Ice Cold in Sharm

As we stepped into the Ice bar, -6C- out of the desert heat someone said;” It’s just like Scotland!”
For the Ice bar is part of Soho, an enormous entertainment and shopping complex, and Sharm’s answer to Las Vegas.
 
Vodka flowed freely and soon we had a party going.
 
Yet in 11 days all this will be gone.
 Our guide, Ashraf, reckons that it will take that amount of time to get all the tourists out.
 
Then what?  With no flights coming in, hotels, shops and entertainment centres will close leaving thousands of Egyptians, mainly young men, without jobs and their future snatched from them.
 
For us we have had a few days free extra holiday and our only inconvenience is that we travel back without our luggage, which will be sent, by ship.
 But for Ashraf, our young Egyptian guide the future is bleak. He has already started job-hunting n Dubai.
 
The grim reality is that with so many young men thrown out of work they become easy prey for radicalisation.
And the political situation in the Middle East, already unstable, becomes even more perilous.
 
Meanwhile tomorrow I shall go again for my early morning swim before breakfast.
 

PS None of us recognize the situation in Sharm painted by the Daily Mail.