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Friday, March 16, 2012

Marrakech : Night life in the bussiest square in the world

Djemaa El Fna is a vary important square to the Marrakech people. It has been there for a very long time. It's not the square that is special, it's the people who are in it that makes it special. This square is home to street performers of every kind from acrobats, snakes charmers, dancers, to fortune tellers alike.

secure your ring on top of a bottle and you get to win something

This square is where you'll get the best orange juice that your buds will ever taste, scrumptious dried fruits at its best (with best price) and really cheap food at night. Known to most people visiting Marrakech, the sunset view from cafes beside this particular square is one you can never miss. Because of its hustle and bustle with both locals and tourists alike, last year in April 2011, a cafe became victim the Marrakech bombing. 



At sunset, food stalls will begin setting up for the night. Here is where you can get really good food at low prices. So far none of us got food poisoning. Maybe because we're very typical Malaysians with warungs crafted on our hearts. So we didn't have any problems eating at the stalls. 


This is our personal favourite stall because no one comes to invite you in and the locals flock it. It's located at the last row of the food stalls, towards the open square. The name of the stall is Hassan. We had a really great time laughing at the aunty who was a frequent customer calling the names of the workers. She just randomly calls out Hassan and Mohammed. Then she ordered bread with sausages, turns away and took out a few sausages from her bread and tells the workers that there's not enough sausages in her bread. Then she got a refill for her bread. It was really funny because I even got my ass bumped by her.


A plate of grilled sausages, 15 Dirhams
A plate of  Brochette (grilled skewered beef/chicken aka satay) 20 Dirhams
All meals served with bread and a tomato (salsa like) sauce

Our dinner the next day we had it in a stall number 117. I remember it so well because when the promoter was promoting his stall, he kept saying "Stall no 117, taxi to heaven". The food was not great, expensive compared to the others and had really poor service. No wonder there were only tourists here. The workers were just standing out fooling around, carrying someones baby to the kitchen, calling him Harry Potter (I don't know why) and they did'nt quite understand our order. Getiing their attention was also a problem. We had to call out many times just to get drinks. Was pretty annoyed actually. But well. For supper two hours after that, we went back to Hassans stall.

Mixed Grill for 60 Dirhams

After dinner, we would stand around the orange stalls to have fresh orange juice which was the best. And it only costed us 4 Dirhams! Pretty amazing. There are lots of orange juice stalls, and people inviting you to go over, so we choose a stall which did'nt have much competition because all those shouting promotions really just made us not want to go. This stall is no 45 and is alongside other dried fruits stalls.

Never miss out having a fresh orange juice in Morocco

After seeing the many stalls selling snails, I went on to try them. These snails are white and grey in color, round and cooked in big pans on the stands. A small bowl costs 5 Dirhams and a big bowl costs 10 Dirhams. These snails look more like garden snails compared to the river snails we eat back home which had a cover that closes it up. These even have tentacles on! 

My 5 Dirham bowl of snails
if you look close enough, you can see tentacles on the snail, far left in the picture


They provide you with a toothpick for you to pick out the meat and you can throw the snail shells in the containers in front of you. They even have chilli powder and pepper for you to add to your bowl of snails. The lady next to me was even slurping the soup! 

To me, they didn't taste very good because they smell quite a bit. But I was glad I tried it. 

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