Morocco.

For quite a while now, Kat had been harbouring a strong desire to go see Morocco, and earlier this year we had a chance to address that. In march actually, and yes, I know this is a bit late for a write-up.

At the time, London was in a state of Big Freeze, so a trip to the continent (well, a continent) was quite welcome. By chance, my freelance gig was winding up and Kat's was due to start in a bit over a week, so on the Friday we said "lets go to Morocco" and on Sunday we were there. That's why we live here.

Not knowing much about the place, we were traveling a bit on the recommendations of friends, and on the basis of those, we ended up first in Essaouria — a groovy little town on the atlantic coast that's renowned for being quite relaxed. Jimi Hendrix once visited, along with the Stones, and the locals are still harping on about it. Essaouria is a port city — and the Old Town in which we stayed is the heart of it: a walled city. Generally people wind up here to relax after the intensity of other Moroccan cities (such as Marrakech, which we were to visit next) so to begin here we were kind of doing things a little backwards. No surprises there eh.

After a long taxi ride through the desert to get here, we arrived after nightfall, and were rather unceremoniously dumped into some square/parking lot and had to find our way to our hotel. Speaking neither Arabic, or French (the second language there due to occupation) and lacking anything like a map, this seemed to be a challenge, but fortunately A Man With A Cart appeared and ferried us to our hotel. Thank God he did because as we were to find out again later, Moroccan cities are labyrinthine in extreme.

I think that that hap-hazard style of city 'planning' is what gave the place what charm it had. Rough walls with plaster falling off, dirt-covered cobbled paths and narrow, windy dead-end alleyways were a far cry from the sterility of Sydney and it's ilk, and the place immediately felt 'foreign'. The place had an ever-present smell of sea breeze mixed with dirt, cat urine, leather products and refuse. Lets be honest here — Moroccan cities aren't pleasant. But they are interesting. That fact was undeniable and I remember wandering around agape trying to soak it all in, while avoiding the continual hassling of the market-stall owners selling their touristy crap.

So, we spent about 4 days here, wandering round trying to find ways to keep ourselves entertained. We would generally sit up on the roof of our Riad (an awesome little place run by a friend-of-a-friend called Dar Afram) and read till late morning, doing our best to keep the local breed of seagull (these things were enormous!) away from our food, then head off for a wander around town and the markets, trying not to buy anything, and generally succeeding. Dinner consisted of tagine and cous cous, or cous cous and tagine. To be honest, the days kind of blended together, and I'm not sure what you would do if you were there for any longer. You end up doing things just to do things. On one day we found ourselves on an sand dune half an hour out of town, seemingly left alone, when someone wandered up out of nowhere and asked if I would like to buy some weed. When I declined, saying I don't smoke, he then asked if I would like some opium instead, then wandered back off into the dunes, leaving us alone again. Surreal. This is what traveling is all about, isn't it?

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Following Essaouria we headed to Marrakech. This time we caught a bus that appeared to have no suspension, which, coupled with poor roads, made this feel more like a boat journey than a bus trip. So much so that the guy in front of me was quite ill from the constant swaying. I felt pretty rotten myself, which is rare. Once we arrived we got on another taxi, followed by another Man With A Cart and after getting lost a little bit (it even happens to the locals) ended up at our riad. Riads are an awesome experience for anyone who would like to try the local thing.

Marrakech was full-on. Really full-on. Like no-where I've been before. It's like where we had just come from, but turned up to 11. The streets were even more twisted, the roads dirtier, smells stronger, and sun hotter. On our first night there I was blown away. THIS is what traveling is all about I thought. We wandered down into the main square (Jemaa el Fna) past a throng of human traffic. You generally can't fit cars into the narrow paths — mopeds constantly weave their way suicidally in and out of the crowd. Once you get there you are treated to quite a feast — both figuratively and literally. Market stalls stay open late into the night, food vendors ply their trade, there were even snake charmers — snake charmers! with cobras and everything! — sitting around trying to get some of your money. It was all a lot to take in.

The rest of our time there was spent wandering around the souks (markets) getting lost quite frequently, and getting hassled even more. For the most part I was lugging round my ludicrous and impractical camera set, looking for the ultimate photo, which was exhausting. Not only because of the weight of it all, but also because it felt like there was a general hostility in the air towards foreigners — it was a bit like Cambodia where you were viewed as a wallet with legs, but also like they didn't want you there, and it was only begrudgingly so that your presence was allowed. This made it quite hard I found to take nice photos because as soon as you took the camera out, you attracted people trying to sell things (or charge you for taking the photo).

Now fine, it's not all about taking photos, but this feeling penetrated pretty much all activity you undertook in Morocco, and so left something of a blight over the whole experience. That was the overwhelming feeling we came away with — it could have been an amazing experience, but for the locals. Shame really. If we hadn't been to Turkey before here (which had a lot of similarities, but also very friendly people), we probably would have left with the balance sitting in the 'wow' corner but as it is, the good (fascinating place) probably balanced out with the bad (the hassle).


Photos here.

Bored.

No-body reads this, do they. Oh well.

It's lateish at night here, and I'm a little bit crook with a head cold, and I'm waiting to get tired enough to go to bed and pass out without all that tedious coughing first. So I have some time to write.

What's news then eh? Well, the other weekend we went to Paris for the day. No, not overnight, for the day. You can do that here. It was as good as Paris ever is (well, it's the second time I've been there, bringing my tally to nearly 4 whole days) and I finally manned up and ate snails. They actually don't taste all that bad — I found the trick was to pop it in, get a bit of flavour action happening, then chew like hell and swallow it before your body realised what it was eating. The system works - even Kat ate one! Anyhow - there's some photos at flickr for those interested.

Um, in other news... pretty much same ole same ole. I'm freelancing at my old job, and Kat is on the job hunt, as well as putting in a lot of effort to keep the house tidy after my messy habits.

Warmed up nicely to a rather humane 12ºC here, so I'm on the lookout for some shorts soon methinks.

White Christmas.

Well, for Christmas this year I lost the battle to win the war. (Don't tell Kat I said that). The war: where to go for Christmas. Kat was wanting somewhere warm as an escape from the rather gloomy weather in London, whereas I wanted to go snowboarding and have a white christmas. And therein lay the battle – I eventually persuaded her to come along, but we were to go skiing instead of snowboarding, because when we tried snowboarding in Dubai Kat didn't enjoy it. (Jokes on me though, cause she really enjoyed the skiing, and it looks like it'll cost me a fortune in the years to come. Oh well.)

We ended up booking ourselves into a guesthouse at Mayrhofen for 7 nights, and 6 days of ski lessons. It was our first time and we had no idea what to expect, but we made sure we had medical cover, that's for sure. We went for the 6 day option because it was basically the same cost as anything less, and we figured we could bail if we'd had enough. To be honest, most mornings I woke up in a mood, covered in aches and pains, and said that I'd had enough, but we stuck with it for the whole time, and enjoyed it — once you got moving it was ok. By the end of the week we could handle most red runs on our own, we'd gotten past using the 'snow plow' move and throughout the week there were no major tumbles or anything, so the lessons went well.

Our usual day consisted of getting up early and grumbling a lot, having breakfast, then trying to to beat the queue at the gondola (which climbed 1200 in altitude in order to get you to the slopes). If we didn't make it early enough, a 40 minute wait could be expected. Once up there, at the start of the week we reported in to ski lessons, but as the week progressed, we hit the slopes on our own to warm up and get some clean runs in. It made a huge difference to your progress if you did, because when you travelled as a group, you travelled 10 times slower than on your own. At lunch, we generally had some quick & cheap food in order to get some more practice in before the afternoon session began. At the end of the day we nestled in to a glass or 2 of Glühwein (often joined by our instructor, Chris). It's basically mulled wine, but the way they made it up on the mountain was different. Much much stronger, and very very good to postpone all the aches and pains (or any sensation below the armpits). After that we made the fatal mistake of heading back to our lodgings and having a shower before heading out. It was very hard to re-motivate after that shower, let me tell you.

Anyhow - everything went well. We learned to ski, met some other Aussies who we ended up having Christmas dinner with (which it snowed for - awesome), and got to see some proper glacial valleys and whatnot. Good times had by all. I'll leave you with a couple of videos we took while we were there.

A Christmas Message:


(Unbeknownst to me the thing was zoomed in or something, so I was cropped out, and it was too cold to do a second take.)

Some views:





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You can find the photos here.

The long version, part 3.

Phi Phi Island, Thailand

Phi Phi was our little treat to ourselves for working so hard the previous week and a bit in doing all that touristy stuff. This place is exactly what they mean when they say 'tropical island paradise'. Here we could just kick back with no agenda and enjoy our last dash at being warm before moving to London. Our days were spent pretty much doing the same thing; lazing about, swimming, lazing about, eating, etc. Consequently, there's not much to write about (and it's getting late) so I'll leave you with this video we took at Maya Bay (set of The Beach). When we swam out to the boat from this beach, I planted my hand on a submerged urchin, and to this day I have a piece of it in my finger.

The long version, part 2.

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Anyone who grew up watching Indiana Jones will testify to fantasising about finding ancient lost cities in the jungle. The older you get though the reality kicks in that it will never happen, and you accept that the earth is fully mapped and discovered and you move on. With Google Earth, that is indeed becoming the case, but if you want to recapture that wonder you felt as a kid then go no further than Siem Reap. It is a smallish town in Cambodia, right next to one of the wonders of the world — Angkor Wat and surrounding temples (read about it here).

We took a quick flight in here from Bangkok and stayed for 4 nights in order to cross something off my List, that being the temples that fill the area to the north and east Siem Reap. The town itself seems to be comprised of a lot of old French colonial buildings mingled in with typical Cambodian dwellings and you are constantly surrounded by the constant buzz of scooters and the local equivalent of a tuk-tuk, so it has a rather funky vibe — sitting under a fan beneath brick arches breathing with dust in the air, penetrating heat and hints of faded glory around the place, it's exactly the sort of place I had always pictured 'travelers' going to, but I never once thought it was a clique I could be a part of. I liked it immediately.

A short ride out of town brings you to the temples. We didn't want to be one of those sad groups of people confined to a tour bus with all it's wonderful air conditioning, so we hired a tuk-tuk and driver to get about. Our driver, Tong, was a great guy and one of the few people we met in our time there who didn't treat us like a wallet on legs, so we ended up booking him every day we were there. I highly recommend anyone else to see the area in the same manner. In a vehicle you simply rush from place to place, whereas getting about in the tuk-tuk is an experience in itself. You get a better view of the surroundings, more time to take it in, and most of all, you can feel it — the breeze, the smells, the rain even. Only way to travel.

The first place we visited was The Bayon:



This is just a small glimpse of what is the first main temple you come across when entering from the South Gate — itself an impressive structure of carved heads lining a bridge over a large moat. The Bayon continues the carved head theme to a surreal extreme. The whole building is made up of them, watching you whenever you are near. Here we discovered what makes this an awesome place to visit — an almost complete lack of tourist regulation. You are allowed to wander around the temple virtually unhindered and so as opposed to places where we had been before (Rome, Athens, Crete) you can explore every nook and cranny at your leisure without being forced down a tourist trail. It enhances the experience greatly and you get just that bit closer to being Indy himself.

Angkor Thom itself is a huge complex, and we ended spending the whole morning there, exploring it's many structures and temples, before heading on to what I was expecting to be the highlight of the trip: Ta Prohm. This is where the fantasy comes to life — it is a temple that has been left pretty much as-is in regards to the jungle taking over (in reality a fair amount of cleaning up has actually been done, or you wouldn't be able to see a thing). People with poor taste in movies will recognise this as being a location in Tomb Raider, which I haven't seen, and am very unlikely to. However, I was really looking forward to this and I was not let down. Once again, you could wander about wherever you wanted, and we scrambled through alleys, and rooms, and shrines, and all manner of rubble till we found this — a strangler fig that has consumed the previous tree that was there, and is now working on the temple. If you stop and think about it, that is one thing that really impresses on you while you are there; the sheer weight of time that surrounds you. That tree is ancient, and huge, and it's the second generation of trees growing on that spot. This place was truly lost for a long time.

The next day we had been saving up so that our first view of Angkor Wat was at sunrise. We weren't disappointed. Fortunately for us we had been given some good advice before coming here, that being that right after the sunrise, the hordes of tourists pack back into their busses and head off back into town for breakfast — leaving us and about 5 other people to explore the complex in serenity. (And it was indeed serene — the highlight was getting blessed by an octogenarian female monk in front of a shrine for no more than $1USD. What a bargain.) The place itself is an impressive feat as far as the craftsmanship s concerned. I think it is 600m to an edge, square, and every inch of it is intricately carved with repeating patterns. The man-hours that would have been required to undertake that small detail alone are staggering, let alone the level of organisation, and you get that feeling wherever you walk around the complex.

Next day was spent in much the same vein, exploring temples and being constantly in awe (and sweating. You have no idea how hot and muggy it was. Like, really hot. Really, really muggy) but I did stop to take the following video at Preah Kahn:



Hopefully this gives you a bit more of a feel for what it was like to wander through these incredible temples.