Morocco Local Custom Tips by barryg23

Morocco is a predominantly Muslim country and as such it can be difficult - but certainly not impossible - to find places serving alcohol. In the big cities, most of the tourist-type hotels will serve alcohol in their restaurants and some will even have a bar. As it's mostly foreigners who stay here anyway this is not too surprising.

Some of the more expensive restaurants will also serve alcohol especially the good French ones. But in small towns or in the medinas you'll find that alcohol is seldom served. You can occasionally buy it in supermarkets or grocery stores but often it will be hidden so as not to offend the local peoples' sensibilities.

Wine was introduced to Morocco during the French occupation and there are many vineyards still producing today. The nicest red we tried was Guerrouane from the region around Meknes.

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It's customary to bargain in the souks. The shop owners and stall holders expect it and if you accept the first price they offer, you're are making a big mistake!

We were fairly strict about it and tried to set a limit before we even began bargaining. This didn't always work as sometimes we paid slightly more than we wanted for something. Also, in some cases, the vendors would not meet our price at all. Nevertheless, it was great fun shopping in this way - I usually hate shopping at home but here it became much more interesting.

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While we were driving around Morocco, we saw, on numerous occasions, mountains or hills with large white Arabic writing or symbols. I don't speak or read Arabic so I've no idea what these mean but they were quite a sight. The examples in the first two picture were taken on the road from Meknes to Azrou while the third picture was on the road from Azrou to Midelt. It wasn’t confined to just these areas though as we saw similar types of writing in many other places.

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Arabic and French are the main languages spoken in Morocco and most people in the country can speak both. In some of the quieter, smaller places you might find people who only understand Arabic.

Many visitors to Morocco don't speak Arabic and make little effort to learn it. However, if you can even learn a few basic phrases of Arabic, you seem to get a lot more respect from the locals. Touts and tour-guides seemed to give us much less hassle when we refused in Arabic and on a couple of occasions we were complemented on actually speaking it - maybe because we looked like such obvious tourists!

If you have no French or Arabic, Spanish is probably the next most useful though English will be understood in the big cities, particularly in hotels and in the souks.

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Mint tea (Thé à la menthe) is the national drink of Morocco and almost every visitor will try it at some point. It's served everywhere: in restaurants, cafes, hotels - even in the souks when you're being enticed into buying a carpet.

It didn't take us long to get used to the taste and we found it quite refreshing though as a diabetic I had to take it easy on the sugar. Without adding sugar it can taste very bitter.

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