My 2 Cents' Worth

I hope you don't get banned--must have been a kind of phishing post.

I wish I could join you all in London for tea and coffee. Have fun.

Have you never seen the tourists who brandish their finery then moan because they paid double/treble the taxi fare their tourist friends have paid. Im honest enough but im blooming sure that in the UK if i did a business deal, id drop the price more for someone who 'appeared' more needy and try to bump it up for someone appearing more well off - its the same globally and in Morocco every dirham counts.

Cocodrilo, you're kidding, right? They might be fake Gucci, but everybody's got them in Morocco. And it's the Moroccan women who walk around with fancy expensive gold, not the foreigners! Still, I think everyone is wrong about this issue - dressing nicely, which is actually expected by Moroccans (who LAUGH their heads off at the way foreigners dress here, and not because of the shorts as much as the stupid cargo pants and Teva sandals, often with socks), does not mean you can't bargain hard. Wealthy Moroccans barter over that last 10 dirhams, you know. It's just part of the culture, and while of course tourists are expected to pay more, there's no reason they should have to pay 10 times more.

On another subject, I don't really travel in Morocco without booking in advance. Three years ago, I had to sleep on the beach in Essaouira for one night because, during the Gnaoua festival, even the highest-end hotels (which I couldn't afford but I had a Visa card with me and would have done it) were booked up. I know it takes away the spontaneity, but I just book hotels that don't require my credit card # so I can cancel easily.

#52 What I meant is tourists shouldn't be bringing their real stuff (Gucci, diamonds, gold jewelry) and wearing it walking around. Guess that designer brand stuff has become big since 2001, when I was there. Didn't notice it then...

Morocco is not an expensive country to travel to/in/around et cetera, but it can be IF take u for a rich fool. I have had to resort to fake accents and dressing like a native to avoid that. It also helps to have friends over there who help u out. But Moroccans have had centuries to perfect the art of the steal. I on the other hand have had to learn and learn FAST. All said, I love Morocco and the shopping is the best - better than England, Germany, Scotland, Belgium, Amsterdam, Hawaii, Guam, France and a few other countries combined in my view. Morocco ROCKS!.

Yeah, be careful when buying carpets! ;-)

No matter what you wear or how good your Arabic may be, there is a fat chance any of us will ever pass off as a local!

I don't normally post on this branch, but lately I've been thinking about a trip to Morocco and have been lurking around this branch for a bit now...hope no one minds my own two dirhams worth...

This whole post reminded me of my first time in Morocco. It was the mid-80s, I was in my early 20s, and a US expat living in Madrid who had been dreaming of going to Morocco ever since, as an adolescent with wanderlust, first encountered those stories by Paul Bowles and Mohammed Mrabet at my local library. Finally, after years of dreaming, I was actually going to go there!

I took the ferry to Ceuta and then a bus to the border crossing. I admit, I was young and naive, and didn't even know there wasn't a town right on the other side and that Tetouan was a distance away.

Once through the Moroccan controls, I decided to just find a place on the side of the road to observe what was going on. Everything was so different: the dress, the language, the script, the architecture. But, I was finally in Morocco! Soon enough, a Moroccan guy came and sat next to me, and we eventually started chatting, first in French, and then in Spanish. For some reason, even then, I thought it was best to say I was Spanish instead of from the US, and since I have dark olive skin and dark hair, I easily passed as such. "Oh, you're from Madrid!" he exclaimed, and soon regaled me with his own tales of his time in Spanish capital. My first thought was: My goodness, the Moroccans are just as friendly as I had believed them to be in the stories I had read (being young, I never got all the subtexts of those stories, clearly).

Soon, my newfound friend was inviting me to have some tea with him in Tetouan and off we were in a grande taxi. Once in Tetouan, he led me straight to the souk, to the maze of streets, and all the different scents and scenery that assail you the first time in Morocco. In hindsight, I was in complete culture shock, but tried my best to just carry on. I was led to an old building deep in the souk, and introduced to some other chaps. I realized I was in a carpet seller's shop, and in moments, mint tea appeared quickly followed by one carpet being shown to me after another. My 'friend' from the border was nowhere to be seen, and I didn't know how to say to these new guys, I don't have the money or interest in buying a carpet. Being naive, I did ask how much a couple of times, and got the stock reply, for you my friend a very special price, and those rugs were put in a pile at my feet. Finally, I started getting very nervous and just stood up and shouted: But, I don't want to buy a rug!! Immediately, the friendly faces and the kind words turned to sneers and accusations, as I quickly backed out of the showroom all the way to doorway and bolted into the street.

There I was, in the middle of the souk in Tetouan, clearly a foreigner fresh over the border, and was immediately surrounded by a group of youth who kept talking to me, asking me where I was going, and if I needed a guide, and telling me to go this way or that way. Fortunately, my sense of direction is quite good and I slowly made my way out to the new city, all along followed by the touts. The worst was when they started asking me, are you paranoid? are you paranoid? and telling me, don't trust him, no don't trust HIM....

Once out on the main plaza, I headed to a cafe, thinking they would just go away. Ha! A whole gaggle of touts sat around me and the people in the cafe were just laughing at my predicament. I finally paid for my coffee, saw a policeman, and ran to him, paranoid as all hell, and said, where's the bus station? how do I get out of here? I had no idea where I was going, but just needed to flee. I made it to the bus station on foot, still followed by a few of the same youths, when in my desperation, I saw a lone blonde woman, sitting undisturbed, waiting for a bus. I went up to her, and in a shaking voice asked, Do you speak English? She didn't even look at me (once again, in hindsight, she probably thought I too was a Moroccan tout, since years later I passed as Moroccan) but answered, Yes. I immediately blurted out my whole experience, asking her what I should do, where I should go, how could I get away from all these guys following me and standing nearby. By that time, she obviously knew I wasn't Moroccan but rather, a Moroccan newbie, and just asked, Where do you want to go? I answered Melilla. OK, she said. And she walked me to the window where I got a ticket. (To that unknown Finnish woman living in Gibralatar on her way to Xaouen, thank you!)

And then, I got on that bus to Nador, sitting next to a lady in a djellaba with tatoos who immediately offered me an orange. And from that moment, I fell in love with Morocco. It was one of the best bus trips I ever took, and I made friends that took me around Nador, Melilla, and Oujda. And from then on, every long weekend or holiday I would head south from Madrid (or later, when I lived in Las Palmas, fly over to Agadir or Laayoune) every chance I got, until the final time, when I ended up staying a year, fasting during Ramadan, and being taken for a Moroccan everywhere I went. Although, I never returned to Tetouan....

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. It's been a while, I'm thinking I need to go back to Morocco and visit some old friends and some old haunts....

Yes, Morocco is fascinating. The first time I went was in 1992 and my Australian "friend" did not want to go so we parted ways in Madrid. I got the ferry in Algacerias, got off the boat in Ceuta, found a hostel, met a Korean guy named "Zero" who was a bit shady, then went to inner Morocco, both scared and excited. I told him Ceuta was in North Africa and was a part of Morocco geographically and he INSISTED quite nastily that we were still in Spain.

I found a young man who led me from the ferry to his home because the cheap hotels were booked and I didnt speak French. Can u imagine how terrified I was, but soon someone found a hotel, I met ppl who spoke English and that was the start of my long love affair with the country and the ppl. I HATE THE TOILETS THOUGH, yuk!!!

#57 I am certainly not squeamish when it comes to toilets, as I have spent half my life dealing with stinking, filthy Asian loos, and I agree entirely with what you say about Moroccan toilets!

I propose then that from henceforth, you are called "cacadrilo"!