Deal or no deal?

It's colourful and enticing, and you should enjoy haggling in its bazaars, but Tunisia is also a country of contradictions, write Anne Luceyand her 16-year-old son,

DEEP IN THE Tunis medina, amid the perfume jars, Aladdin lamps, jewelled slippers and fez-wearing carpet sellers, it is possible, briefly, to conjure up The Arabian Nights and sniff the excitement of the exotic.

Perfume has been brewed here since the Phoenicians, and they have become so skilled at making it that even their Chanel No 5, at a price of two dinars, or just over €1, smelled not unlike the real thing.

The medina - the old walled quarter of Tunis, now a Unesco World Heritage site - is a labyrinth of mosques and mansions. A maze of streets, where daylight dwindles, takes us close to the rose-gold jewellers.

Farther on, the wedding shops amaze with clothes as surreal as those in any western wedding boutique, as well as with mounds of henna, an essential ingredient in Tunisian weddings, which are celebrated for seven days.

Shopping, which involves a robust form of haggling, is an essential experience of any trip to Tunisia.

We are based near Hammamet, on the Cap Bon, the garden belt of Tunisia, on the southern Mediterranean. The resort has been popular since the days when Tunisia was a French protectorate.

Robert Louis Stevenson once said that what was important in travel was not to arrive but "to go". Today, however, the return seems to be the thing. I tend to fall in love with all places Mediterranean and Aegean. When I return from a trip I find my soul takes a while to settle back from the olive groves. But, with Tunisia, I find it difficult to roost there on this, my second visit.

Nothing terrible happens. As a family holiday it is a success. There is plenty to do within the hotel complex, from archery to Arab lessons - the latter of which are hit and miss.

We take golf lessons and are inspired by the hotel professional, Zouheir Jerbi, whose mystical take on the game begins with his definition of a golf club as "not a weapon but an activity for enjoyment, like a nightclub".

A day tour to the Roman ruins at Carthage and the blue-and-white village of Sidi Bou Said is spectacular if exhausting.

The hotel is one of the best places we have stayed. The food is great, although the local wine is awful. The bedrooms are spacious and comfortable, apart from the maids spraying evil-smelling bug killer into every alcove.

From the hotel balcony the view of the white-painted settlement at Hammamet is stunning. Strict planning laws mean no building is above the tallest palm (county councils, take note).

With its mix of slender cedars and orange and olive groves it could be Corfu - indeed, places in Tunisia are often marketed on how much they resemble Greece.

But this isn't Greece. And here's the snag: you need a palatial hotel in Tunisia where hotels are truly oases.

Step on to the beach, outside the gate or off the bus and someone is trying to flog something or pull you in a direction you don't want to go. The taxi driver will not be content with today's fare; he will insist on picking you up tomorrow, too.

Shopkeepers have come up with 1,000 ways of drawing you in - to end in a parting of dinars. The toilets at the Ottoman palace that houses the great Bardo museum of mosaics and ship finds, the largest in north Africa, are disgusting when we visit, but the caretaker puts out her hand for a tip.

In an airport cafe at Monastir the stale sandwiches are priced in dinars, but you are charged in euro. At the end of a week you feel like an ATM with a conscience - ever hardening, it has to be said.

If you are a woman past, er, the first flush of youth, and accompanied by a man, you will be tickled at the lavish if strange compliments singling out your hair, your teeth, your eyes, your cheekbones. Then reality dawns. Beguiling tourists is worth a lot of money in Tunisia, a country that is building one of biggest airports in north Africa, near Monastir, to filter the hordes.

But this land just 140km from Sicily is not so much, as the tourist brochures suggest, "a blend of old and new" as a contrary mix.

Eleven years ago, when I last visited, I noticed that only older women, or those who lived closest to the Algerian border, were covered. Today young girls wear the headscarf, and the bars and cafes are still all male and not very friendly. If anything, women seem to have become less visible in public.

There are three things you cannot do, a Tunisian man told us one evening while looking around anxiously. You cannot talk badly of the government, be found with hashish or be a fundamentalist, he said, indicating hands cuffed.

The mosques are full, and among the crowds are plain-clothes police. This country of 10 million people has a police force of 120,000, he says.

I have no reason to doubt his estimates. Walking daily on a deserted beach we come to salute the two policemen on horseback on their twice-daily patrol.

"I love my country," the receptionist opines in the hotel lift. Who, at the age of 24, comes out with statements like that, I wonder.

The house of the mufti in Sidi Bou Said, now a museum, has a picture of bikini-clad women, although representations are meant to be mainly abstract.

On the approach road to the jaw-dropping designer hotels in the new resort of Yasmine Hammamet, the stench of sewage from the sea is overpowering.

Historical sites such as the incredible amphitheatre of El Djem - better preserved than the Colosseum, in Rome, and a location for the film Gladiator - deserve attention. The ruins of Carthage, particularly the baths, are spectacular.

Yet Villa Sebastian, a 1920s art-deco villa in Hammamet that is now an "international cultural centre" but was Rommel's headquarters during the height of the desert fighting in the second World War, and was where Churchill wrote his memoirs, has no plaque, no photograph and no handout to mark its incredible history. Twenty-five people work there, but the gardens are overgrown, litter is strewn about and the paintings are damp.

What emerges in Tunisia is like a very inconsistent couscous. Dip in, but don't expect the kind of easygoing blend you are led to expect.

TUNISIA LIES SMACK in the middle of the Mediterranean, jutting towards Sicily, as you head from east to west. A French protectorate from 1881 until independence, in 1956, it retains close ties with France.

Several films have been shot in Tunisia, including Star Wars, The English Patient and Monty Python's Life of Brian. El Djem was used in Gladiator.

See and do

Take a tour to Tunis and spend plenty of time in the medina, or old part of the city, a Unesco World Heritage site.

Take a two-day desert tour, which will take you on a camel or donkey ride of the Sahara.

The blue-and-white cliff-top village of Sidi Bou Said, near Tunis and Carthage, is also a Unesco site, and worth a visit.

El Djem is a gem of a coliseum. It leaves the one in Rome standing.

The Bardo museum of mosaics boasts one of the world's largest collections, taken from north Africa's sumptuous Roman villas.

Villa Sebastian, in Hammamet, is now an international culture centre where concerts are held each summer. It was where Rommel had his headquarters and Churchill stayed to write his memoirs. It has been neglected.

Shopping

Haggling among the stalls can be great fun, and the Irish especially can enjoy the Arab humour. Let the stallholder - almost all are male - come up with the price. Then you can haggle. Best buys are camel-bone boxes, ornate door mirrors, scented oils and tiles.

Eating out

The squid is divine in Tunisia and the couscous supreme. Freshly squeezed orange juice is another must. You can get pints of it for a few dinars.

Read

Herodotus describes the desert better than anyone. The Lonely Planet Guide is good if a bit dewy eyed.

Panorama and Sunway both offer package tours from Ireland to Tunisia.

Anne Lucey stayed at the Iberostar Phenicia, a modern hotel set in acres of grounds and on the beach.

ONE OF THE main reasons I liked Tunisia is because it is different. It's on a different continent, it is not hugely touched by western culture and, above all, it offered me a chance to experience a Muslim country.

The different-world feel begins with the architecture. As soon as we entered Monastir airport there were walls and walls of white marble. I thought it must be built like this for the tourists. Down in the tourist resorts even the streets were marble, and the hotels were out of fairy tales.

But all these buildings are not intended just to make an impact on tourists, I was to learn. The private ancient Roman-style villas of the wealthy were beautiful, and the modern office buildings in Tunis were very impressive. There are plans for a huge new airport as well.

It took us about an hour and a half to get from the airport along good roads lined with giant cacti. For the first time I saw camels in the wild.

It was impossible not to be struck by the number of police, who stood in pairs at every roundabout. I found this worrying. It was late at night - about 2am Tunisian time - and the roads were quiet, but any motorist around was being stopped and talked to.

Outings to the markets seem a must on a visit to Tunisia, but I didn't enjoy them much. They, or rather the people who occupy them, paint a

hugely negative image of Tunisia.

Every single one of the many hundreds of stall owners was hassling you to buy from them. Without exaggeration, 90 per cent of the stalls sold the same goods, making the market-place experience annoyingly repetitive.

Overall, I thought the people were less reserved and friendlier than in other, more westernised countries and they seemed very open and relaxed with each other. But many were disturbingly poor, and the poverty took from the enjoyment of a holiday, because as a tourist you felt privileged all the time.

... RL