John's "WTF? I've got cancer?" Blog: The GCW Tour, Spain & Morocco: Now I Know How an ATM Feels

Marrakech is a beautiful city. It's green and exotic, with beautiful buildings, interesting shops, and lovely gardens.

Marrakech, unfortunately and with a few rare exceptions, is not populated by beautiful people. It's populated by vultures, pretending to be people. In just one day here, the niece (who's still somewhat traumatized) and I have come up with the following schema of the people with whom we've interacted in Marrakech:

The Straight Shooters

They're few and far between, but we've interacted with a few people who played us reasonably straight. They delivered what they promised without manipulating us for more, took no for an answer without taking offense, and generally treated us like humans.

Lures

On the face of it, these folks aren't so bad to deal with, though you have to learn to recognize them so you know what you're getting into. These are the folks that, while seeming to be helpful and not personally demanding anything in return, are dropping you into the net of someone who will be looking for something. It can be okay as long as you get what you want out of the deal, but you better be careful.

Triple-A Guys

Holding a map? Look lost? Pointing at something? Reading a sign? The triple-A guy will emerge from the crowd to provide assistance, but it's going to come at a cost. He'll point or even escort you to your destination, but his hand will be out by the time you get there.

Basically Harmless Spiders

You see these folks mostly operating the food stands in the central market. They all know they're selling exactly the same food at almost exactly the same prices, so they've come up with their own pitches to try to get you to sit down. The best was the kid who started putting moves on the niece, though she was having none of it. After while it gets annoying, but annoyance is as bad as it gets.

Ghosts

Little old ladies in burkas who approach with their hands out, jabber at you in Arabic, and just won't go away.

Killer Spiders

Killer spiders are the folks who sit in their shops and wait for you to look their direction, or for a lure to bring you by, and then jump to work. You get "free" tours that turn out not to be so free, or lengthy explanations of the items in their shops followed by never ending high pressure sales. Worse, you can get the spider chain where just as you're about to break free you get passed to the guy in the shop next door and it all starts over with new products. The poor niece started by looking at tea pots, but wound up buying face cream, which while nice, wasn't something she planned to buy.

Medusas

Your snake charmers and monkey wranglers fall into this category. All it takes is eye contact and you're done for. The niece took one step toward a monkey and the next thing she knew she was covered in monkeys, and then a monkey was crawling up my arm, and the monkey wranglers and some strange woman were trying to get the camera off my arm to take pictures, and the next thing you know the monkey wrangler is demanding $50 for the privilege of taking pictures of the monkey. Having learned my lesson, I barely got away from the snake charmer before I wound up with a snake around my neck and a hand in my wallet.

"Don't be scared," says the snake charmer. "It's not the snake I'm scared of," says I.

Muggers

The poor niece. All she wanted to do was look at the monkeys up close. The next thing she knows, the monkeys are standing on her head, getting pissed off, and then she's got two monkeys, two monkey wranglers, and some strange woman in a burka grabbing at her. Eventually, the woman extracts her from the monkey chaos, sits her down on a stool, and starts applying henna to her hand. By the time the niece has calmed down from having monkeys thrown on her, she's got a henna tattoo covering her hand and wrist and the woman is demanding $45, and getting more irate when the niece won't pay.

The niece calls me over, and we start explaining that she should've mentioned the price before starting, at which point the woman's sister joins in to tell us this isn't how it's done in Morocco and the niece should've asked the price before asking for the tattoo. When the niece explains that she didn't ask for the tattoo, that gets swept away.

We didn't pay $45 dollars, but I'm embarrassed to say that I couldn't figure out how to get away without paying them something -- and way more than the niece, who does her own henna tattoos, ever would've paid if she hadn't been mugged.

We spent about four hours walking the central market and surrounding shops. In that time we bought some postcards, refrigerator magnets, loose tea, face cream and three glasses of orange juice. But counting back in my head, the total price tag for that excursion was somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 to $200.

Generally, I don't mind this sort of thing too much as I've got plenty of money and the Moroccans don't. But after multiple hours of being hit up in increasingly aggressive ways, I've pretty much had enough -- especially since their chosen target was the niece as much as I.

Not in the least bit okay.

It's all fun and games until the monkeys explode in a rage.

Melting down in 3, 2, 1...

Hey, I've got a monkey on my back, er, arm.

The snakes, right before the snake charmer saw me and
a) wanted $20 for this picture, and b) wanted to drape one of the
brown snakes over my shoulder.

Why am I suddenly reminded of a Western, with the
bandit who pulls a bandana up over his nose?

No extra charge for the bees.

A very nice guy who offered an escort, and didn't ask for anything
in return -- but did introduce us to three people
who did on our way to our destination.