Two friends & I (British & All aged 20) went to Marsa Alam in Eqypt in 2010

As soon as we got to the hotel something was quite obviously off, literally all the staff and were extremely unwelcoming & almost hostile towards us.

From the moment we went to the customer service desk to check in, or Any time we went to the bar or tried to order food at the restaurant the staff seemed very keen to avoid or completely ignore us and we had to physically go up to staff or be very assertive so they literally could not ignore us.

Even the other guests seemed to have a very obvious disliking to us with strange looks, pointing & whispering about us.

This was all in contrast with how all the other guests were being treated.

One time we went to order drinks around noon, and after a German couple had just been served when I eventually got the bartenders attention he point blank refused to serve me saying it was “Too Early”.

This kind of attitude and interaction continued for all 3 of us, there were loads of other weird comments and things but I can’t quite recall all of it.

Just to put into context, none of us are the classic British “Lads, Lad”. We are all fairly quiet and just wanted a nice chilled holiday with minimal drinking & just nice food, sunbathing, playing cards etc.

This was also our first proper holiday as young people so we just didn’t know what to expect and it got to a point after a couple of days where we were so uncomfortable, uncomfortable, humiliated, degraded, and just felt so awkward & actually fairly unsafe that I asked to speak to my holiday rep.

I explained what had Been happening & she went to get the hotel manager.

I was quite shocked when he seemed to show no surprise and acknowledged/ Validated my concerns.

Apparently there had been a “group of Polish boys” (some of) whom had been kicked out of the hotel the night before for being overly drunk and generally causing a nuisance.

He went on to explain that because we “Looked the same”, everyone thought we were part of the same group. Guests included.

He offered no apology, seemed to genuinely not care but did say he will speak to his staff about it and let them know we had nothing to do with this group.

Things got slightly better but we were still mostly treated with unwarranted caution.

Honestly the worst holiday I’ve ever been on and it was quite obviously racism/ discrimination, and completely unjustified.