The first time I’ve put my foot on african soil (and by the way it is a very red soil), I was in airport Mohammed V of Casablanca (aka Dar El Beida , which means “the white house”) in Morroco. It was a great experience. In Morocco, half looks like the time stopped, and half looks like a new age has come. But  besides that, people are great,  life is cheap  and  as a foreigner  you can learn a lot  and feel new sensations.

There are lots to see in Morocco, but if you expect to see monuments, or ancient buildings (like in Egypt, Greece, Italy, you are not in the right place). The only thing that is ancient and it worth seeing in every city is the “Medina” (the old city, surrounded by defence walls - the base/core of the actual city).  Inside the Medina, you will find a lot of narrow streets, and hundreds of old shops along with manufacturing/production shops which allows you to see how they manufacture things using ancient methods. Nothing is in a fixed price on Medina, everything is negotiated , so don’t look for a pricing label because you won’t find. And as you probably guess, the negotiation starts at a different price for each buyer - if you are a foreigner, the price starts at a double normal price, if you are a local the price will be smaller - so be carefull and hold your position in negotiation. As for the merchandise , as well you will need to pay attention. Basically you can find original moroccan products , but in the same time , you can find a lot of cheap merchendise made in China that imitates almost perfectly the local products. Medina as well can be a risky place, so you have to be carefull for your wallet and to try to avoid to get deep into Medina (for example in Casablanca’s Medina, neither the police doesn’t go to deep for their own safety), so try to stick to the main roads that eventually are populated. In Medina, you will find a lot of sellers speaking multiple languages, so you don’t have to really know Moroccan , but a bit of french may help you very much in the entire Morocco, since french is the second spoken language.

Morocco is not a clean country (according to European/US standards), so your main concern should be what and where you eat.  As a suggestion: when in doubt try to find McDonald’s / KFC / Pizza Hut , but consider this as the ultimate solution.  There are enough places where you can safely eat  in every city. And, speaking about eating, you defenetely need to try some local foods , like “Tagine” for example , a good and unique  food .

There are many cities in Morocco that can reveal their magic, but for instance you should try visiting Fes (knows for the oldest university in the world and as well for it’s magnific Medina), Rabat (which is the capital of Morocco and have all administrative buildings , including the kings burrial chambers that worth seeing), Meknes (which is 30km away from Volubilis , considered the most well preserved roman ruins in Africa), Casablanca (famous for Rick’s Cafe where the movie Casablanca was filmed, Hassan II Mosque - which is the third as size in the world) , Tangier (a city at Gibraltar, which can reveal the nice Mediteraneo sensations), Marrakech (a very popular turist attraction, famous for night-life, Kotubia mosque ruins, Place Djemaa L’Fna which at night becames one of the biggest restaurants), Agadir and Essaouira (if you like surfing), Ouarzazate (famous for the local film studio and as well for the surroundings). To travel from city to city in Morocco, you can take the train or you can drive (and sometimes you can use a local flight, but it is quite expensive). The best way seems to be driving, because Morocco is having high-ways from the north (Tanger - Casablanca - Marrakech , and soon Marrakech-Agadir). The moroccan highway is having 2 lanes on each way, but is not very aglomerated, so you can safely/fastly get to destination. But inside the city, make sure you pay attention to the other people, the pedestrians have the bad habbit to throw themselves in front of your car , by making you a sign with the hand. Also the other drivers may make you a sign with the hand to wait because they are passing (yah, priority rules are most of the times broken, so you need to have guts to drive inside the city).

In Morocco, there is a big difference between rich and poor. The middle class is quite small, so mostly you will see people that are very rich, or people that are very poor, but very rareley middle-class. So for this reason, you can get anything if you pay. Even the police is very corrupted, so if you ever pass on a red-light, don’t worry, with 50 Dirhams, you can solve the problem (yah, I should not encourage for bribe, but this is the way things are going in Morocco). It is a good thing to tip people around (in the stores, the gatekeeper, etc), because you are making “friends” that will help if you need them (ofcourse you will pay again for any help, but at least you have whom to call).

Even the majority in Morocco are muslims, you can find alchool in every major store, so if your worry is that you will not be able to have a drink in Morocco, forget about it. The interesting thing is that apparently there is no law agains driving while drunk (and anyway you can solve it with 50Dirhams) , not that I am encouraging to drink and drive, but as a fact, since it is a muslim country, the law doesn’t even mention about this fact (or at least police officers doesn’t apply it).

As for your own security, I cannot say that Morocco is an unsafe place. More than that , at some point I felt safer than in my own country, I didn’t saw (in one year) a fight on  the streets and most of the time (during the day, until late night), I noticed that there was a police officer in every street-joint. Like other countries, Morocco had some terrorist attacks (last one was in 2007, previous in around 2001) and in the last one there were no victims (just the suicidal terrorists died), however is good to keep a low profile (as you should generally do in every country you go).

The climate in Morocco is very nice. It rains about 2 weeks each year (during winter time), and the temperature can be between 14 Celsius and 36 Celsius (depends on the area you are, usually cities that are close to the ocean/sea have low temperatures).

As for the night life, you will find in most of major cities night-clubs, bars, discoteques. The most famous clubs you can find on Casablanca (La Corniche/ Ain Diab), Tangier (with a lot of spanish during weekends), Marrakech and Agadir.

For a new experience, try Morocco, but since the country is so big (nearly to the size of California, hosting around 35 million people), you should have a well designed plan, because probably time will not be something that you will own. If you visit Morocco these are the things you should not miss: smoking “shisha”, camel back-ride, eating tagine, visit a Medina and socialize with locals.

Happy Travel.

Oliver Cage is a contributor for http://ikoupon.com and http://simbiotiq.com