Safi

Safi, a large port (and pottery) town about 150 miles south of Casablanca, is another place not recommended by my Lonely Planet guidebook. In many ways I like visiting these nonrecommended towns better than the recommended ones. Obviously one aspect will inevitably be the absence of many tourists because they are steered clear by their guidebooks, which, in the case of Safi anyway, gives the few tourists who do visit a chance to see a bustling working-class town without all the frills and glitter put in place to attract foreign visitors. I have noticed in the markets here that there are less handcrafted items and more Chinese made goods like clothes, toys, household appliances. Probably this is partly due to the lack of tourists, who often buy the more expensive handcrafted items, and partly because Safi is a port town and thus a lot of the cheap manufactured goods arrive by ship. In Safi there seems to be an extrordinarily high number of destitute people begging on the streets, and one thing I've noticed that I haven't seen before is people approaching customers at streetside cafes and asking if they can drink their complimentary glass of water that is served with the coffee or tea. Also, the other night I was at a cafe having tea when an old guy walked by my table and grabbed up the sugar cubes from my saucer before quickly moving on. Another first for me.