The Old Market — Sharm el-Maya in Arabic — is the actual town beneath the resort. This is where the dockworkers, taxi drivers, and shop staff live and where the cheapest fish and best street food are sold. The market itself is a few blocks of stalls selling spices, leather, perfume oils, sheesha pipes, and the kind of brass and cotton souvenirs that hotel boutiques charge five times more for.
It is also where the bargaining is hardest. Vendors are direct, persistent, and not easily put off — many travellers find it exhausting, but if you are willing to engage and to walk away at least twice, the prices come down quickly. The seafood restaurants along the seafront here are excellent: you point at a fish on ice at the entrance, agree a price, and it arrives twenty minutes later grilled whole with rice and salad.