Morocco: An Eyeopening Experience
I recently traveled to Marrakesh for the World Poker Tour. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical about traveling to an unfamiliar continent for a tournament that’s only in it’s first year. The skepticism was soon met with shock. Marrakesh is an amazing city. Like every other city, it has its pluses and its minuses… fortunately for me and all others there for the tournament, the pluses crushed the minuses.
The hotel and casino where the tournament took place was five-star all the way. In all of my years of travel I’ve never stayed in a better room. With an incredible layout and a beautiful view of the city it truly was a spectacular room. The lobby in itself was very unique. 24-7 there was a guy just chilling in a chair playing some sort of a musical instrument… one which made mostly Arabic beats. It was quite pleasant on the ear. Next to him was a guy with a massive tea area – his only mission was to make sure that everyone who passed thru always had a cup of freshly brewed Moroccan tea. Which, by the way, is THE best tea on earth. This stuff was sooo good. I don’t even like tea but I’m craving Moroccan tea right now just writing about it! The food was in a league of its own. If you’ve ever had Moroccan food and enjoyed it, I can assure you that you will enjoy it twice as much while actually IN Morocco.
The tournament was EXCEPTIONAL. First class the whole way. Matt Savage was the tournament director and you can bet your life that when he is in charge you are going to get a great event. To my surprise they managed to get more than 400 players. That’s pretty strong given that this was the first time for this event and that it was in Africa! A very impressive turnout. The casino went all out to accommodate the players.
ChiliPoker (organizers of the event) put on a great show. On one of the nights they had hired some local Moroccan talent to perform for some of the players. And what a performance! From belly dancers to crazy jumping humans to snake eaters, you name it. It was incredibly cool.
Nothing however could come close to the experience I had in the Moroccan desert. Alexander (one of the ChilliPoker guys) went all out to meet everyone’s every need. On this particular day they had ATVs for some of the players. We rode these four-wheelers through the Moroccan dessert and it truly was a life changing experience for me. Our path went through villages where I saw how people were forced to live with no running water and no proper bathrooms. It was a serious eye opener. Here I was just the week before complaining about my mattress not being big enough while these poor people didn’t have running water.
As we rode through we saw hundreds of children along the path. All of them were so young and innocent and completely not in control of where they were forced to grow up. It was a real eye opener for me. Almost every single one of them was begging for money as we rode through. As the ride went on I noticed this incredibly young, adorable child. She couldn’t have been more than five-years-old. She stood there and just waived as I rode by. She never asked for anything, she was just waving to me. Her innocence touched me. I pulled over and called her over to my ATV. Her mother (or the woman I assumed was her mother) motioned her to come my way. And she did. I reached into my bag and pulled out 1000 Moroccan bucks, which is the equivalent of about 60 US dollars. I handed it to her and she ran it over to her mom. The look on the mother’s face was something I will never, EVER forget. It felt so good to see the effect of what I just did on this family. Very touching. Ever since I’ve been back in the states I’ve appreciated the things I have in life significantly more. I don’t take things for granted and when something goes wrong I don’t let it bother me. Life is too short.
All in all, I had a spectacular time in Marrakesh. The poker was fantastic. Not to mention the live action BTW! Lets just say the locals LOVE to gamble! Great food. And for the most part great people – only drawback is the poverty level. It felt like there was a lot of it … which creates a lot of panhandlers and people that are trying to hustle you. But such is the way of life. I can’t blame someone on the street trying to make a dollar when they don’t have the opportunities that we all have here in America. We are so fortunate to have what we have.
Thank you Alexandre Dreyfus for putting on such a great show. You can be assured I will be there next year!
