DJ P-Town: World Tour

NBD just riding on a camel.

This is an excerpt from my journal entry for my first night in Marrakesh. I didn’t have my camera on me at the time so the attached photo will be from a few days later in the trip. 

There I was. Wandering down a bustling street at night with no idea of where I was. I kept walking as the women behind me spoke a mix of English and Spanish. We were clearly having difficulty hiding in plain sight. Motorbikes and taxis flew by us as we were led down the street by a Moroccan man-kid who couldn’t have been older than we were. Every face was turned in our direction as we slowly made our way down the very dirty streets of Marrakesh.

                We had been dropped off in two taxis from our hotel with a third bus of SAS kids getting lost from our group. Thinking that we had been dropped off at the main square, we made our way in the direction that the taxi drivers had pointed out. We quickly realized that we had been taken as naïve American students. We wandered around the city as we tried to find some square that we had only heard about from the concierge at our hotel.

                As we made our way through the winding streets of Marrakesh, we began to take pictures of each other to pass the time. We passed a police checkpoint and happened to take a picture with the police in the background. Not a minute had passed before the cops ran over to demand that we give them our camera. We had been told to not take pictures of the police or military, but in our state none of us had remembered this rule. We had a yell match in four languages as he shouted at us in Arabic and French and we shouted back in English and Spanish. We managed to get the camera back, but not without a huge evil eye from every Moroccan in the nearby vicinity.

                As we continued wandering around and trying to make sense of what people were saying to us in French and Arabic, we just happened to walk past the other bus of people that had left our hotel. Screeching to a stop, we piled into the bus that totaled 14 kids in a bus that should only hold 9 people. The bus roared down the street as someone tried to get the bus driver to take us to a hookah place. We made an agreement that he would to us to his place if we gave him 500 durhams. He agreed and we headed off to his personal hookah lounge.

                We arrived outside a dark, dimly lit building after a 10 minute drive. We exploded out of the over packed bus and made our way down two flights of stairs, around a couple of corners, through a pool hall, and eventually made it to our bus driver’s local hookah lounge. This place was one of the most local places that I have ever been. The main thing was that there weren’t any women in the hookah lounge aside from the small group of pale, white Anglo-Saxon women that entered with me and the two other guys on the entire overnight trip.

                We had our fill of mint and apple hookah until around 1:30 when we were supposed to meet back up with our bus driver who was going to give us a ride back to the hotel. We headed back through the underground passage up the three flights of stairs to get to the bus. Our bus driver had brought another bus so we didn’t have to squish into a single bus.

We got back to the hotel and crashed around 3.

                I woke up around 8, and headed down to breakfast. I wasn’t feeling great that morning, but I wrote it off as being slightly hungover. I quickly realized that I was having traveler’s issues as I signed out of the museum tour I was on and headed back to the hotel. I slept through most of the day when I wasn’t dealing with my traveler’s issues. I also separated my time by watching the news. I learned more about the world in one hour than I had in weeks. The problem was that I didn’t learn anything that I wanted to hear about.

                I didn’t start feeling better until that night, but by that time I knew that I wanted to get back to 100% so that I could finally ride my camel. 

Here I am in my hotel in Marrakesh trying to get over my traveler’s issues as everyone is now beginning to call an affliction I only thought existed in Oregon Trail. 

Today I had a day that turned out to be full of surprises. I haven’t written about it in my journal yet, but here is a quick picture of the 2nd largest 2nd hand store in the world.

Maybe people would smoke less in the States if they used such soft wording on our cigarette packaging. 

Here is a quick excerpt from my first day in Instanbul, going to the Grand Bazaar, and my first hookah of Turkey:

The briefing wrapped up, and by this time Sammy and Emily’s room had filled with people. Tina, Jade, Taylor, Devan, Ben, Emily, Sammy, Carly, Rach, and myself found ourselves huddled together waiting to get off the ship. We picked up some sort of card from customs that we would need to get off and on the ship, and in no time we were on our way to the Grand Bazaar. We made a quick left from the ship and in less than ten minutes we had crossed a bridge, gone underneath a road, wrapped around a large Mosque, and made it to the Spice Bazaar.

                The Spice Bazaar in Istanbul is a plethora of smells, colors, and sounds. Hundreds of small shops peddle ever kind of spice, tea, or candy imaginable. You would walk along and see Rainbow Mountains of spices alongside huge packets of tea. If a strong breeze swept through the enclosed walkways, the entire building would become a sandstorm of powdered spices and evil eye beads.

Back to the group.

The eight of us made our way through the Spice Bazaar and continued on to the Grand Bazaar as we soon found that the Spice Bazaar wasn’t actually part of the Grand Bazaar. We walked through a couple side streets before we decided that a group of 8 people is too much for a slow shopping experience to handle. We decided to split up, with Carly, Ben, Taylor, and I heading on direction, and everyone else heading in another.

Eventually our merry band made it into the Grand Bazaar. This bazaar was entirely enclosed and gargantuan compared to the spice bazaar.  We walked past stores exploding with rugs, diamonds, fake T-shirts, fake watches, and any number of other fake things. I managed to find an antique watch with Saddam Hussein’s face on the watch face.

You could find anything you could possibly imagine in this place.

I bought some souvenirs for my family, and since my family reads some of this blog I’m choosing not to say what things I did buy. We wrapped up in the bar and decided to head to get some lunch before grabbing a siesta on the ship. Someone had told us that there were good restaurants underneath the bridge that we had walked across that day so we heading back in that direction. We managed to find the restaurants that we under the bridge and walked past a couple before we found a place that caught our eye. It was a lot nicer looking than the other places, but we soon discovered that it wasn’t exactly authentic Turkish food. I ordered a Mexican burger and a beer as Carly, Ben, and Taylor ordered something along the same non-authentic lines.

We had also noticed that they were selling water pipes, what we call hookahs in the states, for on 10 lira. We ordered an apple flavored one as we waited for lunch. I hadn’t had a legitimate hookah in at least a year or two so I found the idea of a hookah quite enjoyable. I wasn’t let down. It was just like any other hookah I’ve ever had, but having it in Turkey as you overlook the ferryboats coming and going along the Straights of Bosporus made it all the better. 

Here at the Turkish cafe.

This was the first taste of Istanbul that I’ve had. We had to pass through the city to get to Varna, and we had to cross underneath this bridge. Those blue lights are just one of the many colors that the bridge gave off. The picture also only shows one of the many light shows that the bridge did as we passed underneath. 

Finding that my favorite cereal from my childhood is still sold in eastern block countries definitely made Bulgaria for me.