"My Dead Sea stroll to the spa began unpromisingly. An old Jordan hand chided me for breaking every social taboo in the land: wet hair (suggestive of steamy sex, not a good look in Ramadan, when romps are banned till sunset); exposed nape of the neck (erotic provocation); bare knees (erogenous zone and poor sartorial sense); looking men in the eye (looser morals than Salome, that local minx). But the irrepressible staff smiled serenely at my crimes, while possibly consigning me to Sodom, just down the track in Biblical terms."

© Lisa Gerard-Sharp, Holy Mud, Times Online, 2007