Traveling to MOROCCO in 2023? You NEED to watch this video!

assalamualaikum my friends and welcome to my channel tales from the road thanks so much for stopping by if you clicked on this video you're probably interested in the wildly interesting and mysterious kingdom of morocco i just spent two months in this beautiful country traveling from the north to the south and i've put together this guide with everything you need to know before you go so if that sounds good let's do it [Music] before we get into the content i wanted to let you know that i am on patreon the link is up here uh if you don't want to support the channel a like and a subscribe would do wonders so let's talk about morocco let's do it so now we're talking practical travel advice so i figured it would be best to start with money because everybody needs to spend it and everybody needs to use it so here we go moroccan dirham this is the currency of morocco we have the beautiful king of morocco on the front we have the lovely hassan the second mosque on the back right now the moroccan deer hum is setting it like let's say around nine to one usds and the country itself is not that expensive the important thing to know is that morocco is a very cash-based society so you're going to have to have cash with you you're going to have to use the atms or you're going to have to bring money to exchange it's important to know that the atm fee is pretty high if you have an international card sometimes i would be charged four dollars sometimes it would be charged even up to nine dollars to use the atm that's no bueno so uh i would recommend uh bringing cash to exchange but just don't do it at the airport because they have the worst exchange rates and in the country you'll get a much better deal you can get away with using your card for certain things if you're doing for example excursions or you're eating at a fancy restaurant but uh you're gonna need to have cash and uh it's just gonna it's just part of the deal so good things to know so what should i bring on my trip to morocco is there anything like special i need to know good question pierce in morocco it's just very similar to a trip to europe just the important thing to remember is that the weather is a bit different than i think people expect because people see that it's a desert country but in the winter it gets very cold especially up in the mountains so if you're going in the winter season definitely bring a jacket an umbrella would be good as it rains a lot also november december january especially the more north you go um it gets very sunny very very hot obviously in the southern part when you get into the sahara portion of morocco so a hat and sunscreen always really good things um if you're a woman traveler realize that morocco is also a conservative country in some ways so uh if you're going into something like a mosque which is which is not really that open because there's only two moss in morocco that are open uh be aware that sometimes you could have a shawl so that you can actually go in and you don't need to like worry about buying a shirt so other than that totally normal place and as far as what you should pack uh that's kind of the be i'll end all of it one thing to note is that morocco uses the european charger so if you're going to moroccan you want to plug in if you don't have that get a converter if you have it your money visas if you're traveling from the united states to morocco you don't need a visa you just show up with your passport good to go if you're coming from other countries especially western european countries or english-speaking native countries uh also same situation uh you get between 60 and 90 days and it's a really easy procedure sim cards um if you want to stay connected with family and friends in morocco it's actually really easy you get three choices in telecommunications companies you can do in wii you can do morocco telecom you can do orange the data is pretty cheap normally between 15 and 20 dollars for quite you know quite a large amount of gigabytes of data uh sometimes it includes calling sometimes it includes texting depends what package you get i found the speeds of the data in morocco pretty good for the phones pretty bad for the wi-fi so if you're hoping to just rely on wi-fi realize that hotels restaurants and cafes sometimes don't have very good wi-fi or no wi-fi at all so i think it's safer to get the to get the sim card all you need to do is bring your passport uh bring some cash and you'll have a sim card that connects you to the beautiful moroccan telecommunications system now let's talk coded during my stay there it would have been really hard for me to say that there was an international pandemic as almost no one in morocco wears masks there was very little disinfection stations and life was pretty much as it is or as it was pre-covered 2020. if you are very cautious about covid that could be a nightmare for you but if you don't really care about kovid that could be the best news you've ever heard the only thing is that the moroccan government is very overly responsive to some things so while i was there for example they just completely closed the borders and i almost got stuck it didn't change any of the internal policy there were no masking stations there were no quarantines there was no lockdown but uh theoretically like anything could happen the king of morocco really controls a lot of the policy and if he wants something it happens like overnight so you just got to be kind of mobile and aware and with the pandemic that's you know an always changing scenario if you do get sick however pharmacies are really easy and really available um the pharmacists don't always speak english but if you know french or spanish really helpful arabic an amazing language to know in morocco but you always can use your translator app the over-the-counter medicine situation is great they have most medicines especially western medicines and master medicines from western europe you can just show them what you want and they'll give it to you without a prescription if you get really sick you need to go to the hospital you can do private hospitals or public hospitals private hospitals are of course more expensive but decently available in any big city if you're outside of a big city for example you're doing a trek in the atlas mountains uh it's be aware that the medical system outside of big cities in morocco is pretty few and far between so uh definitely prepare um if you need something or even to have a first aid kit kind of ready for you because uh just in any sort of developing nation the medical system outside of big cities just isn't very prevalent language how do i talk to these moroccan people well it's pretty simple a lot of moroccans especially under the age of 30 speak english decently well i wouldn't say it's the best uh english speaking country out there but you could find some people with some pretty good english language skills especially those who study in university as many moroccans go to study in europe or in the united states for better opportunities as morocco is a developing nation spanish is the language of the north french is the language of the south and the rest of the country but the main language of course is derisia which is a offshoot of arabic that has adapted french and spanish traits so fun fact if you're from saudi arabia and you come to morocco even though you speak arabic fluently you would have a really tough time speaking to the locals so many people are bilingual trilingual or even quad lingual as amazigh or berber is another native language that of course is native to morocco that predates arabic so you can find lots of people speaking lots of different language it's one of the most multicultural countries i've been to with regards to language but the good news is if you need to find someone to speak your language you will find somebody safety is morocco a safe country morocco is a really safe country i think in any big city in the world you need to be aware of pickpockets of people doing devious things but in general morocco is really safe guns are really strictly outlawed so there's not a lot of gun crime and the moroccan people are very communal so people aren't necessarily doing bad things to people that often there are of course bad parts of every large city but you as a tourist probably wouldn't be going there so not something to worry about walking around at night for example in many major cities for a man like as me i felt totally normal just same experience as pretty much anywhere else i've been in the world um as a woman i have heard that uh men catcall women quite a bit and make them feel uncomfortable especially at night so that's definitely something to be aware of it's just kind of a sad reality but that is what it is um i would say overall morocco felt pretty safe and especially even in really densely packed areas and in the medina which has really like you know really small narrow alleys uh overall i never felt i never felt unsafe at any moment i think the biggest thing to worry about is just pickpockets and just to be aware of your cell phone because i've heard stories of people getting their phone ripped out of their hand every once in a while as well what about scams are there any scams i need to be aware of well that's a solid question i would say that i didn't experience any sort of scams that were obvious when you go into the medina you have a big target on your back if you don't look um arab looking or middle eastern looking uh people see you as a walking wallet so they will come up to you sometimes in aggressive ways trying to get you to buy someplace trying to go into their store um so the most basic advice i can give you is to make sure that you are strong make sure that you only want to buy things you really want to buy and to not give people money or show people money before you're willing to do anything um before there's an exchange of goods so um typically this won't happen in the newer parts of the city people will typically leave you alone but if you go to a tourist center know that people will harass you for money one of the larger scams that happens is children will come up to you looking for money typically these children are orphan children that are owned by some sort of group so if you want to give money to children and support children it's much better to find a orphanage or a charity which you can donate to rather than giving a kid on the street uh you know 10 dirham or one dollar if you really want someone who's pestering you to go away you can speak a language or a fake language that they don't know i found that was a good trick or you can put your hand on your chest like this you can bow your head and you can say shukran and do this i found that was a really good tactic because in the arab world that's a very traditional way to talk to each other and if they see that you've adapted to that culture they might think that you actually live in morocco and they will leave you alone if you just kind of keep walking they will follow you the second part of this is to always verify how much things are and always ask for a menu for example so um like for example one time i was sitting in a cafe um i saw the menu and then they were trying to charge me about 30 more than the actual menu stated i pulled up the menu and i counted it up and i said here's the real price and then they of course they of course let me pay the normal price um it's just that they assumed i would be too lazy or i didn't know enough to to change the price uh so just don't let people confuse you uh stick to your guns and uh pay the correct amount so let's talk about getting around the cities and taking day trips traveling around the country what are the best ways morocco has really good transportation actually sometimes uncomfortable but pretty good the best news is that morocco has the first high-speed railway system in all of africa so this starts in north in tangier and goes all the way to the south in casablanca it's really fast it can go up to like 300 kilometers per hour and it cuts down some serious travel time through some seriously tough terrain if you want to go to other cities that are more in the mountains or more in the desert like marrakesh or fez uh you're going to need to take the traditional old train which takes a bit longer the carts are probably from the 90s or the early 2000s so it's not so out of date to where it's kind of a disappointment but it's a reality of of traveling morocco you can take the bus um but the traffic in the large a lot of the major cities is really bad and bus travel also has to go through the countryside roads which sometimes are also not very good uh one good way to travel between cities are shark taxis sharp taxis you can see by this picture right here and they are city to city taxis that charge a flat rate normally they're shared you get in and you get one space the funniest part about this is uh in a typical sedan three in the back one in front they'll do two in front four in the back so uh if you wanna pay for two seats if you want to be a little more comfortable that is definitely a way you could do it because i will tell you it's not the most comfortable ride you've ever been on getting around in the cities is pretty easy they have a car app called karim it's it's basically like uber for the arab world so if you're in many major cities like tangier rabot or casablanca you'll be able to use this app there are many many taxis that you can find on the street that you can simply hail you have to be a little bit aggressive to get them to stop make sure that they see you uh these are also shared taxis so be aware that when you hail a taxi uh and you get in uh it's not just for you the taxis go in general directions and they pick up people on their way it's very weird at first because this is not how taxis work in at least in my part of the world but it's actually very efficient and probably better for the ecosystem and environment um the taxi driver will keep a count of how much you owe versus the rest of the passengers and the i've never actually had any problems with scam taxis as i have in many other developing countries around the world so i would say moroccan taxis are very safe very easy they just might take longer because they don't necessarily go direct because you have multiple people going to multiple destinations in one direction as opposed to you going directly in your direction if you want to rent the whole taxi you can but the taxi drivers don't always speak english get ready to use some french or some spanish depending on what city you're in so let's talk now about the moroccan people who are the moroccan people and can you interact with them well the moroccan people are an interesting blend between amazigh local culture and arab culture that has come in through years of inter-trade between the region of north africa and the middle east uh the people of morocco are so nice so generous and don't be surprised if they invite you into their home invite you to their store for a cup of tea to chat to talk and to make you feel welcome in moroccan culture they are a welcoming culture and they they they have this old sort of traveler comfort so they make sure that foreigners feel welcome and feel comfortable and they're very easy to talk to my favorite thing in morocco is watching people interact you'll see some of the world's longest handshakes you'll see lots of this you'll see lots of kissing you'll see lots of smiles and if you walk around with a local person uh and you you need to go to a destination don't be surprised if you stop one two three or four times with him talking chatting um getting free food something something of the like i noticed that people in certain neighborhoods it seemed like everybody knew each other and it's a very familial country so um i kind of love this vibe it's something very different than what we have in the united states um everyone kind of is in is in is in a bunch and everyone really knows each other so that's that's a great news about the moroccans i find it really easy to make moroccan friends um they're very friendly people so if you speak some english or you speak some spanish or you speak some french you can really go up and just talk to people and the majority of them will be very happy to uh to chat it's a very extroverted culture if although if someone comes up and talks to you out of the blue probably they're not doing it for just the reason of making friends they probably want something from you so i would say avoid those people if you are talking with a moroccan person they're very open people and they are very happy to talk about many different topics with you what i wouldn't recommend talking about is the king of morocco just leave it alone not really an important topic for you um everybody has their opinion in the country but it's not really not really yours to say much about it um i've had videos where i've talked about the king of morocco and i've gotten a lot of flack on the internet so i would just recommend not talking about the kingdom of morocco and the secondary part is don't talk about western sahara in any sort of negative way or any sort of independent way pretty much every moroccan i talked to was very adamant that western sahara is is a part of morocco and no matter what the international community says that's not going to change their mind so um i would just wouldn't talk about that as well those are the two but taboo talks i would also say islam is an interesting thing to talk about with moroccans and especially to get their opinion on how it's changed in their country over time as i've heard it's been getting more conservative and less kind of mystical as it used to be in the past some practical moroccan language advice would be my favorite words that i got to use a lot in my stay in morocco it means peace be upon you it's a greeting that they use all over the islamic world you can also say marhaba which means hello but it also means welcome and you'll hear lots of people saying marhaba pretty much any time you interact with them another good one is which is something like uh cheers or to your health or something so you hear people say that a lot when you're eating and the last thing you can learn to say is shokuran bisef which says something like thank you very much it's very formal but if you say it people seem to get very excited about it so those would be my my little my little durijo words um if you know some french or some spanish you can also mix it in there and you can find if you can you hear people speaking in the moroccan arabic you can hear a lot of words that you know because there's lots of there's lots of foreign influence over the years of colonization and colonial influence all right so practical information done now i'm going to give you guys some recommendations things that you should definitely try things that are probably worth skipping and uh my overall impression of morocco i think morocco as a tourist destination has a little bit for everyone they have a massive coastline so if you're kind of a beach guy or you like to go surfing there's lots of places for you like uh esoera beautiful beach town or tagazoot one of an uh an absolutely amazing place to go surfing uh the northern coastline that borders the mediterranean is something totally different so you could go to uzda or you could go to uh al hosima or you could go to tangier very different vibes and they all have this kind of coastal vibe the secondary part is that if you want to go to the desert there are amazing sahara regions you can go to so of course you can start in marrakech you can go to the very famous murzuga which is kind of the the moroccan kind of outpost where people do camel um camel tours through the sahara but if you talk to a lot of moroccans they recommend that you go down to western sahara and go to a city called decla which is a beautiful beach resort town very similar to let's say charm el sheikh in egypt they have really massive dunes that go directly onto the beautiful atlantic coast and it was the one place that every time i said where should i go to many different moroccans everybody recommended decla so that's an interesting um and let's say less known spot that you can definitely take a trip to i would say my highlight in morocco the places that i went um was actually rabot um it was just surprising because i assumed because it wasn't like one of the biggest tourist cities that it would be a little bit boring or there wouldn't be a good reason to go there but i found that it was an amazing city and something so so fantastic um in contrast i thought marrakesh was going to be a lot better than it actually was in my opinion i enjoyed my time in marrakech because they have very interesting riyads and it has that sort of desert lifestyle but i found the city to be very very touristy and much less enjoyable and much less authentic than a city like casablanca or a city like rebot so every city in morocco has really amazing things um palaces riyadhs historical science museums uh each place is unique in its own right and the cool part about morocco is it has a lot of historical differences depending on the region so tangier has a very different story in the north than decla does in the sahara south it's just a country with so much to offer so i would say basically there's no good or bad places each place is very different in its own right and if you want to get off the grid as well into the sahara or into the atlas mountains those are things you can do as well so um endless amounts of things to do in morocco and i think that's the best part about the country now we're gonna do the love hate section so love the mosts some of the most beautiful and creative mosts uh that you can see anywhere in the world they're so stunning hate that foreigners can't go in them foreigners can only go in two mosques in the entirety of morocco and they're very expensive and you can't you can't uh even go in the full day because the prayers prevent you from going in so if you stumble into a mosque you'll probably be asked to leave so that's a big love and hate for me love the street food culture in morocco you can find some amazing and highly diverse street food that are cooked by some master street food preparers uh and some amazing chefs but uh hate that in some cities that street food's not prevalent and in other cities street food is everywhere so living in tangier not much street food to be found but if you go to fez street food everywhere really depends where you're at so um i found that to be kind of a kind of a sad thing as a big foodie love that morocco is such an interesting diverse and very large country with so much to offer and hate that it's such a large country so you really need a lot of time to be able to explore it properly the distances between the cities are not gigantic but from the top to the bottom we're talking 8 to 10 hours of travel time if you want to go to western sahara you're probably going to have to end up flying there and if you want to go to the sahara region like like mirzuga it's it's like very far away from cities so uh it requires a lot of patience but also a lot of time so um love that there's so much to see but hate that i have to keep coming back to morocco um but also that's probably a good thing because it's a unique country that i i'm sure many people would be happy to come back time and time again for so let's talk food as a big foodie i would say morocco is a very interesting country and the food was not exactly what i imagined um as uh as a foreigner i would say that couscous is the dish that comes to mind the most when you're thinking of moroccan food but the funny part is they really only eat it one day out of the week friday after the islamic prayer services the kind of opening of the islamic sabbath everyone goes around 2 p.m to go get a big plate of couscous topped with chicken or with beef uh it's absolutely delicious they drink it with kind of like a yogurt drink and it's really good but i would not say it's the highlight of the moroccan food experiences also tagines the traditional clay pot dish of morocco can be found everywhere all the time they're pretty simple some can be a little bit more royal depending on the ingredients but i also wouldn't say that they were my highlight the highlight was certainly the food that's cooked in people's homes so if you can get that experience i would and i noticed the tagines that were made by my friend's wife were much better than the tajins that were made by some dude in a restaurant that's kind of obviously it's kind of a given the surprise for me was the amount of seafood that the moroccans eat for whatever reason when i think of moroccan food i just think of the desert so it's not really what i'm picturing but the highlight for me was the fried fish the sardines the fresh shrimp and the fantastic spicy sauces you can dip them in it's a place that's really diverse with food and has a lot of fast food options notice the moroccans really enjoy the old fast food the secondary part is the bar culture which i think is very interesting it seems like like the bars are very acceptable because it's a very uh let's say open country but because it is an islamic kind of country as well there's this sort of kind of hush-hush judgment about it all so there's two types of bars that you can find there's the one bar that's like a to like traditional normal bar that you would find lots of young people loud music people smoking inside people having beers hanging out dancing very normal and then there's the secondary bars which are like a bunch of men in their 40s who look like they're avoiding something at home most of them are at a table drinking by themselves in kind of a dark room and there's also like pretty rampant prostitution in these uh in these bars so the majority of the women are just prostitutes so uh it's just a weird sight i've went with some friends a couple times it's very fun because they play with traditional moroccan music as opposed to you know like club music or something like that but the whole vibe kind of feels a little bit like a whole bunch of people like being naughty uh i don't know how else to phrase that it's it's very funny and it's something that i i really enjoyed seeing and i haven't seen it really in any other country sort of like that because countries where alcohol is prohibited it's prohibited in countries where it's free it's free in morocco it's like free but like a lot of people shouldn't be doing it that was the impression that i got all right guys i think we covered a lot of ground we talked about the food we talked about the people we talked about what you need to bring we talked about some of my favorite places the transportation and everything in between so if you have any questions related to morocco feel free to drop a comment below i'm more than happy to answer any of your questions um you can write me personally via email as well very happy to answer your questions i might do a podcast about this as well and uh which will be a live stream so you can of course participate and i look forward to engaging with you guys um i love my time in morocco it's one of the most unique countries that i've been to uh it's just deeply historical and deeply interesting with so much contrast in the way that people live the stories that you can have and that's what makes it so damn special so don't forget to use your moroccan dirhams buy a jalaba one of those like cloaks that the the traditional men wear and to have some couscous on your adventure in the wonderful kingdom of morocco if you like the video make sure to like and subscribe hit the notification bell we're going to do some more in-depth travel guides for many countries around the world and i look forward to sharing them with you so thank you guys for watching if you made it this far you guys are legends we'll see you in the next one ciao

Channel: Tales From The Road

Views: 107,966

Keywords: tales from the road, travel vlogger 2022, american travel youtuber, food vlogger, travel vlogs in 4k, morocco 2021, morocco 2022, what to do in morocco, what to see in morocco, morocco travel guide, morocco travel vlog, morocco 4k, what to eat in morocco, is morocco safe?, can i go to morocco?, is morocco worth it?, can americans visit morocco?, how do i get around in morocco?, tangier, casablanca, al hociema, oudja, chefchaouen, marakesh, rabat, essaouira

Id: 46F7LGYA_8Y

Length: 27min 27sec (1647 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 12 2022