`You have no boyfriend? I be your boyfriend!!` (Marrakesh, Morocco)

Can you tell thqt men here are really forzard? A went out shopping alone while K and I took some afternoon siestas and received 3 marriage proposals. I received the above when the 3 of us were browsing in Fez: It;s positively insulting at some level at this point: We,re pretty sick of the constant ,Japon? Japon? India? India? Pakistan? Pakistan? ` becquse now we know that it is not so much a welcome as a plea for us to get into their store; buy their orange juice, etc. It,s a constant barrage. European or generally white tourists are not subjected to the sa,e thing: The only thing i heard was some girls who looked a little S. A,erican get "Shakira Shakira" tonight. I hate how all tourists are seen as walking money bags though. It,s actually much better in the local souqs than those geared tozards tourists; cuz the ppl there realize we will not be buying their cuts of meat, or zatermelon, or random household items; They did try to sell us Chinese tiger balm though... However, since all of us have pretty much filled our shopping quota or airplane weight limit, ze do not have to deal with it unless we feel like we have the patience:

Dinner tongiht was interesting: My stomach is not doing too zell =( so i,ve broken out the immodium (to my parents who i didn,t quite catch on the phone an hour ago; i am still alive and it,s not that bad) Anyhow, we decided to have Moroccan soup (harira) with their bread for dinner (bread here is quite good, flat round loaves that are nice and soft zhen fresh):We went into the enormous market square and went to the harira stall with the most locals: Here we learned that harira is not served with bread but zith these fried dough things covered zith honey and sesame seeds: According to the Casablancan couple seated across from us; these are the first two things that ppl here break fast at Ramadan with: We had a little bit of trouble understanding them, but it seems that he may have been an imam (holy man): He looked quite young though, maybe early thirties: In any case the first thing he told me zas that in their culture they do not eat ziht their left hands: This is so,ething that we had seen in the guidebook; that you should never reach into a communal dish zith your left hand; because they use their left hand for ablutions after using the toilet (I am not sure quite what this entails; but my practise has been to scrub both hands with soap and zater...) Anyzays, i switched hands so as not to offend them; We asked general questions of each other: He was trying to get K to sing so,e Bollyzood song.. K does not knoz Bollyzood songs: Then he started asking about religion in India; who is their god? zhat do they practise? We told him that most ppl there are Hindu and that Hinduism has multiple gods: He asked us how it was possible for there to be ,ultiple gods; and he made an allegory to a land zith ,any kings: We were not entirely sure whether to enter into this discussion, but their was a slight language barier anyways: In the end; they had to get going. We then got co,pletely overcharged for our food. We were hopping mad, there was no way that should have cost ,ore than 5Dh; but we were stupid once again and did not get prices dealt with before the meal.

I guess that is why I was a little pissed again at the beginning of this email: We got gypped several times by what was supposed to be an official guide to the city: We only wanted him to show us the monuments; and insisted we did not want carpets. The deal with this is that guides will often kill your time by bringing you into artisinql shop after artisnal shop; to herbalists and ultimately carpet stores; where it is nearly impossible to leave politely for at least half an hour: We pretty ,uch raced through the different sites: We ended up in one artisinal ensemble: He put us into a taxi to another place and we were beyond overcharged for that: 50Dh could have gotten the 3 of us to the next city at least. We're quite sure ,ost of the ride was just driving in cricles: Somehow we got roped into lunch with the guy:We had the presence of mind to settle on prices before we started eating: He started at a ridiculous 33Dh each for omelettes (it was not even a touristy place!! Also note that each store; restaurant or taxi ride taken during a tour; the guide receives a commission) but when we balked; it zent down to 15Dh: It ended with him wanting to show us a Touareg house (we were pretty sure it was a carpet store, but he insisted it was to see the place): Touaregs are the nomadic Berbers fro, the desert; the blue men. For whatever reason these ones picked up and bought a house in Marrakesh: What do you knoz? Carpet store. We spent half an hour in there before we convinced guide and mr. Touareg that we did not intend to purchase anything. Tour pretty much ended there, it went over the proposed half day by half an hour; for which he wanted to charge us. We said we spent half an hour eating: He said there were many more sites to see and that we should do a whole day. At this point I pulled the sick routine and said I had to return to the hotel: We finally settled on 170Dh rather than the original 150Dh: Lesson learned - no more guides. This one was so much sketchier than the Fez one:

Overall, my favorite city remains Fez for the atmosphere. However, Marrakesh has an amazing public square that is jammed with ppl for every square meter at night; Apparently it has been going for some 900 years and at some point there was discussion of turning it into a parking lot; but it was decided to keep it as it is: There are rows of fresh OJ stands; stands selling dried fruits; fresh mint, snake charmers; henna painters; fortune tellers; story tellers; acrobats; drummers, dancers; watersellers, ppl with leashed performing monkeys; ppl who take bets on boys boxing each other; carnival type ga,es zhere you try and fish for coke bottles; and finally food stands that go up in the evening and make the air all smoky: To see this from a restaurant terrace is absolutely amazing: The sheer nu,ber of ppl boggles the mind: Think SARStock pictures; but every night of the year; From this square extend the twisting zinding streets that house the souqs - here they have souqs for leather; metalwork, babouches (pointy toed shoes = it's funny, they remind me of clogs; but locals actually weqr them), clothing souqs (i bought one of those cotton chemises but not a full blown djellabah), cloth souqs, herbalists, all sort of craft stores and of course; carpet stores: