He said, "When you get to the shop, just get your 5 dirham coin ready and pay them exactly that, don't ask for the price, don't let them charge you more. If they give you a higher price, tell them no, everyone pays 5 dirhams only." I thought, okay, I am prepared. When I got to the shop and picked up my bottle of water, the shop keeper came up to me and said in English, "hello, that bottle of water is 10 dirhams". And I thought, okay you speak English and so I replied, "no that's not right, it is 5 dirhams." He then insisted that 5 dirhams is for the small bottle of water, not the big one. And I switched to French and told him that this is not my first time in Morocco, I'm not a dumb tourist and I have asked my hotel manager what the price is. The conversation then switched to French and he lowered the price to 7 dirhams because I spoke French. Then I switched to standard Arabic and the price dropped to 6 dirhams and it was finally when I spoke to him in Darija - the local Moroccan dialect then the price finally dropped to 5 dirhams. So just to buy a bottle of water from the shop, I had to bargain in four languages before finally getting the right price. As a parting shot, I asked the guy in Arabic, "so if a tourist came in here speaking only English, then they pay ten dirhams for the bottle of water?" The guy merely shrugged his shoulders and answered in perfect English, "mate, we have to make a living here, I am running a business, we have to make a profit you know. Welcome to Morocco." Yup, I thought I'd start with that story to set the tone. Can you imagine a tourist in Singapore being charged double for a bottle of water just because he didn't speak fluent Hokkien?
Lesson 2: Always do your research on Tripadvisor before arriving.
One of the things that you will do in Morocco no matter which city you visit would be to take an excursion: some of the most interesting sites are located pretty far away from the cities and public transport is confusing and chaotic to say the least, especially if you don't speak Darija. Furthermore, these excursions allow you to make the most of your limited time to visit many interesting places within one day, you can't be as efficient on public transport and the only other alternative is to rent a car (if you're brave enough to drive in Morocco). So what you need to do is to get a local travel agent to arrange these excursions for you and I regret not having done my research prior to arriving in Fes - basically, I went from agent to agent in the Medina until I found one with the best price and service. I then arranged everything through her and I was so pleased with the service that I went to leave her a good review of Tripadvisor, only to realize that she was already ranked no. 1 on Tripadvisor's list of things to do in Fes. These peer review websites are reliable - obviously, if a place only has a small handful of reviews, then I would be very cautious but if it has literally hundreds and thousands of good reviews then you can trust it. On a website like Tripadvisor, you can even click through to the profile of the person leaving the review, so you know that these are not made up by the business itself. You should probably narrow it down to like the top 3 or 4 travel agencies in the city you want to visit and still play them off against each other when you decide. Prices do vary widely and you always need to bargain - never book with the first agency where you get your first quote.
I discovered this accidentally when I was looking for a place to eat. When you walk past a restaurant, a man would usually want to show you a menu, hoping to entice you in with either their good prices or interesting dishes. You should show a little interest but then say no thank you, I want to look around first. Then to make sure you don't walk away, the man would then offer you a small discount of either like 10 to 20 dirhams (say by offering a set meal of 70 dihrams for 50, or a main course of 40 dirhams for just 30) or perhaps he'll throw in a free coffee or desert. This doesn't work with all restaurants of course, but you have nothing to lose by trying a few until one offers you a discount. They tend to be more generous with the discounts when the restaurants are very empty (ie. too early or too late for dinner) or when the weather is bad - oh I did encounter a very wet day in Fes and the streets were obviously a lot quieter when it was raining like that, hence the restaurants were competing more intensely for fewer tourists around. Also, the restaurants in good locations would be more reluctant to offer a discount but those on quieter alleyways would be happier to give you a better price. Once a discount had been negotiated, it is always honoured when it was time to pay the bill, though some establishments would be cheeky and add a 'service charge' to the bill whilst others would not. I was rather amazed at how many tourists were unaware of this and often just paid the full price, but there you go - remember to always haggle!
On the topic of haggling, let me assure you that you can haggle for discounts practically everywhere. Let me give you an example - I wanted to visit the Chouara tannery in Fes because it was featured in the Amazing Race, now my regular readers will know that I am obsessed with that reality TV programme. So when we finally found the tannery, there were a bunch of young men effectively blocking the entrance and demanding money from us before we could enter. One of them waved some kind of ID in my face and claimed that he was the official guide controlling the entrance and demanded 50 dirhams each - I said no way, we're leaving, that's a ridiculous price. For some reason, he switched from English to Spanish and I argued with him in Spanish, since I speak Spanish pretty well and got the price down to 30 dirhams each but then I switched to French as I thought I could drive a better bargain in French, then the price when down to 20 dirhams. I must stress it wasn't just switching from one language to the other that got the price down, it was more my aggressive attitude when it came to bargaining with these people. Finally when I started speaking in Arabic, then the price got down to 10 dirhams each and that's when I relented and paid. The whole process took several minutes, I wasn't counting but it did feel more than 5 minutes and less than 10 minutes - I was trying hard to convince them that even though I look Asian, I am an experience traveler in Morocco, I speak the local languages and I was not going to be ripped off. Unfortunately, being a tourist, I was always going to be richer than the locals so that seems like a valid excuse for the locals to overcharge me at every opportunity but to be fair, you will encounter that in every third world country you visit.
Here's how it works - it is nothing short of a scam. If you're a tourist looking somewhat lost or heading into what looks like a residential area, someone will come up to you to say, "that way is closed, you can't go there, where do you want to go? What are you looking for?" No, this person isn't trying to be helpful - tell them to leave you alone in Arabic, the phrase is "utrukni" or you could say "utrukni min faldak" (leave me alone please) to be a bit less abrupt. No, in 99% of the cases, the local isn't trying to be helpful, in the best case scenario, they will take you to where you want to go and then demand a fee for their "services". In worst case scenarios, they will lead you to an even more secluded spot where you will be robbed, raped and murdered. The streets in the old towns of some Moroccan cities can be confusing, but trying to take advice from a local is unfortunately unsafe because you don't know if they are genuinely trying to help you or if they're trying to lead you up to a dark alley where you will be robbed, raped and murdered. Simply backtrack, retrace your steps, go back the way you came until you recognize something familiar. Some hotels, restaurants and travel agencies will offer a free travel map so never venture out without a map of the city to navigate your way. If necessary, ask another foreign looking tourist for help rather than a local. You cannot trust Google maps in Morocco - you'll probably be okay in the newer parts of the city where the modern streets are compatible with the software but in the crowded, chaotic little alleyways in the old town, Google maps simply cannot cope and is next to useless - always plan your route in advance.
Sigh. I did cover this topic recently in my blog and sure enough, it happened again in Morocco. I am not saying that all Moroccans have poor social skills but I daresay the benchmark for social skills is pretty darn low there and many of them were awfully offensive but were totally oblivious to the fact that they came across as so bloody rude to me. I am obviously a Chinese-looking tourist who speaks French and Arabic - yet the locals never put 1 + 1 = 2, "he speaks my language so obviously he cannot be from China or Japan because people from China or Japan cannot speak my language." I stopped for a brief moment in a shop to look at lamp shades - that's one thing I do adore from Morocco, they have these gorgeous lamp shades made of silver, brass or bronze with such intricate designs and the shop keeper asked me in English, "where are you from?" I replied in French and told him that I am British. He persisted, "Japan? Korea? China? Philippines?" And again, I told him in French that I am from London. Then he insisted in English, "your face not British. You look Japanese." At which point, I told him that he was a fucking rude cunt and I wasn't going to buy anything - just to make sure he realized how offended I was, I also scolded him in French and Arabic, trust me, I made it very clear in three languages that he was being a stupid cunt. He look totally shocked that I was this angry - he was like a big kid who didn't even realize that he was being very rude and offensive in talking to me like that. But he had a shop in the old town of Fes and most of his clients must have been tourists rather than locals, so why did he have such appallingly bad social skills?
So let me explain what this man did wrong - his priority should have been to sell me a rather expensive lampshade, not to fulfill his curiousity about what my ethnicity or nationality was. I was speaking in French (my French is totally fluent), one of the national languages in Morocco - he should have replied to me in French and not English. Instead, he persisted in questioning me in English even though it was obvious that I wasn't happy being interrogated like that - I had given him one piece of information: that I was from London. His response as a salesman should have been, "you may be able to find Moroccan lamp shades in London, but they are never this beautiful and it would be far more expensive in London. The quality of the workmanship with our products is second to none, if you buy something, we'll make sure we wrap it up properly so you can take it home with you to London and you'll always have a little bit of Moroccan magic in your London living room. You have good taste sir, I see you've been looking at one of the nicest pieces in the shop." If he had said something like that, then yeah I might have bought something there but no, instead he wasn't happy with my answer that I was a Brit from London and insisted on interrogating me about what kind of Asian I was in bad English (despite the fact that I speak both French and Arabic for crying out aloud). In Europe, we are far more polite and tactful when it comes to speaking to strangers like that but it is evident that this is clearly not the case in North Africa. His lampshades were beautiful and absolutely exquisite - it was a shame that he had the social skills of a severely autistic three year old child.
Lesson 6: Make sure you spend good money on quality accommodation
Morocco is a Muslim country - that means that you will hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day. It is the dawn call to prayer that you have to watch out for because it is meant to be at sunrise and that can be very early depending on the time of the year and where you are. And unless you're in a resort in the middle of nowhere, you're going to be near a mosque. Good hotels will have sound insulation and double glazed windows to ensure that you cannot hear the call to prayer but cheap hostels will not afford you that luxury and you will almost certainly be awoken by the dawn call to prayer. That's pretty convenient if you are a faithful Muslim who intended to get up to pray at dawn but if you're not a Muslim, then getting awoken at dawn like that everyday is an inconvenience you would rather pay good money to avoid. Perhaps some of you can sleep through an earthquake and would not be disturbed but those call to prayers can be loud.
Yeah this one surprised me somewhat because I have visited loads of Muslim countries and have never had problems with visiting places of worship like mosques. From Brunei to Oman to Turkey to Tunisia to the United Arab Emirates to Bosnia to Indonesia, I have always been welcomed in mosques - my best experience in a mosque has got to be at the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque is Muscat, Oman when we got an English speaking guide who enthusiastically gave us a guided tour and spoke to us about her religion, then she apologized for not being able to offer us a drink of coffee as it was Ramadan, but gave us a gift of dates to take with us - all that for free just because they felt that they wanted foreigners and tourists to come and visit to mosque to learn about Islam. But in Morocco, hell no - mosques are strictly for Muslims and non-Muslims are told (politely) that they are not allowed in. And it is not just mosques - anything from cemeteries to mausoleums to Madrasahs (religious schools) are off limits to you if you are a non-Muslim tourist in Morocco. It was such a shame as some of these mosques are beautiful but I respectfully obeyed the rules in Morocco.
Lesson 8: The arrival of the Chinese tourists!
Oh boy, there are plenty of Chinese tourists in Morocco now - this wasn't the case 12 years ago when I was last in Morocco. There was only one Vietnamese restaurant in Marrakech then but today, even in just the old town of Fes, I counted no less than three Chinese restaurants. I was curious enough to even pop in and look at the menu - the food looked authentic enough and the staff in there were clearly Chinese, however, it wasn't cheap at all compared to the local Moroccan food so I wasn't tempted. You see, most tourists like myself would go to Morocco and gladly eat the local cuisine because that's one of the highlights of trip: to sample new flavours and try the local delicacies. But with many Chinese tourists, they are unadventurous when it comes to food and perhaps it is also a question of being quite ignorant of any other kinds of foods - I remember growing up, I was curious about everything from pizzas to sushi to kimchi to feta cheese but my father simply refused to touch any food that he wasn't already familiar with, which meant that he only ate Chinese food 99% of the time. Well, many of the Chinese tourists in Morocco are just like that - when I popped into one of the Chinese restaurants which were very crowded, I noticed that all the customers were Chinese. They didn't seem to attract any local Moroccans there, perhaps they were concerned whether the food was halal but not that it bothered the people running the restaurant, they were doing pretty good business just with the Chinese tourists. There were plenty of Chinese tour groups everywhere and many of the shops now had signs in Chinese to attract Chinese customers there.
Oooh boy. I don't like to carry too much cash with me because I would have to quickly come to terms with a new currency and I don't feel safe taking out wads of cash to pay for stuff. But I soon realized that it was a necessary evil, I couldn't pay for anything with my credit card! Everyone only accepted cash - they would take Euros or US Dollars as well, but forget about using your credit card in the travel agencies, restaurants or when shopping. Perhaps it is a cultural thing but coming from London when I am so used to using my cards to pay for everything, this was a bit of a shock. The exchange rate is 10 dihrams = 0.94 Euros or US$1.04 so most vendors would accept 1 euro or US dollar as 10 dirhams, but always double check as some would try to give you a poor exchange rate. There are usually plenty of ATMs around if you need to get more currency out - I would advice going for a familiar French bank if you want to feel a bit more secure about your withdrawal (we used the SocGen ATM at the Blue Gate in Fes) rather than a local Moroccan bank. The exchange rate we got was pretty decent even though there was a roughly £3 fee per transaction - still, it worked out to be cheaper that way than to deal with the money changers at the airports who would simply rip you off with a big smile on their faces with their outrageous exchange rates. My advice would be to carry some Euros and/or US dollars with you as you arrive in Morocco and use those until you could find a decent ATM (preferably of a big French bank like SocGen or BNP Paribas).
Lesson 10: Always check your change!
Again, I hate to give you the impression that the locals are dishonest crooks but you must always check your change. On quite a few occasions, when I paid my bill at a cafe or restaurant, the waiter would 'accidentally' give me the wrong change and when I challenged him, he would pretend it was an honest mistake and then give me the right change. Yeah, fucking right, as if. It would always be a small amount but that kind of shit never happens here in the UK or somewhere like Japan. Likewise, when I was in Volubilis, I bought two entry tickets at 70 dirhams each - I handed over a 200 dirham note expecting 60 dirhams in change, but only got a 50 dirham note. The man then claimed that he had no small change, so I said fine, give me back the 200 dirham note, I think I have exact change and fortunately, I did. Again, that kind of shit is just petty theft that will only happen in poor countries. Then at another tourist attraction in Meknes, again, I tried to buy two 70 dirhams tickets and this time I handed over 150 dirhams in notes, expecting 10 dirhams in change. The man gave me two 1-dirham coins and when I pointed out that he had only given me 2 dirhams instead of 10 dirhams, he said he had confused the 1 dirham coin with the 5 dirham coin, I did get my correct change in the end but I wasn't buying his story - he was a local Moroccan man selling tickets for a living and you're telling me he gets confused with the local currency? Yeah right. As if, you're a fucking crook, you're trying to rip me off. Always check your change, you can't trust the locals. Sorry if that makes me sounds racist but as this happened so often, I can't be asked to be politically correct.
I always edit what I write before I publish my blog posts so I have read back at the warnings I have given and it does look like I have made the Moroccans look very dishonest, that you're going to be ripped off and overcharged at every opportunity especially if you don't speak French and Arabic and that as an Asian tourist, you're bound to encounter casual racism or at least locals with very poor social skills demanding to know what kind of Asian you are in a most offensive manner. Well, I stand by what I wrote and everything is true - however, you're going to encounter that kind of crap whenever you visit any poor country and the thing is to be mentally prepared to deal with it - it does come with the territory. People in such poor countries are not as well educated so you simply have to lower your expectations. Your holidays are going to be a lot less colourful and interesting if you only limit yourself to destinations in very rich countries like Canada, Switzerland and Japan. And despite the fact that you have to be careful and bargain hard to make sure you always get the best price, Morocco is still a relatively cheap country for tourists. So let's compare a desert trek on camels, one of the more popular excursions in Morocco - you can do the same kind of excursion in the United Arab Emirates, which is an extremely rich, first world country. Well, you're likely to pay more for the same experience in a country like the UAE compared to Morocco. Furthermore, I hope the videos I have embedded in this blog post have demonstrated that this is a stunningly beautiful country - from deserts to high mountains to vibrant old towns, tourists visit Morocco because they want to see something radically different and exotic and you will not be disappointed on that front.
In conclusion, the whole purpose of me writing this piece is not to discourage you from visiting Morocco, but rather I think it is important to go to these kind of countries fully prepared so you know exactly what to expect before you even pack your suitcase for that trip - what you don't want is a bad experience that will ruin your holiday and I am hoping that in sharing this information and my experiences with you, you would be able to have only good experiences in Morocco (or at least reduce the number of bad experiences). Not everyone you meet in Morocco is out to rip you off or ruin your day with racism, there are nice people in Morocco and I have met some of them - you have to accept that this is a very poor country at the end of the day and a lot of the people there are simply trying to make money from the tourism industry in order to feed their families, they may not have the right kind of social or linguistic skills to do so efficiently (or up to our Western standards), but they are simply trying their very best (and failing). Ultimately, when someone does something hideously stupid like yells 'arigato' at me in the street in Morocco, I know it is poverty that compels them to do so because they want me to buy something from them or hire them as a tourist guide, rather than because they're harassing me as a foreigner or because they are racist. At times like this, I take a moment to appreciate the fact that I have had the benefit of a good education and have managed to learn the appropriate social skills to enable me to do my job in finance, earning a very good living in London, that I don't have the hustle like the poor Moroccan locals in Fez trying to make a living from tourists. So that's it from me on this topic - please let me know what you think and many thanks for reading!
Thanks for sharing. Definitely a must read for anyone who is visiting Morocco for the first time. Be it for safety and saving that extra dollar.
ReplyDeleteHiya and thanks for your comment. Don't get me wrong, I certainly enjoy going to Morocco, hence my second visit there but I do get frustrated with certain aspects of the culture there and I do want other visitors going there to anticipate such issues so they will be better prepared and can deal with it.
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