Beach chairs and pool-side service under an early morning sun.  Pretty boys and pretty girls with sun gold skin and starch white shorts at beck and call.  Out the stout iron gate, an air-conditioned bus with high-backed chairs and a mini-bar traipsing around mud houses and salted faces weathered under hard labor and a down-beating sun.  Shiny baubles laid out on a blanket--what's $50 for a bit of polished tin?  It's more than most people make in a week.  Well then, throw in another 50¢ for a photo with the boy with a dirt-streak face and sad dark eyes.  Smile! glittering white teeth beneath mirrored lenses on a red sun-burnt face.  Back to a plush dining room with colored tiles and deep tassled cushions.  Prim waiters with plates of lamb and couscous Americana held high beneath a canvas of starlight flooding through the open roof.  A troop of veiled dancers restless, driven, swaying to the beat of native drums.  Salut! a glass of brandy for my brave companions on this adventure to foreign lands!

Taking a ferry across the Mediterranean Sea from Algecira in Spain to Tangier in Morocco, one of the first things I noticed is how conservative the Moroccans are compared to their neighbors across the narrow strait.  Women are typically covered as you see on TV, hair and sometimes face hidden.  Many men wear long hooded robes with prominent beards untrimmed. It makes a boy from the sticks very conscious of his own dress.

Back home, shirts are optional and bikini tops not an uncommon sight during the summer.  There, the principle of being yourself and letting the world beware makes for great ad copy and sells a lot of sneakers and ironic t-shirts.  We pride ourselves on the appearance of individuality.

Here, families are close-knit and a man sitting on another's lap is a common sight in the streets.  Despite that, the current in the air blows conservatively and in a country where public lashings are not uncommon, the first thing I did on arriving at the Hotel Continental was to discreetly go into the men's washroom and turn my t-shirt inside out.  A graphic that's funny in Spain (if you're not a matador) just isn't worth 20 lashes in Morocco.

The highlight of my trip through Spain the last few days is not the friendly wait staff at the Ciudat de Prat hotel in Barcelona where we spent the night after missing our flight to Valencia, nor is it the splendid gardens of the Palacio de Nazaries in Alhambra, though you should stop by if you´re in Grenada.  Rather, the highlight of this trip thus far is losing my luggage somewhere between London and Valencia.

Having to do without anything but what´s in my pockets and on my back for the last three days has reminded me that one can get by and be happy with very little.  Simple living, if you will.

In a culture of consumption where having the latest cell phone is a regular topic of conversation, decisions become simpler.  In the morning, after a nice hot shower, and the question of whether I should change my underwear pops into mind, the simple and blissfull answer is, ¨No, I will not change my underwear today.  Let´s find something to eat.¨