photos from Marrakesh, on a cold cold day

its getting cold here in bath! and there's like little drizzles all day.. bought most of the things necessary to make the room cozy so i'm really enjoying staying at the hostel! still having orientation at school though, and everything is still very relaxed. can't wait to settle my modules!

orientation's really different here. no freshmen teambuilding camps, sports camps, smuz camps, asoc camps.. only bashes and parties haha.. went to one last night for international students with gav, mich, sueann, geri and shun hao (bathies for short) and it was quite lousy.. haha at least there was free food, but the music was weird, and the crowd, if you can call it a crowd.. was weird too.. so we went back for a mooncake festival get together! thanks shunhao for the mooncakes by the way! it totally reminded all of us of home..

Anyway I've finally managed to put together a FIRST batch of photos from Marrakesh, which is mainly about the souks and the main square there called Place Jemaa El Fna. the Souks are small little shops that line narrow winding streets, supposedly with alot of pickpockets, but we all got through unscathed :) Marrakesh was such a refreshing break from all the european cities, and so different! all the buildings are like red in colour, and green doors are a popular choice. i think its their national colours, which adorns the national flag and soccer team too.. Problem with Marrakesh is, it is so touristy! I heard tourism contributes to almost 50% of Morroco's GDP, and Marrakesh is just full of tourists, and everybody is just out to snatch the tourist dollar. Add to this the high unemployment and 50% literacy rate.. you get a high degree of desperation which shows in people's attitudes, especially towards tourists.

People will ask for money for any reason.. or for no reason at all.. alot of the photos shown below were followed by heckling for dirhams, which is the morrocan currency. We had dinner with the French lady who was the owner of the Riad, and she was lamenting that Morroco was a difficult country to govern due to the fact there was two distinct ethnicities, the arabs and the berbers, and both spoke differnet languages, and there was no true morrocan language. People would speak French, Arab and/or Berber.

Putting those difficulties aside, Morrocco is lovely in its own way, but I have to admit, the experience was so much better due to the beautiful Riad we were staying at, and that Gavin is such a great travelling companion (of course he typed that) ANYWAY. but yah.. 5 days was just nice :)

Photos from the souks! more from marrakesh and the SAHARA desert soon..