BY Vancouver Sun

Wearing cool aviator sunglasses, a spotless white not-quite-buttoned-up shirt and a pair of khaki capris, 19-year-old

Mohammad is globalization personified.

"Habibi," he says, flashing an easy grin, "put down your bag, relax and drink something. There is no need to hurry."

At this point, I had been at Penguin Village for all of 20 seconds, and in

Dahab for about 10 minutes. Ten metres ahead of me, the Egyptian Red Sea gently lapped against the rocky barrier that shielded the outdoor bar from the elements, and I paused, considered the suggestion, and decided that after a four-hour bus ride across the scorching Sinai Peninsula, Mohammad made a very good case.

"And my room?" I asked, still a little weary from the breakneck back-of-a-Toyota-pickup taxi ride from the bus station.

"You will sleep in the palm tree room," he grinned again. "And do not worry, you will like it."

The bar itself was a wild mixture of palm fronds, soft carpets and giant cushions. It was two hours later, still on my back, when I made the executive decision to stand up long enough to carry my backpack to my room.

Sure enough, up the stairs and some 30 seconds away, the promised palm tree went right through the tile floor, entering through a hole next to the bed and exiting through a similar opening in the ceiling.

Mohammad was still smiling, the sky was perfect, and the only thing that betrayed the passage of time was a slight change in the tide. And if the beginning of my stay in Dahab sounds idyllic, I can only offer that it got better with time.

Located on the western shore on the Gulf of Aqaba some 80 kilometres north of the internationally renowned resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh, the Red Sea backpacker mecca is as close to perfect as it gets. Despite the lack of a pristine sandy beach so associated with tropical paradise, the blazing sun, the spotless sky, the warm and clear water and a lax attitude toward the milder western vices all come together to create the ultimate "black hole," where a scheduled three-day stop can easily turn into a month-long stay.

At the nexus of hippie culture and Bedouin sensibility, Dahab's collection of beachfront cafes offers a much better vibe than the noisy nightclubs of Sharm. The crowd is a comfortable mix of divers, wind-sailing enthusiasts, hippies, backpackers and weekenders from Cairo, with Arabic, English, Spanish and German all coexisting peacefully between the cushions in the cafes.

Here, the famous Bedouin hospitality seems far more natural and subdued than in Sharm, with little guesthouses, hostels and camps dominating the tourist landscape.

The local Bedouins like Mohammad laugh, cajole and facilitate, and since Dahab is the gateway to both desert adventure and some of the best diving in the world, it's usually an easy sell.

Having stumbled onto Dahab completely blind, I was in the mood for a sales pitch, but it was an exuberant Swiss traveller who got to me first.

"You have to see the Blue Hole," he said, stretched out on the cushions across from me. "Even if you're just snorkelling around, you wouldn't think something like this was even possible."

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