From Al-Jazeera's website:
Pretty much identical location from where I took my picture.
Worth, I'm sure you had some terrible experiences with the cabs in Cairo. That was one thing I never got over, was how badly the Egyptians tried to scam anyone that looked like a foreigner. Then I talked with a friend there, and she told me basically what has been re-iterated on CNN the last few days, people in Egypt live off of $2 a day. So in a sense it made is a bit justified. Still, while you're there, it's very annoying.
The biggest difference I noticed between Lebanon and Egypt was the lack of this attitude there. For example taxi prices are set at 2000 lebanese lyra (about $1.30) per person for a ride anywhere within Beirut (not the metropolitan area). So you go into a cab, tell him you're going downtown for example, give him his cash while he's driving and you get to your destination within a few minutes. Another example was the price of 1.5L of water in Beirut is 1500 lyra, so when I got to Junieh (about 20 km north of beirut) I handed the shop owner 2000 lyra, expecting to get 500 back. He gave me 1000 back and said, water is cheaper here than Beirut. That attitude was refreshing after spending a few days in Cairo. Beirut is still kind of thirdworldish as you say, but it has 2 million people as opposed to 24. So the air is cleaner, the streets are less crowded and money is spent better on infrastructure.
Aqaba, is just amazing. I am sure it is similar to Dahab, since it's in the same vicinity. You can actually see Eilat, Israel from Aqaba. It's so close, that it looks like it's part of the same metropolitan area at night. Probably the best part of my trip however was offroading in Wadi Rum, just 30 minutes from Aqaba. I am lucky that my cousin was willing to take his SUV (the one you see in the picture) off road.