How old is EADD? (Older and wiser than the rest of BL!)

[Mailmonkey]

I really want to go back to Morocco. I was looking into Marrakech as potentially the place to stay for my first holiday in three years because it's so cheap to stay in a plush hotel there but practically every report I read states that it's a dangerous, horrible shit hole. And not just those written by Yanks. Shame, rural Morocco is gorgeous and full of friendly people.

Marrakech is fine, really.

 

[jancrow]

I think I'm gonna go somewhere else, really. I wouldn't rule it out in the future but the time period in which I have not been away has been absolutely horrible and I just want to chill for a couple of days. Also, my gf is wary of Morocco as one of her mates had a bad time there and I want to win her over on that one which would probably only happen if we got out of the city.

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Marrakech is fine, really.

Yeah, went to Marrakech to escape Agadir. Though I still think its no place for a, erm, nervous/paranoid-before-you-start tourist...without saying anyone here is like that. I think you need to be a bit street-wise at least.

Best advice for Morocco - hire a car, speak a bit of French. You'll vastly improve your stay.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Though I still think its no place for a, erm, nervous/paranoid-before-you-start tourist...without saying anyone here is like that. I think you need to be a bit street-wise at least.

it could be the best place. i was a bit in this state of mind before going to cairo, as the friend i was visiting was going to be working in the week, and it sorted me right out. good job it only kicked off the day after i arrived otherwise i would've cancelled. getting the night train to luxor and back was the most adventurous thing i've ever done (or i felt, looking back moving abroad for a year was...), i know i'm a wuss but please also bear in mind i was an unaccompanied western lady. anyway point is i faced my fears and as a result am less limited in the sorts of travel plans i'd make in the future.

edit- though obviously this only applies if nothing particularly bad happens, i just got bugged a lot and had some guy try to put his hand down my top, had i been mugged i'd prob feel differently.

 

[gannetsarewe]

She's probably have the time of her life with the homegrown urchins, you won't have to worry about her running into the street and being hit by a bus in the narrow streets of the Casbah and Medina where the youngsters play from dawn till dusk. Plenty of European sprogs around nowadays as well and, if you want her fluent in Moroccan Arabic complete with Tangier slang, the younger she is the easier it'll be. Can also make life a lot better for you; when waiters, hotel clerks and shopkeepers hear rhe young one chatting away in their own tongue you go up in their esteem and the prices go down dramatically...I managed three free weeks in a top-of-the-range Agadir hotel once simply because the staff were charmed by the 4 year old, wouldn't happen at a Travel Lodge. I would think twice, though, if she's blond haired and blue eyed; racism isn't an exclusively Caucasian affliction.

Blond haired and blue eyed, looks like the Canaries so.

 

[charlie clean]

Which saved you all of £1.30.

Only place I've stayed 5 star - purely because it was £13 a night. Didn't think much of the barbed wire fence for the private beach. Didn't think much of Agadir, largely because a guy threatened to kill me for not buying a second lot of dope.

Morocco is all about the villages in the mountains. Safer. More beautiful.

Anyone been to Tangier and not been mugged?

Agadir was all but completely destroyed in the earthquake of 1060.

The survivors were moved lock, stock and smoking hookah five kilometres down the road and the city ingeniously rebuilt around a kind of Paris by the sea, a Moroccan-free enclave with western plumbing to attract tourists put off by the country's seedy reputation. It worked, too. It's the nearest winter sun for northern Europeans and secretaries and office workers headed there in their droves.

I was there in the mid seventies. The family were staying down south of Tiznit in a fishing village whose inhabitants had voted against paying the cost to extend the national grid. A hotel room - a bare space with a sleeping mat and candle - cost 2 dirhams, including limited use of the communal tap. I headed for the city for a taste of electricity and was blown away by how much those seafront hotels cost. Even the rudimentary place away from the front cost 12 dirham pp pn and that was the cheapest in town. Then the kid got talking to a waiter from one of the 130 dirham joints and the next day we moved in on the strength of an out-of-date cheque from a closed account. The staff go through the motions with the clientele but, at least in those days, appreciated the absurdity of it all and didn't give a fuck if a sympathetic child and his family swindled their employers. On the beaches in the hotel area, there were sunloungers, European women in bikinis and white-coated waiters serving drinks with fruit and paper umbrellas; it wasn't like Morocco at all. A welcome change to see a female face and comfortable eating but, in any real sense, a joke of a place. Would have hated the set-up if not for the service drones who thought so as well and it only merited a mention as example of how a child with the lingo can improve your lot. Would imagine Agadir's got worse since but have never been back to see.

Don't tell me you were a backpacker, SHM? Only hippies were robbed in Tangiers, junkies were more attuned to the spirit of place and the street thieves left them alone - in nearly three years of intermittent residence, I never felt threatened once. It was the only city I've ever been where addiction didn't damage your social status. Oh, the old ways, when things were as they should be. That's probably changed by now as well.

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Don't tell me you were a backpacker, SHM? Only hippies were robbed in Tangiers, junkies were more attuned to the spirit of place and the street thieves left them alone

Haha I'll overlook the wild generalisation but no, I've never even been to Tangiers. Just everybody I know who has (alright, three people, but two of them at least street-wise/worldly-wise) ended up with a knife at them.

I think you either love or hate Morocco. I certainly know people (junkies mainly now I think of it) for who it's their favourite place in the world.

It's just not mine.

 

[jancrow]

Definitely agree on the car / French suggestion. The roads are good for the most part, better than here in fact, and the way the scenery changes is entrancing. You can probably see desert, pine forest, mountain and.... er... something else...umm, rocks, perhaps, in the space of an hour.

I'm a pretty robust traveller most of the time, I'm just too worn out to go into a human washing machine at the moment.