The men at security eye us suspiciously, but allow us through, and we grapple with our shishas and move, like pack horses, through the airport. We've been given free passes to the first class lounge, even though we are most definitely not travelling first class, and we drag our stuff inside. The lounge is like someone's ... well ... lounge. Small and poky and with a sleeping man in the corner.

He wakes up.

'Hello!' he says. 'Coffee? Coca?'

We smile and put our shishas down, and grab a coffee and a pastry each, and soon the uniformed man nods off again. Our flight is in an hour, but it can't come soon enough. We are coasting on an hour's sleep, still lightly drunk from late-night gins on a warm hotel balcony.

On a small TV in the corner, Mr Bean tries to open a jar. Wag starts to laugh, and then I start to laugh, and before long we are two sleep-deprived, laughing idiots, unable to control ourselves. The sleeping man wakes up. We try to stop our giggling but we can't. We are now giggling because we are giggling.

'So ...' he says. 'You have shisha!'

'Yes,' I say.

'Nice shisha,' he says, smiling.

'They were gifts,' I say. 'Lovely gifts.'

'You can smoke hashish!' he says, which is surprising, and then he laughs like he was joking, and we laugh politely, and we shake our heads and say 'no!', and then he laughs some more like he was definitely only joking, and then he says ... 'You want some?'

It is an awkward moment. We are being offered drugs by a man who works in the first class lounge of an airport. What do you say to that? What if it's a local custom? I try hard, but I can remember nothing of the sort being mentioned in the Rough Guide.

'Um ... we're OK, thanks,' I say, and he says 'No?' and smiles, and Wag pipes up and says, 'Thanks for the offer, though.'

The man wanders off, sits down and shuts his eyes again.

'Wag, these things are giving us reputations,' I whisper. 'You can't giggle near a shisha! Imagine what they'll think at customs when we get back to London! They'll think we're drugs mules! Or barons!'

'I'd rather be a drugs baron than a drugs mule,' says Wag, thoughtfully. 'I imagine the hours are better.'

We decide there and then that we'll have to lose the shishas. We lay them by the sofas in the lounge and wait for the man to nod off. We pick up our backpacks and carrier bags and begin to creep out ... and then we run.

We make it. We get to the gate and board our plane. But we're feeling guilty for leaving our gifts behind.

'We had to,' I say to Wag, shaking my head seriously. 'We had to.'