What to wear where, whether you can drink, what Ramadan actually changes, when not to take the photo — and the six things visitors here reliably misread.
The gate is the whole answer
Egypt’s Red Sea resorts are a carve-out, and almost every etiquette question here resolves to which side of the hotel gate you are standing on. Inside, the norms are Mediterranean: swimwear at the pool, wine with dinner, nobody watching. Outside, it is an ordinary Egyptian working town where people dress modestly and drink tea. Both are real, they are fifteen minutes apart, and nobody tells visitors that the boundary is the whole answer.
Wear: Anything you would wear on a Greek or Spanish beach. Bikinis are completely normal, so are swim shorts, and nobody — staff or guests — will react to either. Cover up for the buffet, which is a hygiene convention rather than a religious one and is usually a printed rule.
What causes friction: Topless sunbathing is not done and is prohibited at most hotels, including ones where the rest of the beach could be anywhere in Europe. Nude is not a category that exists here.
Wear: Shorts, dresses, vest tops, sandals. These are purpose-built tourist areas and they dress like it, all year. A cover-up over swimwear is enough to walk to a beach bar.
What causes friction: Swimwear alone in a restaurant or a shop, even a tourist one, reads as bad manners rather than as offence — the same way it would in Nice. Take a t-shirt.
Wear: Shoulders and knees covered is the single change that matters, and it is worth making. Loose trousers or a long skirt, a t-shirt or a light long-sleeved shirt. Men: this applies to you too — adult Egyptian men do not wear shorts in town.
What causes friction: Nobody will stop you or say anything. What changes is the volume of attention: a woman in a strappy top through the market attracts markedly more comment and sales pressure than the same woman in a t-shirt, and that difference is larger than most first-timers expect.
Wear: Long trousers or a long skirt, covered shoulders, and a headscarf for women. Shoes come off at the door and there is always a shelf or a bag for them. Loose clothing rather than tight, for everyone.
What causes friction: Visiting hours are outside prayer times, and Friday midday is the one time to stay away. If nobody is around to ask, the answer is not now.
Wear: Cover shoulders and knees, and add long sleeves you can put on. This is a churches-mosques-and-tombs day, some of it in genuinely conservative places, and it is also six hours of sun with no shade in the ruins.
What causes friction: Closed shoes. Every guide on this coast has watched somebody try Karnak in flip-flops on hot uneven stone, and they will not say anything until afterwards.
Wear: Swimwear on deck, a rash vest or t-shirt in the water, and something with sleeves for the ride back. Crews see swimwear all day and have no opinion about it.
What causes friction: The Egyptian crew will be dressed for work, not for the beach, and the deck is not a private space. Change in the cabin, not on the ladder.
Alcohol is legal in Egypt for non-Muslims and is served in every resort hotel, tourist restaurant and bar on this coast. All-inclusive packages generally include local beer and spirits. There is no permit, no card, nothing to arrange. This surprises people, and it is the single most common thing visitors get wrong before they arrive.
Outside the tourist economy it effectively does not exist. Local cafés, ordinary restaurants and anywhere in Dahar serve tea, coffee and karkade, and asking for a beer is an awkwardness rather than an offence. Drinking in the street or on a public beach is not done and can bring the police into your evening. Buy from a licensed shop or drink where it is served.
Egypt taxes imported spirits heavily, which has created a genuine market in refilled bottles — a familiar label with something else inside. Methanol poisoning from counterfeit spirits has killed tourists in Egypt and in several other countries with the same tax structure. The practical answer: stick to beer, wine and spirits poured in reputable hotels and licensed bars, be suspicious of a bottle sold cheaply from a back room, and treat "imported vodka" at an implausible price as the warning it is.
Arriving passengers may buy a limited quantity of duty-free alcohol, and there are duty-free shops airside on arrival at Hurghada as well as in town, where purchases are usually possible within a window of a few days after landing with your passport and entry stamp. Rules and quantities change; check the current allowance before you count on it.
Hotels on this coast run normally through Ramadan: restaurants open, bars serving, beaches full. Some hotels move a bar indoors or trim live entertainment. If you booked a package and never leave the resort, you may barely notice it — which is worth knowing both ways, because people cancel trips over this and then meet a completely normal holiday.
Shops and offices keep short and strange hours. Traffic in the hour before sunset is genuinely dangerous, because everybody is driving home to break the fast and nobody is patient. Then the streets empty completely for about an hour — the quietest hour of the Egyptian year — and afterwards the town comes alive and stays that way until very late. Plan around iftar rather than through it.
Not fasting. Just not eating, drinking or smoking conspicuously in the street in front of people who are — which mostly means finishing your water bottle indoors. Nobody expects a tourist to fast and nobody will ask you to. Egyptians are used to visitors and are, in practice, far more relaxed about this than the guidance suggests.
Ramadan evenings on this coast are the best atmosphere of the year: lanterns up, families out, restaurants full at midnight, everyone in a good mood. If you are invited to an iftar, go. It is the most generous thing that will happen to you in Egypt and refusing it is the only real mistake available.
Ask. "Momken sura?" — may I take a photo? — gets a yes far more often than not, and a smile either way. Photographing women without asking is the one thing that reliably causes anger, and photographing children without asking a parent is worse. A camera pointed at someone working is a request for their time whether or not you meant it as one.
The man with the camel at the viewpoint, the shopkeeper in costume, the boy holding a falcon — these are businesses, and the photo has a price. Agree it before, not after, in the same way you would agree a taxi fare. Being annoyed about it afterwards is a misunderstanding of what was being offered.
Military installations, police, checkpoints, the airport apron, bridges and port infrastructure. This is not a cultural nicety — it is enforced, and it can mean your phone is examined and a long, unpleasant conversation. The road between Hurghada and Safaga has checkpoints. Put the camera down for them.
Bringing a drone into Egypt requires prior authorisation, and drones are routinely confiscated at customs on arrival — sometimes returned on departure, sometimes not. Flying one without a permit, particularly near coastline, ports or anything official, is a serious matter rather than a fine. Leave it at home unless you have written permission in hand, and check the current position before you travel.
"Salam alaikum" answered with "wa alaikum es-salam", then how are you, then how is the family — the whole exchange before any business begins. Cutting to the question is the single most common way visitors read as cold. Thirty seconds buys a completely different conversation.
Eat, give, receive and shake with the right hand. The left has a traditional bathroom association and using it to pass food or money registers as unpleasant even with people who would never say so. Left-handers: use the right hand for the handover and nobody minds what you do with the fork.
Some observant Egyptian men will not shake hands with a woman, and will instead place their right hand over their heart with a small nod. This is a greeting of respect, not a snub, and the correct response is the same gesture back. The reverse holds too: some women will not take a man's hand.
Being offered tea in a shop is hospitality, and accepting it does not commit you to buying anything — this is genuinely true and visitors rarely believe it. Refusing every time is the impolite option. If you have no time, decline warmly and specifically: "next time, inshallah".
And in some shops with carpet or prayer space at the back. Watch the doorway: if there are shoes outside it, yours go there too. Nobody will ask you, which is precisely why it is worth knowing.
Midday Friday prayers empty the town for an hour or two. Government offices and many local businesses close for the day; tourist businesses do not. Plan bank and admin errands for any other day of the week.
Holding hands is unremarkable anywhere. Kissing, or anything beyond it, belongs inside the hotel and not on the street, for Egyptian couples as much as for visitors — this is a norm about public space, not about foreigners.
"La' shukran" — no, thank you — said pleasantly while continuing to walk, ends an unwanted approach better than silence, which reads as rudeness and tends to make someone follow you further. It is the most useful sentence on this site.
Almost none of the trouble visitors have here is rule-breaking. It is misinterpretation, and it runs in both directions.
You assume: Everyone who talks to me wants to sell me something.
Actually: On Sheraton Road, often yes. Anywhere that is not a tourist strip, usually not — Egyptian street sociability is genuine, unusually warm by European standards, and being met with suspicion is the thing visitors here find rudest. The tell is simple: a seller opens with a question about you and steers; someone being friendly opens with a question about you and listens to the answer.
You assume: Those two men holding hands are a couple.
Actually: They are friends. Male friends in Egypt hold hands, link arms and walk close together, and it carries no romantic meaning whatsoever — it is a friendship gesture that European men mostly gave up a century ago. Reading it the other way, out loud, is the misunderstanding, not the gesture.
You assume: "My friend" means we have a rapport now.
Actually: It is a form of address, roughly equivalent to "mate" shouted across a street, and it commits neither of you to anything. It is also the standard opening of a sales approach. Nothing has been established, and you can walk on without having been rude.
You assume: People are staring at me because something is wrong.
Actually: Direct looking is not impolite here the way it is in northern Europe, and a visibly foreign visitor away from the resorts is simply interesting. It is curiosity, not judgement, and a smile and a nod ends it every time — which is the opposite of what avoiding eye contact does.
You assume: "Inshallah" means yes.
Actually: It means "God willing", and depending on the tone it spans anything from a firm yes to a polite no that avoids the flat refusal. For anything that matters — a pickup time, a delivery, a booking — get the specific: what time, and whose phone number. This is not evasiveness, it is a different convention about how certainty gets expressed.
You assume: They are being generous because they want a tip.
Actually: Sometimes both are true at once and that is not a contradiction. Egyptian hospitality to guests is a deep social obligation and it is real; tipping is also woven through every service transaction here. Accepting the first graciously and handling the second separately is the move. Treating the generosity as purely instrumental is both wrong and visible.
Short, unhedged, and none of it is legal advice. A page reviewed twice a year cannot be authoritative on a legal question — check your own government’s current travel advice before you rely on any of it.
Egypt has some of the harshest drug laws you will travel under, penalties are severe, and this includes substances that are legal or decriminalised at home. Prescription medication should travel in its original packaging with the prescription; some drugs that are ordinary in Europe — certain strong painkillers and sedatives among them — are controlled here and can require documentation. Check before you pack.
Egyptian law does not explicitly criminalise homosexuality, but prosecutions occur under public-decency and "debauchery" provisions, and dating apps have been used for entrapment. In practice, same-sex couples visit the Red Sea resorts without incident every season and hotels do not question a shared room. The discretion this asks for is the same discretion the public-affection norm asks of everyone — but the legal exposure is not the same, and it is worth reading your own government’s travel advice on this specifically before booking.
Exporting genuine antiquities is a serious criminal offence, and anything sold to you at a market as authentically ancient is either dishonestly described or an invitation to commit one. Coral, shells and sand are protected under marine park rules, bags are checked at the airport, and this is enforced. Neither is a formality.
Last reviewed 26 July 2026. Something out of date? Tell us