Port Said, Egypt

Founded at the start of the canal excavations, PORT SAID (Bur Said in Arabic) was by the late nineteenth century a major port where all the major maritime powers had consulates. It was long synonymous with smuggling and vice, and the adventurer De Monfreid was amused by the Arab cafés where "native policemen as well as coolies" smoked hashish in back rooms, supplied by primly respectable Greeks: "… every single one of them got his living from trafficking in hashish, either as a retail seller, or as a small-scale smuggler who haunted the liners."

Nowadays, this bustling city of 540,000 people earns its living as an important harbour; both for exports of Egyptian products like cotton and rice, but also as a fuelling station for ships that pass through the Suez Canal. A faintly raffish atmosphere lingers around its old streets, its timber-porched houses giving something of the feel of New Orleans's French Quarter.