Had Enough Holiday?

I returned from Morocco three days ago after having spent a week there, I was meant to spend three but booked a flight home early.  I have to admit I did not return to England because I missed the way of life in Blighty; I was managing ok without The Sun, ITV, ASDA and all the other contemporary Great British institutions.  After much autonomous thought and discussions with my compadres who undertook the trip with me I have become aware of a number of reasons as to why I came home earlier than planned with the bad taste of tagine still in my mouth.

I will start with the reasons I brought to the table that coerced my inevitable hundred pound donation to Ryanair by getting an earlier flight.  Firstly, I handed my second year of uni work in on the 18^th of May and the immediate advantage of studying with the Celts in the duchy of Cornwall is that when one has seen to their responsibilities, Cornwall offers an abundance of beautiful beaches to parade along with a wetsuit draping from the waist.  I was obliged to move back to the delights of Essex, my family’s habitat, at the end of June and did pay a little weekly tax whilst waiting for the 18^th July (a.k.a. my summer trip to Spain and then over to Morocco) to arrive.  I broke up the weeks reminding myself what drinking establishments Colchester had to offer as well as with trips to Belgium and Brighton.  Something was a little out of shape when excitement didn’t rear its welcome head in regard to the main trip of the summer but I initially put this down to my perpetually maturing self.  Hindsight, what wonders it offers!  It is now apparent that perhaps the reason excitement didn’t acquaint itself, was because I had pretty much already been on holiday (synonym with vacation. break form work) for two months before I even stepped on Michael O’Leary’s blue and yellow metallic tube of wonder, that would transport me and my little martin guitar (for an extra 32 fucking quid, it has to go down a ‘special’ baggage conveyor belt even though its ickle and designed to go in hand luggage) to Spain.

So maybe I had just been fucking around for two months and didn’t need to fuck around some more in a foreign country, but, I can’t seem to help thinking every other holiday I have been on has been the bollocks, why was this one not?  Do I not like holidays anymore?  Am I just remembering the good times of previous holidays? Probably, but at least there were good times!  I need to quickly give Spain a get out of jail free card and excuse it from the table; it was a fun, sun and beach holiday for a few days before the ‘real travelling’ began in Europe’s Third World neighbour.

From what I remember Morocco was chosen as a destination for many valid reasons, because of its proximity to England, I haven’t been to Africa before, it should provide a glimpse of culture different to Europe, which, from my own experience, is doing its best to become mono.  I guess to be general, I seem to think that I like travelling, I tell people I do, I have done the whole Southeast Asia-Australia thingy, that was good, driven around Europe and have also visited Russia and Cuba; for my age (24) I would consider myself fairly well travelled.  Visiting Morocco is not only another country to tick off the list but should help in the maintenance of my opinion.  So what is my gripe with my time spent there then? 

Having arrived in Tangiers by ferry under advice from several people we headed straight to somewhere that wasn’t Tangiers, in our case it happened to be the ‘charming’ (lonely guide) city of Asilah.  Within 6 hours of being in Morocco I would have experienced three fundamental reasons as to why 21 days became 7.  Firstly, I trusted the lonely guide, I know they are full of shit but they are useful and do provide a blueprint to work from.  In this case the book had plied Asilah with all kind of adjectives such as ‘charming’ that encouraged our visit.  I don’t want to immediately sound ignorant, even though I felt it and am still unsure whether I am, but I have to agree with an anonymous blogger who’s online description of Asilah was ‘there is nothing to do here but walk around’.  Maybe I missed something but it did appear to me that there was not much to do in this ‘charming’ city.  As the days progressed and the question ‘what shall we do?’ wore thin, persistent reference to the lonely guide seemed to manage to generally make things sound much grander than they were.  The obvious argument that adjectives are subjective is relevant but I have to lay some guilt to the lonely guide for promoting places that may just not be that great.  I guess if you picked up the book in a bookshop in England and read about a place and it just said ‘yeah its alright, wouldn’t bother with it really’ that would firstly be sloppy travel writing and secondly, wouldn’t sell many copies, “I’m not buying that book, just says its shit.”  So well done to lonely guide for providing a spine to many a trip but the pinch of salt just got heavier.

So onto my second grumble please bear with this one.  Upon arriving in Asilah to cut it short, we were hustled.  Having been the (potential) victim of a hustle many times before and having the naivety to think I was experienced in such situations probably led me straight into this particular, familiar scenario; unintentionally got a guide (some dude with nothing better to do) around the city showing us all the ‘best’ places to buy stuff, stay or eat food, where he probably earns commission.  Upon telling him we were ok without him and in need of some privacy he request some money for his troubles.  I am not really grumbling about the specific hustle that I was a victim of, that doesn’t really bother me.  What got chronically aggravating was the persistence of such hustlers; having been burned on the first day made me wary of Moroccans.  However, I think I am a pretty reasonable guy and I attempted to give each Moroccan the benefit of doubt and not just think they were all out to rob me.  I detest generalisations but found my self within a week constantly finding out that another Moroccan only wanted to talk to me to offer me a hotel, drugs, clothes, girls or food.  I have experienced this behaviour in other countries as well as Morocco, but have never been so vexed before.  It was relentless to the stage where I didn’t want to leave the hotel, as I couldn’t be bothered to put “no thanks” on repeat. When the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth anymore, and it appeared as though I was ignoring their generic rapport building lines, the rapport building lines turned to mockery and insult.  Yeah, yeah, I know they are trying to make a living and sticks and stones but bollocks, I just couldn’t be bothered with it and the fact it came with no endearing qualities, that I have experienced from similar kinds in the past, pushed me further toward the ticket office in the airport.

My final highlight of the first day was the evening’s activities.  Having repeatedly read in my good guidebook about Medinas it was off to see one first hand and experience the ‘excitement’ and then see where the evening takes us.  Took us around some shops producing mass produced crap that you are supposed to buy in Morocco, tagine pots, paintings, rugs, shoes, jewellery…  Shopping is not my favourite way of wasting time in England so visiting a primitive lakeside in the Third World didn’t hold my interest for very long.  But that’s ok, lets see what else happens in the evenings here; if we take a walk along the main street there maybe somewhere cool to go for a drink, we may meet some people.  The main street consisted of many, what I can best describe as cafés?  These establishments had many Moroccan men sitting outside drinking coffee or mint tea.  They didn’t appear to be engaged in banter or conversation with each other just sitting staring out into the street.  I wouldn’t consider my self an alcoholic but I do enjoy a drink, Morocco as a state heads towards some Islamic ideals, one prominently being the omission of alcohol from society.   I am blaming this on subsequently creating a situation I found hard to comprehend.  People just going out and doing nothing.  I don’t mean to indirectly advocate going out and getting drunk but I have done this many times and met some lovely people through doing it, and had some memorable funny times.  Going out and sitting in a café drinking hot drinks all night does not have the same appeal and as I might ignorantly say pretty much renders doing nothing.  The fact that the cafés had no cultural or aesthetic draw and didn’t seem welcoming, allowed an easy decision, or should that be a solo option, to return to our place of sleep.   Our quarters for the night allowed us to partake in activities such as reading, playing guitar and chatting, non-exclusive to Morocco or anywhere.

I hoped that our experience would be contained to Asilah and would be quickly shaken off by the rest of the country but unfortunately, as is probably already obvious, stained the rest of the my impressions of the country with similar experiences.  I don’t want to pedantically further illustrate with examples from each city, the above problems I had with Morocco, so you will just have to take my word that I found these issues present everywhere I visited.

Within six days our spirits were broken and a general sense of apathy had overwhelmed us.  Hoping Marrakech would lift our spirits, it didn’t, and it failed miserably.  Regardless of the oppressive heat it offered nothing new to change our ambience.  We finally tried a trip to Ouzoud waterfalls as a last ditch attempt to salvage our relationship with Morocco.  They were ok, pretty, but made bitter by hassle from ‘guides’; everybody selling orange juice and tagine, and most disappointingly the falls had a hefty collection of rubbish.  That evening a trip to the airport to book tickets home ensued and left us a day to dwell on why we had not got along with Morocco.  We could have stayed and visited the desert or more beaches but the sour taste was strong and I don’t think the mild glimpses of natural beauty could have outweighed the boredom gained from the indifference to the culture.

I am very aware that I don’t want to sound like an ignorant philistine with no cultural appreciation, these feelings toward a trip has challenged my own opinion and upset my ideas on travelling.  I have spoken to people that have awarded Morocco high praise and this constantly baffled me whilst there; why don’t I like it?  Perhaps it is more appealing to stoners?  Perhaps if you want to buy some ‘exotic’ goods from the country of origin, opposed to the hippy shop in town, Morocco serves well?  Perhaps I was not in desperate need of respite and if I were Morocco would be allowed to shine?  Perhaps Morocco failed to show me anything I have not already witnessed from previous trips that are still vividly present?  Had it been my first time in a non-European culture perhaps experiences would have had more gravitas?  It would be fair to conclude that I have no immediate plans to return and I am sceptical about visiting another Islamic dry state.  It has questioned my whole concept for travelling without obvious purpose; presently I have no plans to travel abroad and just fuck about, I am intrigued as to if/when I will travel without a pre-determined reason again.

These are just my impressions and thoughts about Morocco.  I would hope that they would be bore in mind whilst individual opinion is formed from individual experience.   However, also bearing in mind times winged chariot, Morocco is currently at the bottom of my fantasy travelling league.