"NO Alibaba's,,,NO Alibaba's"

Actully mate.....we've had a Ali Barber today. I've cut may hair.

The story is we slept on the side on the road just before the desert road to Siwa. You can see this on the map. We slept near  Marsa Matruh in a layby on the side of the road. These Layby's are every so many kilometers and we presumed its OK to sleep in them as we had seen Lorries in them on many occasion. So we slept.

In the morning we were hassled by a morobike cop actually checking to see if we were OK but hassle none the less. He moved on commenting on the fact I was washing up the pans from the night before and that Julie was doing nothing. Actually she arrived just after this to dry the pots. This he didn't see but he wasn't impressed that i was washing up. Neither was I. I managed to get my farther out of washing up the other day by calling him just as he started. Can someone do the same for me please.......

Just minutes after this an none English speaking Policeman (in a van) stopped, this was actully a turn round come all the way back to hassle us manouver. These are never good. He didn;t speak a word of English unlike the other motorbike guy and just kept repeating "no alibaba, no alibaba" over an over. This we took to mean we cannot sleep there. Considering it was about 8am and we'd just made coffee it was unlikely that we would be bedding down again. However he thought it so important that he U-turned his large "detention" van twice to relay this wisdom. We took no notice. So now i keep saying "no alibaba" to Julie and I both smirk. Today Ali the Barber has cut my hair. Actually his name is Wahl Homecut and he doesn't like running of a Black and Decker 240V modified sine wave inverter......who would have thought a trimmer would be so fussy that it needs a true sine wave on its mains feed. Anyhow after a lot longer than usual my hair is cut. I have the before and after poses to post but we are doing this in the middle of the desert off my mobile. Not exactly fast internet.

Tomorrow we drive 400km across the desert to another Oasis. For this we needed special permission and a convoy. We meet our local man in his Land Cruiser at 6:30am in town and off we go across the desert with 7 police checkpoints on route. For this we need to pay around £50 quid. I will try not to pay more than the £10 we already have. The local is either a scam or he's legitimatly going the same way. We shall see. We'd already seen him once as he passed us on the way here about 400km ago. I recognised the car and he said the same. He speaks good English so at least i can find out what the score is in the morning. Getting secret police permissions is a pain in the arse......Hopefully this is the last one.