I've been to... with Matthew - Morocco

When I have something difficult to say, I often turn to Matt for guidance.

He's great at helping me turn my thoughts into words.

So, when it was time to write about Marrakesh I asked Matthew.

"How do I say this?"  "How do I say that I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would?"

Everyone raves about Marrakesh.  It was the last stop of our tour and the one I was most excited about.

I'm not sure if it's because it was last, or maybe how and where we spent our time,
but it was my least favorite.  I'm going to let Matt help me out a bit.

I've been to... Morocco.

I went in 2013 as part of an Explore Worldwide trip with Selena.  I'm sure you've been reading about our travels here on Oh, the places we will go!  We started in Malaga in Spain, travelling through Moorish hill towns to Algeciras where we boarded a ferry to Morocco.

I’ve always loved borders.  I’ve often been perplexed by how much significance is placed on a line on a map.  A line that was drawn many years ago in a place many miles away by someone who may never have even visited the region they were bifurcating.  When I lived in San Diego I used to enjoy visiting Border Field State park, which sat right at the South-Westernmost corner of the USA.  Through a slender chain link fence was Tijuana in Mexico, physically only feet away, but economically another planet.

In Europe these days, it’s often difficult to even see its borders.  We recently travelled from Austria into Slovakia, and as it was a new country for Selena we wanted to celebrate the achievement, especially as we were crossing the “Iron curtain”.  I think we noticed a crease in the landscape that might have been the border, and there were some abandoned buildings that might have formerly been a customs point, but Europe’s economic integration is now so advanced that we couldn’t be sure.

So as we boarded the ferry in Algeciras, I was really excited to be crossing a border, especially as I was crossing a new one (I’d not been to Morocco before), was crossing by an unusual means (a ferry) and we were also crossing a continental border, which is quite tricky to do.  Unless you live in Istanbul of course, where some people do it every day.

Whilst I love borders, I don’t usually care much for border towns.  Tijuana was a bit of a dump, not to mention being a very dangerous place to visit these days.  When I lived in Singapore, the excitement of crossing the border to Malaysia marginally outweighed the disappointment of then having to spend time in Johor Bahru.  Tangier in Morocco has some charming corners, but can’t be described as Morocco at its best.

Fez however, was a revelation.  Founded in 789, if you dive into the Medina and tune out the TVs and Coca Cola refrigerators, you could easily be in the middle ages.  Traditional crafts are still pursued using medieval technologies.  Mules remain the primary form of transport through the narrow, winding alleys.  Butchers ply their trade (and offer their wares) in an authentic, but disconcertingly public way. 

The sights, sounds and smells are truly alien, but are fascinating to experience.  I can think of very few places where such an authentic and ancient experience can be found.  Damascus is close, but it’s not as ancient and it’s not a particularly attractive tourist destination right now.

Explore tours are usually structured to give you a big finish.  Our tour ended in Marrakech, so we were excited to reach the desert city to see what Explore had saved for the finale.  Gwyneth Paltrow, Sienna Miller and the Beckhams love it there.  Yves-Saint Laurent and Jean-Paul Gaultier own property there.  EasyJet and Ryanair fly there.  It must be great, right?  Oh, dear.

It’s rare for me to actively dislike a place.  I disliked Caracas, but visited in 1995 during widespread rioting during Venezuela’s economic crisis, so was too scared to leave the hotel.  Central Ghana was picturesque, but my time there turned into a tour of every available toilet as I got very, very ill.  But I’d rush back to either of these places before going back to Marrakech.

Marrakech was founded in 1062, and has a medieval souk and the same blend of mosque and mystery as Fez.  But Marrakech feels fake in comparison.  First of all, everyone speaks English.  In Fez, you need Arabic, French or a range of enthusiastic hand signals to communicate (in that order).  When you find a dense concentration of English speakers in a non-English speaking country, it tells me that their primary purpose in life is not to pursue ancient crafts and traditions, but to extract money from American tourists.

The central medina is a large, open space at the centre of the city, which fills up with tourist tat during the day.  Stalls will sell you low-quality, high-priced souvenirs.  Berber women will overcharge you for “traditional” henna tattoos.  Snake charmers and monkey wranglers will pose with you, then extort cash from you for the “pleasure”.

Let me linger on this for a moment.  Don't give money to a snake charmer or a monkey wrangler, in Marrakech or elsewhere.  The snakes and monkeys are taken from the wild, kept in appalling conditions and are tortured for your entertainment.  There is nothing authentic  about the experience and as long as people continue to pay for photos, the practise will continue.  I saw a monkey attack his handler with teeth and claws bared.  I was cheering for the monkey.

At night, the Medina turns into what must be the world’s largest street-food market. Whilst this is quite an experience, and some of the food is excellent, it’s a rather intimidating experience with every pickpocket in North Africa putting in a long and lucrative shift.

There are good, ethical operators in Marrakech, such as an independent hotel and hammam that we visited a few alleys down from the central Medina (post to come).  Some of the city’s accommodation is excellent and we enjoyed some great food while we were there.  But overall, Marrakech was a disappointment.

If Marrakech was your only experience of Morocco, I can see how the exoticism and mystery of the place (not to mention the climate) would make it an attractive destination.  If your only opportunity to visit Morocco was to go to Marrakech, then go, as the country has so much to offer . 

But let me say that Fez is so much more authentic and would make for a much more enjoyable experience.  As would Rabat.  Even Casablanca felt like it would be more interesting to explore.  Easyjet and Ryanair do fly to Fez, too.  

To be honest, when I first read Matt's draft I told him I wouldn't post it.  Way too blunt.
Even though I agree with most of it, I want to talk about the positives of the places that we visit.
I want to fall in love with every place we visit.  It's easy to write the good stuff.

But, what do you say when a place disappoints.  It's not an amusement park designed for our pleasure.

It's someone's Home, Sweet Home.  How do I say that I didn't enjoy it without being offensive?  

I guess honestly.   And with the disclaimer that this is simply our experience.

We were there for a very short amount of time and saw a limited part of the city.

We had a tourist experience that left us feeling disappointed rather than the
authentic experience that we were craving.

We did have some really great moments there that I'll definitely share with you.

But, I'll steer future travelers to Fes or Rabat over Marrakesh every time.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you a bit more about my experience and why I came away with a negative perception. 

Where were you excited to visit that left you feeling a bit deflated?

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I've been to... with Matthew - Bangladesh

It's time for another guest post from Matthew.

I 've been to... Bangladesh.

In 2006, I signed up for a tour through Explore! Worldwide that promised to take us to many of India’s holiest places, travelling wherever possible by train.  The trip is still available and now starts in Kolkata, but back in 2006 the trip started in Bangladesh.  Armed with a ticket and a visa, I boarded a plane bound for Dhaka, apprehensive about what I would experience but excited to see a place that most people know little about.

 Bangladesh sits at the mouth of the Ganges delta, so there is a lot of water.

Firstly, a little history which helps explain why Explore’s tour now starts in Kolkata.  The Bengal region had been part of the British Raj, but as a result of the 1947 partition of the region, the Western portion of Bengal joined India, with the majority Muslim Eastern part becoming East Bengal (later renamed East Pakistan).  West Pakistan ruled from Islamabad, 1,600 miles away with about 1,000 miles of Indian territory in between.

East Pakistan had a larger population and was economically more significant than the West, so the population became unhappy with this arrangement and a progressively more violent independence struggle rumbled on for 20 years.  The situation came to a head in 1971 with a 9 month war which led to Bangladeshi independence.  Through the conflict, the occupying Pakistani army committed a number of atrocities, including the murder of between 300,000 and 3 million civilians (the number depends on who you talk to – the Bangladeshis are adamant it’s the higher number).

 

Quite a slogan to build a campaign around

Recently the country has held a number of war crime trials, which has unsettled the country and has made it a less attractive tourist destination.  But even in 2006, tourism was very limited and seeing a visitor was a novel experience for most Bangladeshis.  My strongest memory was of a crowd gathering to watch us whenever we stopped.  The concept of privacy is very different in that part of the world, so staring (and being stared at) was nothing unusual for the locals, no matter how uncomfortable it made us feel.

 

Look!  Tourists!

We stopped at some remote places as we travelled through the country, and sizable crowds would often gather.  We were escorted by the military, which was intended to make us feel at ease, but actually served to further highlight where we were and as the troops tended to fan out ahead of us, where we were going.  A few troubled countries with tourist industries tend to do this and it’s never been clear to me that an armed escort really helps.

 

Our escorts.  The lowest quality photo we’ve ever posted, but you get the idea.

So what is there to see in Bangladesh?  To be honest, not much.  During colonial times, it was a relatively unimportant outpost, so didn’t really benefit from the investment in great public works that more “important” colonial cities received.  The underdeveloped economy lacks the wealth to support a great infrastructure.

Very pleasant

There are some (lower scale) colonial gems to explore, such as Dhaka University, but the post-independence monuments tend to feature large quantities of concrete in unusual geometric formations.  As an example, the Jatiyo Sriti Shoudho (the National Martyrs' Memorial) is located in a small town around 30 miles outside Dhaka, which makes the country’s most interesting monument actually quite difficult to visit.

 

The National Martyrs' Memorial

The most interesting thing about Bangladesh is undoubtedly its people.  Bangladesh is the world’s 8^th most populous country, with over 150 million people crammed into a country smaller than Illinois.  So there are a lot of people living in extremely close proximity, and it’s even more cramped than it might sound as around 20% of the country is either waterway or uninhabitable swampland.

 

Travelling by water is a very developed industry

There’s a resilience to the population that you can only really understand by visiting.  We joke about “first world problems” - a quick scan of my Facebook news feed would suggest that the greatest challenge my “first world” friends face is how to complete that tricky level on Candy Crush.  Your perspective shifts when you read that 30 million Bangladeshis lost their homes during the flooding of 1998, which left two thirds of the country underwater.  The average income of the 150 million Bangladeshis is just over US $1,000.

The world is a fascinating place and a visit to Bangladesh will certainly enhance your understanding of it complexity.

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I went to... with Matthew - Qatar

 I went to...  Qatar.

In 2006, I’d just finished an 18 month assignment in Singapore, and decided to come back to the UK to visit family.  Once that decision had been taken, the next exciting job was to decide a stopover location, as indirect flights are always much cheaper than direct flights.  Even though I was unemployed, I was fortunate to be able to take some time off before looking for my next job.

I decided to stop in Qatar, and so travelled on Qatar airlines, which turned out to be an excellent choice.  Qatar occupies a small peninsula in the Arabian gulf, sharing a land border with Saudi Arabia.  Bahrain is around 20 miles away by sea and Dubai is around 235 miles to the East.

 Qatar from my hotel window.  I travelled in February, so although it looks baking hot, it was actually a very pleasant time of year to visit.

Despite being a very small country, Qatar has the third largest reserves of natural gas in the world.  The rapid development of liquefied natural gas technology in the early 2000’s allowed gas to be distributed without needing a pipeline, which brought great wealth to Qatar.  In 2009, Qatar overtook Luxembourg as the country with the highest average income in the world.  That doesn’t quite tell the whole story though, as the 280,000 Qataris are supported by 1.6 million migrant workers who do not share in the wealth to quite the same extent as the Qataris.  As a result of the huge migrant workforce, my favourite statistic about Qatar is that 74% of the residents of the country are male.

Qatar’s capital (and only real city) is Doha, which is a very picturesque city built on a bay.  The waterfront is fringed by a delightful cornice, that runs for around 3 miles and provides a great opportunity for strolling and people watching.  At one end of the corniche is a vast mall, with the usual designer label stores, restaurants, cinemas and, perhaps surprisingly, a huge ice rink.

At the other end of the cornice is a large residential area for the migrant workforce.  There were markets, mosques and restaurants, but as they serviced a population drawn almost exclusively from the Indian sub-continent, the feeling of the place was much more like Delhi, Lahore or Dhaka than a major Middle Eastern capital.  This created a contrast which I actually really liked.

I found Qatar to be the probably the most strongly Islamic place I have ever visited, more so than Kuwait, Dubai and far more than you find in the Islamic parts of Asia  I don’t believe I saw an uncovered woman in the entire time I was there, and the (male) crowds at Friday prayers spilled out of every mosque.  The sale of alcohol was restricted to a small number of  bars which were very well hidden in luxury hotels.  Nevertheless, most of the customers in these bars were locals - it was rather disconcerting to sip on my Heineken while sitting next to a gent in full thawb and kufiya who was chugging a Stella Artois.

 Skyline work in progress

Back in 2006, Qatar’s wealth was building exponentially, and the country was in a phase of huge building works.  Nevertheless, I could sense a realisation that the gas would eventually run out, something I’d also felt when I visited Dubai and Kuwait.  It felt that the respective governments had recognised their long term obligation to provide for their populations when the oil and gas ran out, and each of the major states was trying to find a way to differentiate themselves from their neighbours so as to attract investment and tourists.

 Meet Orry, the mascot of the 15^th Asian Games. 

 A Qatari Oryx, if you were wondering.

Qatar picked sport.  In a surprise decision, it had been selected as the host of the 2006 Asian games, a decision Malaysia described as “ridiculous” and which China felt was “disappointing” (I’ll come back to this theme later…).   Despite the controversy, Qatar was proudly advertising its upcoming hosting responsibilities during my visit with a countdown clock on the cornice.

The old and the new are never far apart in the Arabian peninsula

In 2010, Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup, beating out the USA, South Korea, Japan and Australia.  Giving the hosting rights to a country that has never qualified for the competition (and based on a global ranking of 106, would probably never qualify), was a controversial decision, to say the least.  It certainly satisfies world football’s desire to take the tournament to new parts of the world, but there are lingering suspicions of corruption in the bidding process.

Another problem is that the tournament is traditionally held in the Northern Hemisphere summer, where temperatures in Qatar can reach 50 degrees Celsius.  Qatar’s bid included a promise to build air-conditioned stadiums, although there are concerns over fan well-being when travelling to and from games.  The latest thinking is that the 2022 tournament will be rescheduled to the winter months, which would solve the heat issue, but which would require substantial concessions from national football federations.

Since I visited Qatar nearly a decade ago, the development has continued and Doha has become an even more desirable stopover.  A museum of Islamic art has been built on the corniche, which was quickly rated as one of the great museums of the world.  Qatar has boosted its sporting credentials by hosting major cycling and tennis events and a Qatari recently won the Paris-Dakar rally.  A long mooted bridge connecting the country to Bahrain is shortly to be built.   

A fascinating part of the world, that is well worth at least a stopover.

Matt

We've had such a positive response now that Matthew is contributing regularly to the blog.

Thanks so much for all of your great comments.

 

We're home from Barcelona this evening.

I can't wait to tell you all about it.

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I've been to... with Matthew - Northern Ireland

Today Matthew is adding to his series "I've been to..."

I've been to Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland has been synonymous with “The Troubles” for most of my lifetime, so visiting Belfast was my opportunity to see the epicentre of the conflict for myself.

The conflict in Northern Ireland is a complicated one to explain briefly.  The population is made up of around 65% loyalists, in the sense that they are loyal to the Queen.  They are predominantly protestant.  Around 35% of the population see themselves as republicans, in the sense that they would like to see the 6 counties of Northern Ireland join the 26 counties as the Republic of Ireland.  They are predominantly catholic.

Things were complicated by the fact that the constitution of the Republic of Ireland laid claim to the territory of Northern Ireland, and people born in Northern Ireland could choose between British and Irish citizenship.

After suffering general unrest since the Irish war of independence in 1920, the troubles began in earnest in the late 60’s, and raged through the 70’s and 80’s, increasingly spilling over to the British mainland.  I moved to London in 1992, and the threat of terrorism was a daily fact of life.  London had developed a reputation of being a dirty city, but when you lived there you quickly realised that this was because the authorities had taken away all the rubbish bins.  They represented a very convenient place to hide bombs.

The tube was frequently suspended as any unattended package was assumed to be a bomb, forcing a shut-down of the line.  I clearly remember the emotions when being evacuated from a station because of a suspect package – you knew it was almost certainly it was a false alarm, but the IRA did leave bombs on tubes in 1991 and 1992 so there was a real sense of fear as you (and several thousand others) tried to leave the station as quickly as possible.  You can imagine the anxiety in the air.

The troubles became very real for me on December 10^th, 1992.  I was living in North London, and I’d got home unusually early, so was watching the 6 o’clock news with my flatmate.  Suddenly, there was a dull whoomph, and the bay windows to the garden bowed inwards before vibrating violently for several seconds.  We looked at each other, and almost simultaneously there was a report on the news that the IRA had called in a bomb warning to our local tube station, which was about 1/3 of a mile away.

The IRA realised that murdering innocent British civilians was bad for their PR, so they generally issued coded warnings to allow the authorities to evacuate civilians.  The police were seen as weapons of the oppressive British government, and therefore they were “legitimate” targets – the plan was to kill members of the emergency services as they completed evacuations.

I must have been one of the last people to travel through the station before it was closed.  Nobody was injured in the attack, but as it turned out, the blast we’d experienced had been from the detonator.  The IRA had packed a van with a fertilizer bomb, but the bulk of the explosives hadn’t been triggered by the detonator.  I can only imagine the damage that the bomb would have caused if the entire device had gone off.

The Good Friday agreement of 1998 effectively brought the troubles to an end, although there is still tension and the occasional outbreak of violence.  The agreement saw a devolution of government to the country, with power shared between the loyalist and republican communities.  A referendum was also held in the Republic of Ireland, through which 94% of voters agreed to amend the Irish constitution, removing the territorial claim to the 6 counties of Northern Ireland.

Belfast today is a city which today shows the scars of its past, mainly in the form of the extraordinary murals painted on the many buildings.   

 

There are also a number of “peace walls”, large barriers built to separate the two communities.  Before the walls, a loyalist garden might back onto a republican garden, producing tension and conflict that the authorities could do without. 

It’s hard to believe that these walls can exist in your own country in the 21^st century, as they look like they belong in see in Berlin or the Gaza strip,  But they are a reality and many of them actually have been constructed after the signing of the Good Friday agreement.

We took an open top bus trip around the city and experienced an echo of the bad old days.  The bus had to be diverted from its normal route down the loyalist Shankill road because of a demonstration taking place.   (This is why most of our particular photos show Republican imagery.)   It turned out to be an extension of a demonstration we saw outside Belfast town hall.

In 2012, a city council resolution limited the number of days on which the Union Jack (the British flag) could fly over Belfast to a maximum of 18 days a year, having previously been flown every day of the year.  Understandably, loyalists are extremely unhappy about not being able to fly their nation’s flag over the city’s main buildings.  It’s hard to imagine any other place where a group of politicians can decide to ban the flying of their country’s flag, but given Northern Ireland’s history, for the most serious issue of the day to be a dispute over the flying of a flag represents real progress.

It was fascinating to visit Belfast.  Tourism is growing strongly, driven in no small part by interest in understanding the troubles.  It is ironic that the thing that once drove the community apart is now something that brings it together.  We received a very warm welcome from everyone we met, and people seemed happy to finally be able to welcome people to their great city after so many years of isolation.

 We had a great time in Belfast.  We both felt very welcome and safe.

As Matthew mentioned, we toured Belfast on a double decker bus.

We chose a local family run business that did a decent job with the tour.

But, I will say that we felt very conspicuous driving through these neighborhoods snapping photos atop a big green bus.  The reality of the conflicts in Belfast are very current.

Looking back I would chose to take a Black Cab Tour instead.

They come very highly recommended and think it's important to hear this story.

Have you toured Belfast?  We'd love to hear your stories.

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