans" hidden under that vast giant clam shell of a tureen are not made by Heinz. They were once chocolate covered beans that have been individually sucked by toothless Bedouin and are now covered with last night's salsa sauce from the Mexican Jamboree that kept you awake all evening just before the Deep Dive of your Advanced course. You will get halitosis by proxy. Do realise that if God wanted us to love beef and turkey bacon, He would have given said animals snouts. Give it up, turkeys are for Christmas and cows are for fornication - if you live in Barnstaple.
	Do realise that the Egyptian brekkie offerings are just for show. It is an EU mandate that ethnicity must be represented by food in all CE marked hotels across the world. The falafel are plastic and taste the same. Do wonder about Lipton's tea. If it's good enough for your hotel it should be good enough for home. I can't remember ever seeing that little yellow tag hanging out of a cup back here in Gordon's Britain. So come on Lipton's, take on the PG Tips monkey and show us your real worth, otherwise I assume you are crap tea flogged to Euro coffee drinkers just so they can raise their little fingers once in a while. Do count the steps down to your dining area. You will have to walk back up them afterwards with 2 kilos of food in your belly, 90 degree heat and the minibus for the dive boat waiting for you impatiently. Best to book a hotel where breakfast is up, not down. Do run your bread at least twice round that funny machine to create something approaching "toast". It is set on "limp-warm bread" for the first run so as not to be a fire hazard if it jams. So look like a good old English pedant and keep racking the doughy stuff through and through until it's just like mum burns on the Aga.
	Breakfast don'ts Don't expect the cereal in the dispensers to taste anything like it does at home? There is a Kellogs bootlegging factory out there in India (perhaps) and they take pride in recycling western cardboard containers into crunchie flakes. God knows what they turn into the larger version of coco-pops. Don't expect to get your omelette in the order in which it was received? If the girl four places after you has cleavage on show, she will get hers first. You either have to put up with it, or go back to your room and borrow your wife's bra and make up and come on a little stronger for your eggy fix.
	Don't think that the purple liquid next to the orange juice is Ribena? It's some weird stuff that tastes like a mixture of plum, tamarind and turpentine and frankly should be banned. Don't think that eating feta cheese and hummus early doors will endear you to the next person that rents your regulator set? It stays in the pipes and plastic for fourteen years and corrodes the tanks as well, if given the chance. Don't expect the two birds sitting next to you in see-through tops and hot pants to have given you a single thought? Yes, you may be a Divemaster, a stud in your spare time and have done the Blue Hole arch on air whilst punching oceanic whitetips on the nose. But they are lesbians or Russian hookers on holiday. Forget it and learn to love your wife/buddy sitting opposite you with milk stains in her moustache. Don't expect the two ripped blokes sitting next to you in six-pack clinging tops and shoulders to die for, to have given you any thought? They are German homosexuals and are currently debating whether to get another waffle as "Ahmed the Wafflemeister has such lovely buns". Learn to love the fat bloke opposite you who has at least been to 100 metres and pissed in his own decodiaper.
Don't get there at opening time (6.30 a.m) and expect to see normal breakfasters? They are insomniacs like you, or are either the Hun who have been toweling every area near the pool or Tech divers who still have to figure out their VR3s before looking like an idiot in front of their instructors. Don't wonder why one man can have two such stunning girls beside him at his table? It will destroy your soul. It is because he is an artist and they are his muses. That or he is an amateur dive pornographer who has just won the Lottery.
Don't try to figure out Bircher muesli, cold grainy porridge, or funny-milked Alpen. I was told it could be blow-back from artificially inseminated camels with diarrhoea. Don't attempt to run a croissant through the toast-conveyor. If you do - block the smoke alarms with wet tissue paper. If it's a brioche, then expect chocolate napalm in your face after 3 seconds. Next issue We look at "Sharm Day Boat Lunch" – if it's chicken how come there are no cats in Sharm, and how to recycle pitta bread for two weeks.
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