We had assumed that on our holiday we would meet people like us – semi-retired and taking a lucky break to the sun away from the miserable British weather.

Well, there were lots of people taking the break but they were not all like us – young couples, couples with small children, couples of friends, family groups …….. and not many of them were British.

Not that that would have mattered but getting to meet people – if you don’t have kids to pull adults together – turns out to be hard on this holiday.

For example, the hotel’s restaurant was not conducive to mixing. It was a rather vast, airy room but as it was made of marble and stone echoey and noisy.

Think posh marble canteen with a seriously extensive buffet. 

We have so far spent a lot of time talking to each other.

On our boat trip, we met a lovely family. He was an award-winning Indian restaurant owner, and he and I talked about what spices he used to make just the right sauce for scallops or venison.

His wife was a primary school teacher and we talked about their Bangladeshi parents’ roots, how she was bringing up the children with their traditional family values, and also how she was making sure their children knew they had to grow up and get their life’s path sorted, so they could do work which helped other people.

I asked if customs and ways of thinking were changing with the generations and she said, ’not much’.

(It reminded me of someone ( an Indian) I heard speak once who said that the 1960s and 1970s immigrants to Britain brought with them the values of the time when they left India or Bangladesh or wherever.

Some of those customs changed over time back in the home country but tended to ossify in the immigrant community.)

We also talked to our excursion guide and the hotel barman, both of course, very nice young men with very good English.

So, as I said in a previous piece, no one in Sharm is from here.

Of course not just the thousands of tourists, but also everyone who works here from cleaners to cooks, to gardeners, to coach drivers, to waiters, to shop keepers to pool lifeguards, from spa staff to reception staff.

They are all young Egyptian men away from home.

(Inside the resorts/compounds, all is immaculate and very pretty but outside the perimeter walls, things are mainly just rock and no one seems to mind/bother.

This is just next to our hotel and you can nip out through a gate to it or along the beach. I think it might be a place where off duty staff can hang out together and have some time away from the guests out of uniform, not having to smile at every passing guest, and just relax. I might of course be wrong.

I know there is another town of worker accommodation – of course there is because there is a large town’s worth of staff to accommodate.

Mahmoud was our lovely excursion guide.

( I am not identifying anyone without their permission here because many Egyptians seems remarkably unimaginative when naming their sons – our hotel’s staff name badges suggest that most are called Mahmoud, Muhammed , Yousef or Hussein.)

He told me that people here work on average three months seven days a week, get about two weeks off and then back to work.

There is no overtime so in the summer he gets about 4 hour’s sleep a night at really busy times.

His rota includes being in charge of transfers from the airport, camel ride trips, boat trips, trips around the old town to see churches and mosques etc etc.

He speaks English, French, some Italian and a little German and his nickname is Mahmoud French to distinguish hime from all his fellow Mahmouds in excursion company.

He earns £100 per month.

He like everyone else in this place relies on tips to make a halfway decent wage.

‘Its our culture,’ he said.

We have been asking about the tipping protocol – and it is a complex business.

We were advised to bring lots of £5 notes by a Sharm el Sheik old hand. 

We didn’t bring enough it seems, as they are much more popular than the equivalent in Egyptian pounds.

I was told clearly that for our room cleaner you gave him ( of course it was a him) some money at the start of the holiday and at the end.

You had to hand it in person because he would never pick up any money from your room even if you had packed and left.

You tip the barman at the end of your holiday, likewise the waiter who has looked after you and your table for the majority of your holiday and it is tactful to sit in the same seating area for meals so that there is one waiter who knows he is likely to get a tip rather than sitting in a different place every night and not getting to know and therefore, tipping anyone.

I didn’t know what happens about the many gardeners or other ‘invisible’ staff like the kitchen staff so I asked at reception if there was a tip box which could then be divvied up.

And no there isn’t.

You get to learn a lot when you don’t have ‘people like us’ to talk to, and very instructive it is.