Places not spend a Friday night definitely include Luton, and its Airport. I spent a funfilled 19 hours in the airport. It was 2 degrees outside and no more then 7 inside. If you decide, as I did, that the best way to save money is to get very cheap flights and spend the night in the airport, take a sleeping bag. And try not to have one of your shoes mysteriously vanish (I have 2 pairs fortunately and am determined to find the roaming one that somehow escaped me).

On the plus side I was not the only person sleeping in the airport and I met some cool people, we laughed a lot. You can bond with anyone when trying to sleep on an airport floor and or seat. I was also happy to discover that Luton is a 'silent airport' meaning it does not announce flights or any information apart from the compulsory messages about not leaving your bag and not smoking inside, which are only every half an hour or so, rather then every 2 minutes ala the States (incidentally as soon as these warnings were played back to back, half the airports population abandonded their bags to go and smoke outside in the freezing cold, another example of the power of suggestion misapplied, Interesting that the lesser of the 2 evils was bag abandonment not smoking indoors).

Airports aside, I am now in Portugal and so far, I love it. The hostel I am in, is the best yet. Clean, has bar, light fillled, comfortable beds and reasonable numbers of people in each room. It seems, like every hostel, to be inhabited mainly by Yanks, Aussies and some token Canadians and Kiwis, but they are thus far a cool crew, even in my sleep deprived state. What little I have seen of Lisbon leads me to believe it is a beautiful city with lots of oppurtunties for fun. And the sun sticks around until 6 and it is a balmy 21 degrees, England you could learn from this....

Flying essentially over Portugal to get to England and wait 19 hours for my flight to Lisbon was surreal, but Marrakech had primed me for oddities and surrealism. Hours spent trying to find a way out of the (Funky Pink) Medina makes any western plane experience pale in comparison. Marrakech Airport with its tent in the carpark, lack of information and lassiez fair attitude to announcements and departure times, also added to the surrealism of the whole Morroco affair and detracted from the strange universe of airports and their cleaning machines.

Africa, tick.

So I am in Africa. And it is certainly something else, by the far the most "foreign" place I have been yet. Biz and I are staying on the edge of the Medina, the ancient town, which is the most confusing maze I have ever entered. No invading hoards would have been able to conquer this town; they would be hard pressed to relocate their seige engines if they made it in, and would do the only sensible thing to do in this crazy town and roll a doobie and try and find coffee.

I have seen the white slavers, they roll past their captives in tow all looking stupefied, drugged and confused. I had mistakenly thought white slavers are snatching people against thier will and selling them. I now know that in fact you sell yourself into slavery, you pay your fee and wonder around behind some knob with a paddle while he shares ancient history and you congratulate yourself on being so adventurous. No, the true white slavers are the tour operators, trapping thier victims and dictating every second of their Morroccan Experience.

Meanwhile I may be lost but I am free. Free to be hassled by children who offer to show you to different places in the maze. They catch you when in a weak moment as you draw out your useless map and pretend to know where you are, let alone where you are going. "Big Square?" They offer and volunteer to lead anywhere, usually they take you to the tourist traps and market stalls and then demand exhorbitant amounts of money for the priveliege. "But this is not where I wanted to go..." Pleading and rationality does no good nd on the end the only thing left to do is swear t them and look angry. Or I suppose you could give them what the verage family gets in a week as they demand, but I won't.

We found the Museum of Marrakech which I hypothesised was where they showed you what happened to all the other tourists. Apprently it really is a museum... But the whole city seems to be a window into the past, so I wonder what is in there that is not on the streets? Wood fired cooking, donkeys and primitive attitudes to women are everywhere alongside scooters, bikes and the worst driving I have seen for a while. Since we continue to stumble on the Museum, it would be great to know where it actually is, especially in relation to the hotel, but no it is just everywhere.

The Big Square is exactly that; a big square. Like most of the Medina there are stalls with spices, shoes, clothes, produce, live turtles, animal skins and hats, but it also has the added bonus of snake charmers, people in national dress and with monkeys. Everyone wants to sell you things and constant harrassment the latest price of white middle class priveliege.

Marrakech is colourful place, I think I like it. But I am glad I am not here on my own. I am also getting a little tired of being looked at like a prostitue.