On a side note, Happy Valentine’s my dear Xin Yi! Thanks for teaching me how to love and for letting me love you for the past 28 months. We no longer celebrate monthsary but everyday with you is equivalent to a celebration:) even though we are not together physically, our hearts are still connected. Seeing so many couples in thie exchange and hearing their love stories make me understand that every couple is unique and I am very happy and thankful to be able to write this story with you:) i love you!
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Marrakech -> M’Hamid -> Zagora -> Marrakech
It’s been awhile since I blogged. Haha for one, I am quite busy and lazy at the same time. But yay because my profs like my group’s presentation and he gave us A for almost every component. “Good take on the business perspective”. Eh, 我读 finance 不是盖的. Hahaha, just kidding, I thought the cost calculation is quite crappy for all the assumptions we had to make tbh. Whatever, they like it can already!
So at the start of January, after my family left, Xinyi and I decided to head south to Africa for the exotic experience and to escape the cold, hahaha!
The problem with travelling out of the continent is that 1) no data, have to get their plan, 2) not sure if singapore passport can enter without a visa and 3) everything is traded in their currency and their currency circulation is limited to their own country only.
So feeling really lost, we spent our new year planning for all these minute details haha. But we were really excited for our first African trip and last trip together as well. So excited that I kind of can’t sleep in the afternoon (cause we needed to hobo at the airport in the night). Xinyi snores quite loud so you can tell when she falls soundly asleep, HAHA OOPS!
We tried to cook claypot rice for dinner but kinda failed cause we are noobs and we cooked the rice before frying it in the pan. Should be the other way round so the rice wouldn’t be too sticky. Thanks to Auntie for bringing over some rice and sauce for it!
After dinner, we began to head out to the airport. Thinking if we reach early, we will be able to chope seats to sleep. But nah, Stansted airport is a sucky place to HOBO because they have limited seats and they only open the departure gates at 2.30am. We sat at Costa Coffee and waited till 3am when the ryanair counter is opened. Got in and surprisingly we cant sleep and went to eat BK instead lawls.
Luckily the plane ride was comfortable that I could sleep well for the three hours:) As the plane was hovering over Morocco, we saw patches of brown and gold(desert). It was an interesting geography there!
And finally yay to 22 degree weather, havent had a chance to shed our layer for a long time XD. When we stepped out of Marrakech airport, we started to feel the heat and well the warmth is good!
Took a bus down to the famous Jemma El Fna medina, and we were greeted by a row of fruit stalls. Essentially, all of them are selling the same thing, orange juice for 4 MAD (or 0.40c euro) and some varied fruit drink for 10 MAD (1 euro). It was perfect competition and nobody can raise the price at all. And every stall we walked past, people are persuading us to buy. The annoying thing was that the moment you walk away, they started spewing vulgarities at us – such uncouthness! We tried from one stall and the orange juice is definitely one of the nicest we had! Guess morocco is known to be an orange land hahaha!
Subsequently, we checked in the hostel and wow the riad style hostel is quite cool. Riad are houses where the room are built to face inwards, towards an indoor garden. We shared the room with just one other German guy and we had a really good sleep:)
After the check in, xinyi and I walked around the souks in the medina but the experience wasnt really pleasant because everyone is so persistent and they keep approaching us to buy the moment we set our glance onto their items. We bought some agand oil that smells really good, as recommended by a friend. So we would recommend getting it. While you are buying, do negotiate for a good price. Dont bother about finding out the quality of the oil because they are all the same – each retailer will probably tell you that their comes from some authentic source..
We also went into a really nice pastry shop that sells turkish and moroccan delights(sweets) and the shopkeeper came to entertain our silly request of buying just 200g of sweets😝
After that, we went to have dinner at one of the street stalls in the medina. Ordered kebap, tagia and harira(meat skewer, moroccan veg stew and veg soup). They are really good but what really impressed us was the MINT TEA! Its like sweetened tea with a hinge of mint inside, super refreshing after all the salty and savory dishes:) best drink in morocco, better than the orange juice haha! However, something to note is that, return all the bread and appetisers back to the waiter if you DO NOT intend to take them. They are not complimentary and they will charge you even if you take a small bite. Touristy place indeed. We also saw some exotic dishes like sheep head but I didn’t dare to try😅
On day 2, we decided we are so sick of walking around with our guards up that we decided to take a stroll down to carrefour, which is about 5 streets away. Marrakech out of the medina feels like a normal city but still doesn’t let go of the tourist air. The cities are lined with rows of orange trees and occasional cluster of national flags alongside of the rode. Mischievously, I plucked an orange and tried it with Xinyi. Its super sour, that we threw it away after one bite😅 Guess we shouldn’t have listened to the mischief and pluck it haha!
Walked into carrefour and shopped there like we are doing our regular groceries shopping. We compared prices between that of UK and we realised some stuffs are actually more expensive, like ice cream haha! Their fruits are damn cheap though! So we bought a bit of groceries and went back to the medina.
Enroute back, we walked into a park that is sponsored by the telcom provider Maroc Telcom. Quite a nice place to chill haha, we walked around and saw many families who came over to walk around. Kind of love this walk with xin haha:)
We then went back to the medina to go up some cafe @ the roof to catch the sunset. Not before we actually went down to the bakery to get our Moroccan sweets again:) the girl who served us recognised us and came right away to help us XD. But sadly she can’t take a photo with us as it is a culture thing not to reveal their faces to public:)
The sunset was beautiful but we had to order something or the people would keep coming to bother us. We could not get a good seat at the start until some Swiss couple left and gave up their seats to us:)
“We thought that by leaving, we would make someone else’s day”
thats what the lady told us, and it was definitely sweeter than the mint tea we got:)
Some couple suddenly pulled the chair and wanted to sit with us, and questioned what’s the problem when we refused them. Guess they were being racist and thought that we could be bullied. Thankfully the Swiss couple came back and defended us by saying they gave the seats to us and not anyone else. We were so touched when they help us out in the situation:) bless them!
The sunset was really beautiful in Moroccan’s uninterrupted skies and it signify a beautiful closure for our marrakech days:) (had targine again for dinner but whats new right?)
Alright, I shall break here for a while before i continue with the second part:)
CinqeMinte 