Retro-blogging Morocco Part 1: A Bumpy Start

From Thursday, February 25, 2010


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CAIRO AIRPORT, around 7PM local time. It's raining in Cairo -- lightly at the moment, but enough throughout the day to give the runways a slick, unsettling sheen. For today, I'm only here to change flights between Doha and Casablanca. Once in Morocco, I don't really know where I'll end up. Our plane just took off, so the wet runways aren't such a problem anymore, but instead it's the streaks of lighting flashing across the sky. They're in view outside the window, crackling just beyond the wingtip.

Normally I love flying.


CASABLANCA, past midnight local time. Morocco is three hours behind Qatar. The Moroccan dirham (MAD) trades at roughly 8 dirham to tfhe US dollar, or $12 for every 100 dirham. I'm staying in a 90 dirham room, somewhere in the middle of -- well, I'll find out the neighborhood tomorrow.

Without success, I did try to plan out one thing for this trip ahead of time -- the hotel or hostel where I'd stay for the first night. Yesterday morning, I thought it could be a good idea to make an advance booking, so I googled the cheapest hostel I could find and dialed them up:

"Yes, hello," said a gruff voice on the other end.

"Hi, is this the Casablanca Youth Hostel?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a bed for tomorrow night?"

"Yes."

"Could I make a reservation for tomorrow night, then?"

"Yes. We will have a bed for you." He hung up.

I landed in Casablanca around 11PM today -- too late to catch a train from the airport, so the only other alternative was a taxi from the airport.

There are two types of taxis in Morocco: grand taxis and petit taxis, generally used to cover inter-city and intra-city distances, respectively. The former was the only type parked outside the terminal. The cars are old boxy Mercedes that cost 300 dirham a car from the airport, shared amongst whoever is riding. Not able to find anyone at this hour going to the same part of town as me, I sucked it up and paid for a whole car.

As we pulled away from the airport, I gave the driver the phone number of the place where I was staying. He called them up, and some unexpected arguing in Arabic ensued. He then handed the phone off to me:

"Do you have a reservation?" said the man in the phone.

"Yes, I called yesterday."

"That was over the phone ... did you make a reservation over internet?"

"I called, asked to make a reservation, and you said you'd have a bed for me."

"Yes, but that doesn't count! There is a group here tonight, and no beds left!" Hung up again.

For a minute, I sat there in the taxi, which was by then zooming down a highway into the city, wondering if I'd end up finding a place tonight. Having heard everything, the driver he said he could drop me off in town, and then a petit taxi could take me around until I found a hotel -- he knew of a few places, but not their rates. More taxi fare! Talk about an expensive ride from the airport. There wasn't much I could do at this point, though.

The driver flagged down the first petit taxi he saw and told the new driver my dilemma. I unloaded my backpack from one backseat and tossed it into the next, and we were off again. Let me say now that Casablanca looks super seedy at night -- the tiny red car that I was now riding in turned off the main road and into a grungy, poorly-lit section of town, each turn taking me onto a road literally shadier than the last.

The first hotel we stopped at was 450 dirham a night -- next. The second, no vacancies. After 10 minutes of trying hotels that were like these -- either out of my budget or completely booked -- we finally found the "Hotel Touring," where I am now. The room was a little musty but good enough, so I paid the driver for putting up with me and he sped off. The man working the hotel desk was friendly and helpful -- he also hoped I could translate a Japanese entry in his guestbook for him, and was a little disappointed when he found out I couldn't. Anyway, I was exhausted by then, so I said good night and went up to my room, where I'm about to crash.

Bumpy start today, but inshallah this week is going to be an adventure.

Going to Morocco

Tomorrow I'm jetting off to Morocco with Baby Blue backpack -- the one I bought on sale in a rush right before our first holiday here, the one that's seen me through five countries, the one I've inevitably grown attached to -- slung over my shoulders one more time.



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I'm solo travelling this time and have only the faintest sketch of a plan in my mind. All I know for sure is that I arrive in Casablanca Thursday night, and whatever happens, I'll have to be back in a week.

World Schools Debating Championships

So, I've been on a long hiatus. Starting from where I left off, I flew off to China back in December. I landed in Beijing and Nanjing to find all blogging websites and Facebook blocked (quipped someone later, "Then what's the point of the internet?"). As a result, I decided at the time to just put blogging on hold for two weeks.

Needless to say, it's lasted a little longer than that. Time to start up again.



This year the World Schools Debating Championships are being held in Qatar, and today was the Octofinals round, with the motion: "This house believes that we should have no laws which restrict free speech."

I got to sit in on one of the match-ups today: Wales vs. Israel (I did a double take too. Yes, here).

Anyway, both teams were very good -- I've never been on a debate team, so this is really the first time I've gotten the chance to see high school debating at this high a level.

P.S. Wales won.

Raining in Doha

After almost four months of dusty and humid -- but mostly cloudless -- weather, we got three straight days of rain this past week, complete with awesome lighting and thunder. Photos reblogged from Jakob [1] [2].


Driving to work. There isn't much at all in the way of drainage in this city. A little rain goes a long way toward throwing off everyone's morning commute.


One of the many "Think" campaign signs on campus, looking a little more subdued yesterday.

Physics 208, khalas

Physics 208 and the final are over, which means I'm halfway through a year in Qatar now (that's too soon). In a month, team Physics will be meeting a new class of first-years, but all the same, I'm going to miss seeing the second-years on such a regular basis. Most of our job, day in and day out, is exactly as advertised -- teaching physics and grading homework -- but one of the best parts otherwise has been to get to know our students little by little as they've come into the office throughout the semester. By either nationality or residence, we've had students this semester who are from right here Qatar, in addition to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, India, Pakistan, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, the USA, and more places I'm sure I've forgotten. And they have lots of stories, all told. It's been fun comparing notes on our 90s childhoods and video games and the high school years, sharing travel suggestions and visa horror stories, getting lessons in Arabic (my "2nd grade handwriting" notwithstanding), and, maybe just even exchanging a prank or two.

In the meantime, khalas. I fly to China on the 16th, and classes start up again on Jan 10.

Retro-blogging Oman Part 1: Marhaba Oman

From Thurs, November 26, 2009


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Happy American Thanksgiving -- though, I'm spent and going to bed early tonight. I think I should have ordered that cappuccino at dinner. Preparations yesterday were sort of haphazard: I stuffed my backpack with the essentials and went straight to bed ASAP (but not soon enough), got up today at 3am to catch a 4am taxi, and flew -- see map -- from Doha to Bahrain to Muscat.

I caught up on sleep where possible. From Doha to Bahrain, it's usually less than half an hour in the air, but the flight was held at the gate and delayed for another hour. I fell asleep right after strapping into my seat on the plane, so this news was lost on me, and I woke up sometime later to see Jakob snapping pictures of a city skyline below us. Seeing the time, I asked "Oh hey, are we there now?" to which he answered "Nah that's our apartment down there...we just took off." So I started out the day quite disoriented.

We got to Bahrain with minutes to spare and rendezvoused at the gate with Adam, who'd arrived the night before. It may have just been the shortest length of time I've spent in any single country connecting to another flight.

Anyway, everything worked out and we're here: marhaba bikum fii Oman! Basics first. The exchange rate is 1 Omani Rial (RO) = 2.6 USD. Or, since I'm getting used to Qatari Riyal (QR) now, it's easier for me to think that 1 RO = 10 QR. Then you just shift the decimal point over on the prices -- like the metric system, for money. It feels like things get pricey here if we're not careful. We're staying at the Golden Oasis Hotel, one of the cheaper options in town, for 70 USD total tonight. A ride from the airport to the hotel was 8 RO. The equivalent in Doha, I think, would be half as much.

Leading Oman is Sultan Qaboos: his portrait adorns almost every major bridge, hangs inside every public building and is rendered on every paper bill denomination of the Omani Rial. As the history goes (I was on Wikipedia a lot before this trip), he came to power in 1970 and is largely responsible for the country's gradual but -- by all first impressions -- effective modernization in the decades since. We're still new to the country, but at the very least, the infrastructure is impressive. The view along the airport-to-hotel drive is pretty: there's been a lot of effort that's been put into greening the roadsides and the median, but surrounding the highway, further out, are low, rocky, desert mountains. It's definitely not the flatness we've been used to. Oman and Qatar are both in the same Gulf region, but you wouldn't know it from their landscapes.

We almost didn't find a rental car because of the rush of reservations for the Eid holiday, but the hotel staff pulled through for us late in the day. With Adam driving the new Nissan Tiida, we drove off to the local corniche and wandered around the Mutrah area and the souqs. The roads are illuminated tonight by a kaleidoscope of colored lights, ostensibly in anticipation of Eid, but I couldn't stop thinking we were on some Gulf MarioKart version of Rainbow Road. But they looked cool -- very festive. Festive but funny.

Last picture -- rows of the Omani khanjar (ceremonial dagger):

Retro-blogging IstanBulgaria Part 8: Sofia and Rila

[I know; the remainder of these are so overdue. To view all of the Turkey/Bulgaria entries, click the "Turkey and Bulgaria Trip" label, either at the bottom of this post or over on the right-hand navigation bar. It'll pick out all of these entries and display them in reverse order.]

From Tues, September 22, 2009


View Rila day trip in a larger map

10:15 am -- The bus we're on now is far less comfortable than the one that took us into Sofia yesterday. Here in the back, the noise of the engine all but drowns out our conversation, the smell of diesel fumes is overpowering, and all the seats and walls are a dull shade of brown like the inside of my 5th grade school bus (the deja vu is satisfying but fleetingly so). I'm quite sure the vehicle couldn't have come off the factory line any later than the 80s. The driver's face occasionally glances our way in his rearview mirror, and we think he may be blind in one eye but have decided against asking, now that we're chugging along on the road.

We're on the way to the town of Rila. Onward from there to Rila Monastery, tucked away in the mountains but one of the main must-sees of Bulgaria.

Presently, we've just left Dupnitsa, a quiet tiny town at the foot of the mountains. We only stayed long enough to grab a meal before transferring to the bus we're on now. To get here, though, we woke up before the first light of morning and got on a bus leaving Sofia at the crack of dawn. It stopped near Dupnitsa by the side of the highway, from which we had to find our way on foot to the actual bus station. We were directed to follow the signs, and it took longer than it probably should have: one sign said in Bulgarian, "Aftogara," which, I only belatedly realized, resembled the word for "bus station" in French.

A thought: I'd like to have a serious talk with my high school self about why foreign languages are important and why I should have kept learning after graduating. It would have been worth it.

As for yesterday, we spent all of it wandering around Sofia. It was different than any of the places I expect we'll see today, with more trappings of a major city -- the buildings actually rise up around you, and there are more historical monuments to explore and parks to relax in. Once again, we checked ourselves into a hostel, this one run by an initially intimidating middle-aged lady who spoke in a thick accent. I would call the accent Bulgarian, but my ear so far is only sharp enough to discern that it's vaguely Eastern European. Ultimately, she was quite helpful and generous to us. We got some good restaurant tips from her, and when we bought ourselves a bottle of wine in the evening, she let us borrow her glasses to polish it off.

There's not much to say about Sofia that can't be better shown through pictures, but if there's one thing worth noting, it's the giant shift in social climate as we've hopped westward over this break. Granted, Qatar is progressive relative to its immediate neighbors, but it's still a country where it's inappropriate at best to show shoulders and thighs, where alcohol is tightly regulated through buying permits, and where it's technically unlawful to be eating and drinking publicly during Ramadan daylight hours. Then we arrived in Turkey, a Muslim majority country with an officially secular government. Mosques feature prominently in the Istanbul cityscape, but at the same time, bars do a healthy business serving raki and still stiffer drinks. Bulgaria simply takes it one step further. Beer is painlessly inexpensive, at about 1 USD or less for the cheapest tap. Lingerie stores abound on every other block, and gentleman's establishments, while not uncomfortably common, are openly advertised on signposts at main intersections. For better or worse, this place is obviously a world away from Doha.

9:40 PM -- Back in Sofia. One hour left til we have to catch the overnight train to Burgas. I'm slouched around the tables of the now-too-familiar bus station, while we all catch up email and catch our breaths. Rila and all around was worth the trip. Once we got to the monastery, we wandered around it for some time with the tourist crowds, before striking out into the mountains ourselves. We went up into the hills until happening upon a tiny retreat in the mountains. Rested for a bit, then headed back. It was beautiful; see for yourself.