I have just returned from a week long holiday in Tunisia and I must say it was bloody marvellous.

Tunisia is a North African country bordering Libya to the east and Algeria to the west. 40% of the country is in the Sahara Desert while the more prosperous and fertile north is divided from the south by the Atlas mountain range.

I stayed in a package-holiday hotel just outside of the tourist town of Hammamet. The hotel was rated four stars and had all the usual things such as pools, bars, sauna, spa and hammam. The beach and the Mediterranean Sea was only a short five minute walk away.

When you visit an Islamic country your immediate thought is that there would be no alcohol available anywhere. However in Tunisia this is not the case. The president himself has over a 40% stake in the local beer producer. The country itself produces a range of red, white and rose wines as well as a few spirits and liqueurs. However these sales are mainly for the tourist trade as well as export.

When I arrived at Monastir airport I made my way to the coach transfer. On the coach I met a Keith who had also won a free holiday and was going to be staying in my hotel. Keith and I spent a fair amount of the holiday together and it was nice to have someone to travel around with and see the sights.

One thing that you notice when arriving in Tunisia and especially in the south, and more traditional part of the country, is the lack of visible women. It is almost as if they do not exist. Men loiter in cafés and on street corners. Shop assistants are predominantly male as was the majority of staff in the hotel. It is only when you get into the capital Tunis that this disparity begins to even out. For the lone traveller it can be quite intimidating in some instances.

The day after arrival I spent lazing around the hotel, visiting the beach and sitting by the pool. I met the representative, Shirley, from the booking operator, med hotels, who sold me a number of excursions. Shirley had been living in Tunisia for about four years and earns around 300TD a month from her job which she supplements by selling day trips. 300TD is approximately £135. Her monthly rent and bills were approximately 250TD. The cost of living in Tunisia is cheap compared to the UK as long as you are not in the tourist areas. In a tourist area a can of coke costs around 1.5TD while in a non tourist area you could get a can for around a third of a dinar.

Friday came and Keith and went and had a look around Yasmine Hammamet, a new development of over 40 hotels catering specifically for tourists. The problem with Yasmine Hammamet is that it feels very bland. It is catering specifically for the foreign tourist market and as such as no real life about it. In the afternoon we went into Hammamet to look around the medina. A medina is essentially a walled town in which you find houses, mosques, markets (souks) and in the case of Hammamet a fort. The medina is very touristy and all the shops in the souk sell much the same tourist tat. Keith and I walked up Avenue de la Republique which took us away from the tourist area and into the town itself, giving us an insight into the real lives of Tunisians. The usual mobile phone shops and banks were interspersed with carpenters, food outlets and clothes sellers. I didn’t once see an estate agent.

My first ‘trip’ that I had booked with the rep was ‘Arabian Nights’. This took place on the Friday evening where we were bundled into a coach and taken to a small village about 30 minutes drive from Hammamet. We were shown around a mock Berber village before being ushered into a tent where a large circle of sand with a stage at one side was surrounded by tables. I sat down with Keith and an English couple, Petra and Mike, who were also staying at my hotel. We were next to two girls who worked at the hospital in Stoke on Trent. A traditional Tunisian meal was served consisting of Brik followed by lamb couscous and mint tea. Tunisian red wine flowed in abundance and the evening’s entertainment was provided by dancers, horse riders, fire eaters, snake charmers and men who liked beds of nails, swords and broken glass. One of the funniest things I saw was a man who liked to balance china pots on his head. I also had some snakes put around my neck by the snake charmer. I went to bed at midnight with a slightly uneasy feeling that I had to be up at 5am the next day for my two day tour of the south of Tunisia and the Sahara desert.

Part two tomorrow but if you want a sneeky preview of what I got up to then I have put all my photos online.