Traveling is fun. Or interesting. Or a survival trip. By the end of the day, the way I see it, independent of what it is, as long as the destination and the trip isn’t boring, it’s always worthwhile. Each of us is different – our personalities are different, our interests, our way of living, expectations. I hate people saying you should do that or you shouldn’t do that. Usually, the only thing someone can say about most of the issues is how they feel about it or how it turned out for THEM. T... read more

Hmm, great title. Unfortunately I don’t really know about any myths. But I know about the impression Morocco might leave. It might leave the impression that everyone are using drugs, everyone are selling drugs, everyone are drinking, everyone are trying to rip you off, everyone are trying to sell you something, all Moroccan men are spending their days in the cafeterias in the streets, the police is corrupt, people are dirty, there’s disease everywhere, there’s lots of poor people and so on. W... read more

If you came to me and asked how were the prices in Morocco I’d need to answer „It depends”. I wouldn’t be lying and I wouldn’t be avoiding your question. Because it really does depend on a lot of factors. When in other just a bit more civilized countries there are usually just more expensive towns and less expensive towns, more expensive restaurants and less expensive restaurants then in Morocco there are more variables. If you’re from United States you can expect to pay a lot more for the sim... read more

I don’t know if you should go to Morocco if you wanted to have a holiday full of different great food. But then again, I wouldn’t send you to any country under these circumstances – I’d just suggest you to go shopping in the supermarket. But the food in Morocco is good. I won’t even talk about the salads and drinks you can get before you start eating your main course – in most cases they are good but I’d still go with French food instead. Some most traditional foods in Morocco are Tajin (Mor... read more

When you first enter Morocco, you are required to fill out a form and fill in fields such as your name, your flight number, your departure airport, the place you’re going to stay in Morocco, reason for traveling and your occupation. In most cases feel free to write down your correct occupation. However, not every time might it be a good idea. Jailing local journalists in Morocco isn’t very uncommon practice. Back in 2003 journalists were sentenced to prison for insulting the monarch. In 2007... read more

When in Morocco you’ll get in contact with a lot of people who want to sell you something. One theory says that you shouldn’t even answer them and move on or watch in a different direction. While it might work, I don’t like that much plus in many cases it might not work anyhow. The reason I don’t like it – maybe it’s just me but it’s not polite. While they might want to sell you something, it IS their job and why should you be impolite towards people just doing their job? And the other thing ... read more

Before going to Morocco, the friend I was traveling with, said it’s difficult to find clean hotels. At least from his experience in Morocco the last time he was there. He might have been right at that time – as he was using even cheaper hotels ( probably something like 50-80 Dirhams a face) we were in this time (75-125 Dirhams a face). But what we saw during our trip this time – you can find pretty great hotels for very little money. For 230 Dirhams for a room for two you could get a very nic... read more

In Morocco, everyone are working. Except for the mothers with their up-to-two-year-old children on the streets begging for money, it seems everyone in Morocco really are working. Usually instead of begging people call their activities work. We don’t even have to talk about the numerous street-sellers here. Even though there’s really hundreds of people working in this „industry” on every street. Selling watches, perfumes, sunglasses, cleaning your shoes. In many cases the „service” indust... read more

We all know about Darwin’s theories. The strongest survives, the species that can adapt the quickest survive and so on. It’s the same with traffic in Morocco. At first glance it seems that people can drive (I mean, they must, considering the driving culture over there) but it seems that there are no rules or other laws related to it. That’s the impression anyway. Whenever you’re behind the wheel, you need to pay attention. In Morocco, you need to pay attention 3 times more. You can’t count on... read more

It was December 3rd, the weather wasn’t too bad, especially considering when we started our trip, there were snowstorms. Now all that was there was a bit of rain. Our flight was supposed to leave at 7am the next day so we had loads of time to waste. It was around 16pm when we arrived in Weeze and now we decided to walk to the villages nearby to get something to eat and drink a beer or two. The first little place we walked to was about 3 km from the airport and I think there was only one pub.... read more

It was about midnight and we had no further plans. Yet we had two days til’ our flight back to Riga. Trying to decide where to go next, we considered taking a bus to Düsseldorf, or Essen, or Köln or ... at some point we noticed a bus to Amsterdam and decided to go to Netherlands instead. We arrived in the Central Station of Amsterdam around 15 minutes before 3am. Some girls from United States were on the same bus and none of us wanted to pay for the hotel that night so we decided to find an ... read more

We bought the tickets to Essaouira and waited for our bus. Well, about one and a half hours later the bus still wasn’t there and I went to talk to the guy who sold us the tickets. Would have been nice if he mentioned it before, but now he said there was no room in the bus and the next one goes in about 8 hours. So much of that plan. Fortunately we managed to sell our tickets back and as we didn’t have much time before our plane from Marrakech back to Düsseldorf-Weeze anyhow, we decided to go ... read more

Foreign journalists or people working in the fields related are not very welcome in Morocco and especially in Western Sahara. So writers of any kind usually tend to claim some other title when asked for occupation. Before going to Laayoune couple of days back me and my friend had stayed in Agadir for two days, walking in every possible direction, so we already knew our way to the beach (not always did we know the way back, but that’s already a different story). And we also knew that there’s a... read more

We left Laayoune at about 1900, the time which happened to be the exact time in the bus schedule as well. That was surprising, considering so far none of our transportation in Morocco had been on-time. Quite refreshing, isn’t it? This time, it wasn’t just the locals and the two of us in the bus. The third tourist in Laayoune, the English teacher was heading back to Agadir as well. Like on our way from Agadir to Laayoune, we again saw something like ten or more police stops. And we were as... read more

„My name is Islam,” said the local guy from Laayoune couple of minutes after starting a conversation with us. He had come to speak to us in order to practice English and talk to foreigners in Laayoune. And it was quite obvious we weren’t from around there due to our skin color and hair. Islam has a dream, the American dream. He wants to go to the United States of America and work as an auto mechanic, occupation he knew quite much about, having worked on the same job in Laayoune since young a... read more

Upon making the decision to go to Western Sahara all I really expected to see was a usual bomb-hole. And what we saw during our first hour of stay there, it was exactly what I expected. But once we got to the “right side” of the town, it was as nice as Agadir or new town in Marrakech, why not. And in this part of the town there was really no sign of anything Western Sahara could represent. We found ourselves a hotel, paid something like 200 Dirhams for it again and except for the missing picture... read more

Fortunately by the time we got to Laayoune, the sun was already up and after a cold night in the bus we were starting to warm up. Besides the sandy football field with dozens of too many people were kicking the ball back and forth (as you can see, I’m not a huge football fan, shoot me) there was a closed cafeteria, shop for carpets and closed office for SupraTours (office for one of the normal bus companies), nearby we also noticed an internet cafe. Before anything else we decided to smoke s... read more

Western Sahara was annexed with Morocco in 1976 and about half of the native population fled to Algeria where most of them still reside in five specially created refugee camps. No countries have officially recognized the country. „A guerrilla war with the Polisario Front contesting Rabat's sovereignty ended in a 1991 UN-brokered cease-fire; a UN-organized referendum on final status has been repeatedly postponed. In April 2007, Morocco presented an autonomy plan for the territory to the UN, which... read more

Remember that in Morocco, taking one wrong turn might result in a number of wrong turns (in which cases you won’t even be able to decide on the last turn, confusing, eh?). And by taking the bus by a wrong company which cost more, took more time and was more uncomfortable than the “right” bus, we didn’t really reach Agadir but its transportation center (Inezgane) about 12km away from Agadir. The station for the better buses is also about 12 km from the center of the town, but these stations are s... read more

Getting to the bus station is usually easy, you just look for signs to "Gare routiere". But in Morocco, in many cities, there seem to be at least two different bus stations. One for stupid people and one for just a bit smarter ones. Or okay, I could say that one is for poor people and the other is for rich people, but that would be a plain lie. The main difference there is – the busses in one station are old, ugly and if it catches fire, I guess it’s a normal thing. And in the same bus station, ... read more

The name Marrakech comes from a Berber language and means a Land of God. With its one million inhabitants the city is divided between two parts – the new town (Gueliz) and the old town (Medina). Couple of decades ago Marrakech not only was the name of the city, but referred to the country itself. Morocco as a country was known by many as the Kingdom of Marrakech. Marrakech airport has been built to use solar energy to heat and power the building. While we were there, the screen showing a... read more

Planes, trains, buses, taxis – after more than 70 hours of travelling using all of these modes of transportation, I’m back. Big as hell, twice as ugly, as they say. November 23rd 2008 – for the first time this year we experience snowstorms in Estonia. Just to get to the bus station after a birthday party of my Morocco travel buddy turned out to be a survival trip. I had no ears and my head was turning into a ball of ice – that’s what it felt like anyhow and considering I didn’t need a joint ... read more

A friend of mine has asked me quite a few times if I’d like to go to Morocco with him. He’s been there before but thought that even though it shouldn’t be too dangerous, he wouldn’t like to take the trip to West-Sahara, more specifically Laayoune alone. Last time he was in Morocco his bus caught fire, go figure. I do hope it won’t happen this time, at least not while I’m there. Or if it does, I hope I can at least get a few good shots of it. If I remember correctly (well, I got my friend to ... read more

Until now I’ve usually gone abroad about once a year. Main destination has been France. I’ve hitch-hiked, taken 12-hour night trains and of course, used a bit more comfortable way of traveling – floating through air on planes. The upcoming plans however have just a bit different expectations, mainly frequency-wise. I intend to go to a new trip every 2 months if not a lot more often and write about it, show you pictures of the destinations, videos and a lot more. I’m not a plan-ahead guy so I ... read more

Just to get this blog started, here's one article about my trip couple of years ago. Traveling from Estonia to Spain and back, covering about 8000km altogether, passing through Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Germany and France, is not the easiest trip to take, is it? Might be, but try doing it by hitch-hiking all the way and by never staying the night in some hotel, but rather using alternative ways. What is hitch-hiking anyway? In many countries it is recognized as an alternative way of trav... read more