I second that!
It is a hellish jolt to the system but it turns out that yes, one can live without the high cement walls garnished with razor wire, the barflies and the night-fighters, the sound track of either "When I..." or "Ssst! Darling, I love you too much!" with a backbeat of rock 'n' roll from the Stone Age or else some British lunatic playing spoons, guitar, bagpipes or all three at once.
Fun in my part of the Sahara is pretty basic: just waiting for a camel spider to come racing past to see how often and how loud the lady F/O says, "Oooh-la-la!" Once every 28 days we get a really big, full moon. That's about it, unless Al Qu'aeda decide to come trick-or-treating.