Red Sea
Egypt

...seaside villages like Dahab, cool places to dive, snorkel or just hang out and walk like an Egyptian.

Pictures: a typical pricey Sharm el Sheikh hotel; Dahab waterfront lounging, dining and drinking; the Red Sea at Sharm el Sheikh.

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The Red Sea: A mere five hours direct flight from the UK, just about certain sunshine all day long, warm waters, world-beating Red Sea marine life and modest prices, Sharm el Sheikh and other Red Sea resorts are now victims of their own success with the biggest problem being how to avoid being part of a crowd from dawn to dusk.

Hurghada on the Red Sea's west coast is a 30km string of resorts with no urban heart, unless you call a short parade of fast food joints, Sky TV pubs and tacky souvenir shops a worthwhile organ. i.e. if you choose to holiday in Hurgada then accept that you'll be in the hotel, on the beach or in the sea, unless you take a trip across to Luxor.

Sharm el Sheikh, on the other hand and on the Sinai side of the Red Sea, more upmarket than Hurghada and with excellent watersports facilities does have a plausible, lively tourist centre in Na'ama Bay, though it's still short of laid-back Egyptness and the suburbs are a half-developed wasteland.
Apart from sunbathing Sharm's raison d'etre is scuba diving, with two prime sites attracting most of the dive boats - the Strait of Tiran in the north and Ras Mohammed in the south. The best dive locations may take up to two hours to reach though good snorkelling places are close by.
How to avoid the dive crowds? Start really early or spend a few days on a live-aboard dive boat that will anchor in just the right place at the right time. Live-aboards sail from Sharm el Sheikh, Hurghada and newly developed Marsa Alam [south of Hurghada on the Egyptian mainland].

Dahab, north of Sharm el Sheikh and heading up the Gulf of Aqaba, is the Red Sea's most relaxed and natural resort/village with some lovely small hotels and restaurants and clusters of neo-hippies to prove it, though as the place develops they will doubtless be exiled and the charm will be cemented over. Next stop Aqaba?
Dahab also offers great snorkelling and diving, including immediately offshore, but beaches are miserable.

Henry:
Dahab is a very different from the rest of Egypt. Less than 30 years ago it was just a collection of huts and cabanas that the Bedouin used to rent out to travelers and young Israelis. Now it is much more developed with lots of hotels, restaurants, shops and scuba diving establishments. To be quite honest it is not really my scene, but my family loved it.

Other newish Red Sea tourist resorts of the heartless kind can be found in the Gulf of Aqaba at Nuweiba and Taba, or north of Hurghada at El Gouna and south of Hurghada at Makadi Bay, El Quseir and Marsa Alam.

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