News / John Tabatabai / 27 October 2009 / Leave a comment

I arrived at the airport in Marrakech yesterday, a day later than scheduled due to a brain meltdown that I suffered from the previous day. It hadn't occured to me that an integral part of flying, to a new continent least of which, was having a passport. Who would have thought it?

Anywho, a day yet equally excited nonetheless. First instincts upon landing in my first ever visit to a North African Country was, "wow, it actually looks like how I would have expected it to look like". Amazingly enough it looked identical to the amazing fight scene in Bourne Ultimatum when they were in either Algiers or Morroco, can't remember exactly which one it was now. Another example that some of you may be able to relate to is the Aladin Disney film. Just like that. Truly amazing.

Getting through customs was pretty entertaining, the customs official wouldn't let me through until I answered his question which involved three words "Egyptian or Lebanese". After the third time of explaining to him that I was British and therefore I was neither one of the options he presented me, he threw my passport back at me with a huff. Interesting start. Needless to say I got hustled on the price of the taxi to my hotel, strangely enough he only accepted euros and not durhams, their local currency. I wonder why.

Upon arriving at the Es Saadi Hotel which I had been looking forward to for weeks and even been looking up online there were numerous problems, however, on this rare occasion I won't bore you guys to death with the details because everything else here is...well I don't even know the word i am looking for. It's more than amazing but at the same time its humbling in the sense that people here really live on the basics. 80% of the driving population ride motorcycles and most of them look like pushbikes ! It's weird. The surprising thing is, for such an arabic style country you wouldn't expect them to ALL speak French as well. Quite remarkable.

Once the room was sorted, and wow, what a room it is, the main man, Mr Alexandre Dreyfus recommended a nearby restaurant and again, this blew our minds way beyond expectation. We had some true Morrocan food, including Seafood Tagine which was a solid 9/10. I don't often give dishes a 9. In fact I can't remember the last dish I thought deserved a 9. Truly great food, and we hadn't even had the best part yet. Half way through our dinner, we got a very pleasant surprise, an early dessert.....belly dancers!!

Seriously, I know its only a day into the trip, but thus far, it has to be one of my favourite places on the tour.

The WPT Main Event started the next day, there seemed to be a huge amount of locals so I was hoping for a similar standard of play as I witnessed in Cyprus and if I could repeat the success of my good friend, Thomas Bichon I will be a very happy man.

Good luck all,

John.

Catch John on the Betfair Cash Tables