A day on our island, hour by hour
The moment the boat cuts its engine and the only sound left is water on sand, the holiday properly begins.
Orange Bay is a private sandbank you cannot see from the shore — a shallow, wind-sheltered lagoon so clear it barely looks real. This is one day on it, told from the first lounger to the last of the light.
A day on the island
From first lounger to last light
Five chapters, in order — each one a thing you can actually book. Read it like a day, then build your own.
- 08:30Morning
- 10:30Late morning
- 13:00Midday
- 15:00Afternoon
- 17:30Golden hour
08:3008:30 · Morning
Arrive & claim your patch of sand
Your pickup is already idling outside the hotel. A short ride to the marina, then the boat noses out across glass-flat water — and somewhere around the thirty-minute mark the Red Sea turns that impossible shade of blue and the sandbank appears like a rumour.
You step off onto warm sand, find a lounger with your name on it for the day, and the island is suddenly yours. Ease in gently: a snorkel straight off the beach, a paddleboard on the still morning water, or a sunrise stretch before the boats arrive.
10:3010:30 · Late morning
Get out on the water
The lagoon is awake now and so are you. This is the loud, laughing part of the day — the bit you came to film for the story.
Open the throttle on a jet-ski across the flat south side, lift off the sea on a parasail for the view of the whole sandbank, glide under the surface on a seabob, or pile the whole group onto a banana and hold on.
13:0013:00 · Midday
Eat, drink & cool off
Salt on your skin, an appetite earned. Walk up to the Beach Restaurant — feet almost in the water — for fresh-grilled catch and mezze, or load a plate at the BBQ buffet and go back for seconds.
Then it is cold drinks on the sand: a cocktail, a fresh juice, a cold beer from the beach bar, and the slow, happy lull of the middle of the day.
15:0015:00 · Afternoon
Slow right down
The heat softens, the day exhales. Wade into the waist-deep shallows for the island’s signature Aqua Gym — low-impact, music up, and somehow always ending in laughter.
Or do the opposite of everything: a shaded beach massage with the waves as the soundtrack, a daybed in the dappled light, and absolutely nowhere you need to be.
17:3017:30 · Golden hour
Go VIP & watch the sun go down
The light turns to honey and the island slows to its best hour. From your own draped VIP cabana, premium drinks keep coming and a host keeps the day effortless while the sandbank empties around you.
Walk out onto the bank as the sun drops into the Red Sea, the water going gold then pink. It is the shot everyone screenshots — and the perfect last frame of the day.
Before all that — getting here
How you reach the island
Free hotel pickup, a short crossing from the marina, and you are on the sand. Here is where Orange Bay sits on the Red Sea.
Find the island
A Red Sea island, minutes off Hurghada
Orange Bay is a private sandbank on Giftun Island. Most guests arrive by boat tour from the marina — with free pickup from resorts up and down the coast.
- By boat
- ≈ 30 min from Hurghada Marina
- Hotel pickup
- Hurghada · Sahl Hasheesh · El Gouna
- Meeting point
- Hurghada Marina Boulevard
- Open daily
- 08:00 – 18:00 · Red Sea season
Days like yours
What a day on the island feels like, in their words
Named guests, real island days — the cabana, the Aqua Gym, the sandbank lunch — across Google and TripAdvisor.
The water was unreal and the Aqua Gym in the shallows was so much fun. We booked a cabana for the next day.
Lena
Hamburg · Google
Hotel pickup, lunch on the island, kids in the water all day. Easiest, best day of the holiday.
Mark & Sarah
Manchester · TripAdvisor
The VIP cabana shots came out unreal — the whole island looks like a postcard.
@reeftide
Berlin · Instagram
Abholung pünktlich, alles inklusive, die Kinder hatten einen Traumtag auf der Insel. Klare Empfehlung!
Familie Becker
München · Google
The story of Orange Bay
How a bare sandbank became the Red Sea’s best beach club
Orange Bay began as nothing more than a pale strip of sand off Big Giftun — the kind of place the fishing boats passed without slowing down. What made it special was hiding just under the surface: a shallow, wind-sheltered lagoon so clear it barely looks real.
A small Egyptian–German team saw a beach club where everyone else saw an empty bank. They built it slowly and on purpose: shade before speedboats, a reef-safe code before a bigger bar, a local crew who treat the island like their own — because it is.
Today that same care is the whole point. We never anchor on coral, we brief every snorkeler before they wade in, and we clean the sandbank at the end of every day. The reward is simple: the water stays exactly as blue as the photos, season after season.
German HQ, Egyptian island crew, one protected Red Sea sandbank — run as a beach club, looked after like a home.
Milestones · placeholder dates
20XX
A sandbank with a view
A bare stretch of sand on the south of Big Giftun catches the eye of a small Egyptian–German team. No jetty, no shade — just impossibly clear water.
20XX
The first loungers land
A handful of sunbeds, a beach bar and one boat. Word spreads along the Hurghada coast that the bluest water is the one nobody can see from the shore.
20XX
A protected beach club
Reef-safe rules, no anchoring on coral and daily clean-ups turn the sandbank into a properly protected Red Sea beach club — with the lagoon as the star.
20XX
The island today
Water sports, a beach restaurant, the signature Aqua Gym and VIP cabanas — run by a local island crew, headquartered in Germany, welcoming 35,000+ guests a year.
Your island, your day
Now go and live the day you just read.
Pick a date, choose your chapters — water sports, lunch, Aqua Gym, a VIP cabana — and we will sort the rest, pickup included.