Collected from years of pre-departure briefings — the seventeen tips that actually change trips, minus the filler you have read everywhere else.
Money & haggling
1. Withdraw dirhams at the airport ATM; cards work in cities, cash rules everywhere else. 2. Haggle only for crafts — food and pharmacies have real prices. 3. Keep small notes for tips and taxis; nobody has change for big ones. 4. Tipping is modest: coins for cafés, 50–100 MAD/day for drivers and guides.
Culture & comfort
5. Shoulders-and-knees covered reads as respect in medinas. 6. Ask before photographing people; tip performers who pose. 7. Accept the mint tea — it is welcome, not sales pressure (usually). 8. Friday midday quiets the souks; plan sights accordingly. 9. “La, shukran” (no thank you) with a smile ends 95% of hustle.
Health & logistics
10. Bottled or filtered water for drinking. 11. Street food rule: eat where the queue is Moroccan and the turnover fast. 12. Pharmacies are excellent and everywhere. 13. Pack layers — desert and mountain nights are cold in every season. 14. European two-pin plugs; UK/US travellers need one adapter.
Trip design
15. Fly open-jaw (in one city, out another) — backtracking wastes days. 16. Two nights minimum in Fes; one is a tease. 17. The desert needs four days from Marrakech to be the real Erg Chebbi — anything less is Zagora, which is honest as long as you know. Full details across our 49-chapter Travel FAQ.
Anas Benjelloun — Anas covers the practical side of travelling in Morocco — money, SIM cards, taxis, scams to sidestep, what things cost and when to book. He updates his pages the boring way, by checking, and takes a quiet pride in the fact that his airport-to-medina instructions have never stranded anyone. If a price appears in one of his articles, he has paid it recently.
