BootsnAll Travel Network



Morocco Day 6: Let the Shopping Begin!

As mentioned, most people got great nights sleep but one couple had been moved last night because of mold and another pair were stuck in a room that had a sewage problem. One was moved to another riad the night before, but the other stuck it out. The manager acted as though he didn’t know we were supposed to be given breakfast and breakfast ended up only being tea, juice, and “moroccan pancakes” which are somewhat oily nan-like pancakes that some loved, but I despised. There was not even any regular bread so I went out and got a couple of chocolate croissants from a nearby baker for 3 dirham (less than 50 cents), as I’m still taking malaria meds and need a decent quantity of food to keep the pill down.

Because of the problems with the other rooms, the tour company decided to move us all out of the riad because the manager was being quite the jerk (we noticed this as well). Though not keen on moving because we’d gotten good night’s sleep, we agreed we didn’t really want to give business to a jerk and we wanted to support JBT. At it turns out, the riads we were moved to were great. Mine in particular was FABULOUS – the L’Heure d’Ete. It was the only one we stayed in that was a restored house but restored into modern decor, not ‘traditional’. The place was great and the bathrooms were wonderful (best shower I had the entire time, I think). I HIGHLY recommend this place and will post the photos. The other people stayed at a more traditional Riad which was less nice than ours, but still quite nice. These two places were more in the higher budget JBT usually travels under, rather than the cheaper rate Bootsnall pushed for.

So today is a “free” day in Marrakesh where we have no planned itinerary, but it was recommended that before we begin our shop-fest, we all go to a cooperative market outside the Medina which has fixed prices and hassle-free shopping, in order to get a sense of what prices should be and better prepare ourselves for bargaining. This coop was a good place to buy just about anything except leather goods and carpets. Many people bought stuff because shopping hassle-free is such a delight and a rarity in Morocco. I bought a couple more pottery items despite swearing off ever buying any again, in part because the shopkeeper packaged his stuff so well. They survived the journey to the US, hopefully they’ll make it all the way to LA.

After lunch on our own I went off to do the thing I’d been prepping for for days — Carpet buying. Buying a carpet can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a huge PITA and a huge expense. There are carpet shops EVERYWHERE and it is very easy to get ripped off if you don’t have a sense of what prices should be and how to bargain. Fazia pointed out to me the large stores with three to five guys sitting out in front and said that’s a dead give-away that it’s a bad place to buy a carpet. You want a store with really just one proprietor. You also NEVER want an official tour guide to take you carpet shopping as they get a commission and will not help you.

I wasn’t planning on getting a carpet for myself, but my friend KH commissioned me to get one on her behalf. Fortunately, I know her taste well enough from her other Moroccan rugs to know what I think she’d like. I’m very glad she gave me this opportunity as I don’t think I would have gone through the process otherwise.

Fazia took me and two others to a carpet section to a guy they know who has good quality stuff (they don’t get a commission so far as I know). I started by telling the guy the color family and size that I wanted to look at. He was pretty good about showing me only what I’d ask, though we got off base a few times. I pulled out carpet after carpet and each one got an:

Waha (yes) (I actually kept saying “Aiwa” which is “no” in Egyptian arabic, which cracked him up)
La (no)
Mumkin (maybe)

Over the next hour or so, after drinking a fair amount of tea, we narrowed it down to a few carpets, and he gave me some astronomical prices, such as 10,000 Dirhams for one of them and 5,000 for another. I apologized for wasting his time, I was in a completely different ballpark, expecting to pay much less, such as 1,000 each. Fazia had warned me it was OK to come back with an insultingly low price, it was part of the game. Of course as soon as I said 1,000 D looks at me and says “are you taking into account how old these are?” and I look at her and say quietly “you’re not helping me here”. Fortunately she got it.

So I say, ‘you might as well show carpets to D, since obviously the ones you showed me are much too expensive’. D then looks at carpets in a smaller size and different color family. She also narrows it down and gets a price of 3,000 dirhams.

I then offer 3,000 dirhams for both rugs and in the end, whereas he’d started with 18,000 for all three, we end on 9,200 total (about $1100) for three ‘old’ rugs (‘old’ being 20-80 years), one very large about 6 feet by 12 feet, and two that were more in the 3×5 range). I have no doubt I could have done better, but we needed to leave so D and W could attend a meeting for those who were leaving next day to do the mountain summit. In hindsight, I should have done better, but I talked to some people and found while I did not do spectacularly well, we definitely didn’t get royally screwed. In fact, that night I met a guy in the hotel who had also bought carpets and we exchanged digital camera shots of each of our carpets. He paid 24,000 dirhams for his two carpets ($3000 total), one of which was a slightly larger version of the one D then got. He definitely got screwed.

When I went back the next day to work out the details for shipping them back to the states, I started bartering in jest for another carpet on the wall that I had been eyeing, and in the end bought that as well. So, in total I had bought 3 carpets, 2 for my friend and then one I’d keep for myself — though it really is too large for my apartment in LA. However, upon emailing the photos to my mother, she liked them all so much that she said she’d take whichever one(s) KH decided not to take, so I ended up with the fun of buying carpets but none of the expense. Not a bad deal!

Carpet buying took up most of the afternoon, but I did have time to buy some baskets. My mom, aunt and some other relatives collect baskets so I wanted to bring some back as presents. I went to a section where there were a whole bunch of basket-sellers right next to each other, completely in competition for each other. I walked around each of them fending off all offers of prices until finally I picked a vendor and picked up two baskets that should be about 20 dirham each and asked how much. He said 350 dirham so I make a big production of walking away dramatically saying “how much of an idiot do you think I am?” (etc, etc) as he yells after me “OK 100, OK 50, OK 40, OK 30… 30 Dirhams” but it was too late. I went to another guy and ended up being 4 baskets for a total of 80 dirham ($10), no fuss no muss.

Overall it was a very satisfactory shopping day.

The next day only a portion of us were staying in Marrakesh, the rest were going to the Atlas mountains to hike to the top of Mount Toubkal, the tallest mountain in North Africa. Me, I had way more important stuff to do, like more shopping and to get a hammam treatment at a spa.

The trekkers kept it an early evening as they had to leave at the crack of dawn, but some of the others of us went out to eat at a place on the main square and it was quite nice. After dinner I wanted to go to D’s and J’s room in the other Riad and I decided to test out what life is like in Marrakesh if you’re a well-covered muslim woman. I went into “stealth” mode and put on a long-sleeve, long cotton tunic and my headscarf, both of which I’d bought in Egypt. I tied the headscarf around me and while upon close inspection I clearly would not pass disguise-school, for a cursory look I did quite well. Most people just give you a quick glance and “classify” you as ‘tourist’ or ‘leave alone’ so this put me in the ‘leave alone’ camp so long as someone did not take that good a look.

I then traveled throughout the entire medina, including the main square the the shopping aisles and what a world of difference it made! Being a tourist you constantly get invites into stalls and if you ignore them, about 25% of the time you would then get a nasty sexual comment made about you. Wearing my disguise it was like I was wearing an invisibility cloak. No one said anything, no one hassled me, in fact when I asked the price of something by pointing it it, I was told 12 dirhams. As a tourist the starting price for it would have been around 200-300 dirhams (too bad I didn’t need it, I should have pointed to something I was actually interested in).

When I got to D and J’s Riad, the manager who opened the door took one look at me and started laughing — he wasn’t fooled because he was looking at me more closely. But D and J thought it was hysterical and many photos were taken of me in “camoflauge”.



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