A HARD DAY'S FRIGHT

Most travellers have hotel adventures, but few will have been frightened out of their wits by a couple climbing into bed with them in the middle of the night. This happened to me in Morocco when they mistook their room and I did the unthinkable—I forgot to lock my door.

A hotel is a home away from home for travellers and especially for travel writers. So I don't deny to being fussy about the standards. Will my room overlook the motorway or the market? Will I be over the kitchen, or under the discotheque? Will there be an Indian wedding in the garden or a buffet around the pool? IS THE HOTEL STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

Do you suffer from  xenodociophobia—a fear of foreign hotels?  An airline stewardess I know will never sleep on the ground floor after finding a snake in her room in Darwin while an interior decorator friend will not stay higher than the ninth floor in case fire traps him in his Calvin Klein’s. My London postmastman said his own particular dread was finding hard pillows on his annual holiday in Bournemouth.

Hard pillows, lumpy mattresses, slow room-service, no room-service—room-service banging in with breakfast—these are common complaints. 

 I always carry a personal pillow, but my own phobia is the colour orange drives me mad. Why does a sunburnt country like Australia have so many motels with a hot, orange décor? The same is true, I have discovered, of many hotels in the Arab world. After being out in the desert, I want the décor to be cool green. Or blue.

Do you agree that many hotel bathrooms leave much to be desired? Do you scald yourself under the mixer tap for instance?  Well, that's nothing. When I stayed in Hunza in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, the bearer-wallah brought me water to wash in a bucket filled from a dripping glacier.

I had many adventures while researching a book on Pakistan. At a canal rest-house in Dera Ghazi Khan, I awoke in the night to find the room had been invaded by saffron-coloured frogs. More than 40 were leaping about when I turned on my torch (there was no elecricity). Then in Balakot, in the Kagan Valley, I was disturbed by bush-mice chewing the orange flavoured vitamin C tablets in my wash-bag.

The service in some hotels can be truly disturbing as well. Leaving a hotel in Tangier recently, my bags were carried out to a taxi by the porter, smoking a cigarette. (who was angry that I requested he put it out).

In the 1980s when I was working in Khartoum, we had a power failure every night. On one occasion I was trapped for hours in an elevator with a 7ft tall Dinka man. Then in another hotel, this time in Port Sudan, I opened the window for a breath of air and the entire thing crashed into the courtyard.

Happily most places to stay have improved dramatically in the intervening years, but I’m sure all travellers have their tales of hotel holiday hell: what are yours?

 Images: www.copix.co.uk

The Terrible Cafe Lemsid

 Excerpt from Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book ---Travels with My Hat, 85,000 words 8 pages pictures.         Chapters on Ethiopia, the Royal Tour of Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen. Pictured is the terrible                      Cafe Lemsid in the Western Sahara, from the final chapter on Morocco.

                                                                

...I’ve often thought I’d found the middle of nowhere on my travels, only to realise that I was on the edge of somewhere, but the Café Lemsid was definitely in the middle of nowhere. Caramel and raspberry red, it resembled a giant lolly that had fallen off a desert transport and surrounding it lay the detritus of local civilisation: burst tyres, perished fan-belts, broken lobster-traps and empty port-a-gas cylinders. A rug was stuffed in a hole in the wall to keep out wind-blown sand, and among items stacked behind its counter were boxes of Gunpowder tea, flour, candles, packets of “Tide”, balls of string and inevitably— tinned sardines.  It’s owner said fresh fish arrived daily from Boujdour, so that even in this god-forsaken place I was able to sit down at a broken table for lunch (grilled dorade).  A lame, fish-eating chicken hopped about for scraps: it would never be killed and eaten, I decided; it was much too horrible. As I settled my bill, a grand-taxi pulled up and I half expected it to disgorge a host of characters from a Fellini  film—dwarfs, transvestites and dancing bears—but they were merely crushed passengers from Dakhla, relieved for the chance to stretch their legs on their long journey up to Agadir...

DAR ANEBAR: AN EXOTIC HOME AWAY FROM HOME IN ANCIENT FEZ

A riad is a traditional house located in the medina - the old residential and commercial heart of ancient towns in Morocco.

A typical riad is a three or four storey building whose thick stone walls enclose a central courtyard open to the sky. Smaller riads may only be the width of the height of a date-palm whose trunks were used as beams. Others owned by prosperous old merchant families have carved cedar ceilings and walls adorned with elaborate plaster-work and zellige tiles. To ensure a family`s privacy there are only tiny exterior windows, but a roof terrace catches cooling breezes and provides a panorama of the skyline.

Many old riads abandoned when their owners left either to seek work or to upgrade to a modern villa, have been bought by foreign investors who have transformed them into luxurious Maison d`Hotes, a trend started by American architect, Bill Willis in the 1960s when he transformed a run-down riad in Marrakesh into an exotic town-house.

More than 500 riads -mainly in Marrakesh, Fez and the lovely coastal resort of Essaouira have now been restored by foreigners using local artisans and drawing on the abundance of crafts sewn, hammered and tapped out in the souqs.

On many trips to Morocco over the years I`ve stayed in a variety of accommodation ranging from the famous Mamounia in Marrakesh to the simple Pension Mauritania in Tangier - even a crumbling funduq once used by wool merchants visiting Fez.

On a recent visit to Fez to collect material for my new book, I stayed at the Dar Anebar, a true "Arabian Nights" style riad which has been returned to it`s former glory by Moroccan businessman Ahmed Azami .

"It was my grandfather's riad and my dream was to restore it, not just for our family use, but so visitors might experience Fassi hospitality in traditional surroundings," said Ahmed as we sipped mint tea in the calm oasis courtyard.

"Tourists can stay here from EU90 a night. If we are not fully booked, we upgrade at no extra cost. I want people to feel it is their home. They can even go into the kitchen and watch Naima making Berber bread."

Fez is considered the culinary heart of Morocco and Naima's cooking lives up to this reputation. I dined on regal dishes such as bstilla made from flaky pastry stuffed with quail, and lemony tasting tajines using chicken and olives, and lamb cous-cous smothered in toasted almonds. A wine list featured the best of Moroccan wines: even Flag beer for any Australian visitors!

Dar Anebar's five large bedrooms with king-size beds overlook the courtyard. A personal touch is a flagon of argan oil, a nutritive emollient sold in Fez for over a thousand years and recently declared a 'miracle oil' by French cosmetic firms.

"We wound our way through the medina and walked into a world of wonder and warmth," one of hundreds of comment in the Guest-Book, resonated with me after a fall on one of my daily walks through the centuries old souqs.

Down I went among cages of hens, boxes of sardines and baskets of snails as everyone from the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker rushed to my aid. Back at Dar Anebar bandages were produced, my shirt was spirited away and washed, and a glass of freshly pressed orange juice was brought to my room.

When I offered to pay, I was waved away and Ahmed himself drove to me to the CTM station to catch my bus to Tangier.

Further information: http://www.daranebar.com

See comments : www.tripadvisor.com

For travel arrangements in Morocco: http://www.olivebranchtours.com

Images from: www.copix.co.uk