Morocco is shot through with a dreamlike essence. In the Medinas the concepts of inside and outside are blurred and forgotten, every straight line bends, and no 'street' ends up in the place the direction of travel promises. In Tangier I once took 20 minutes to walk down an empty alley in one direction, but only 3 minutes to walk back to the start. Time and space become slightly wibbly wobbly, and every moment in history is happening now. People talk on phones whilst riding mopeds down medieval streets lined with shops that haven't changed in the last 100 years, and in the mountains, the only change that the centuries have begotten is that even in villages without electricity, someone, somewhere, will be showing the football.

On my first trip to Morocco 12 years ago, I landed in Marrakesh and was hit by the blunting effects of culture shock. I quickly headed up into the mountains, where some confusion with my grand taxi driver led to me getting out in the wrong village, one having no truck with that interloper, electricity. That night, wandering streets lit only by moonlight, a man in full pointy-headed djelleba came out of a door directly in front of me, swinging a brazier of hot coals from a long iron chain. As he briskly turned and walked away the brazier swung out and sent up a great chorus of sparks, swaying and dancing towards their sisters in the stars. Straight away, with a rush, the culture shock melted away and I realised I was here, in this place, and in this place, this was what passed for reality.

Agadir is not like other places. Utterly destroyed in an earthquake in the 60s, it has been rebuilt in the international style, a mix of softish brutalism that wouldn't seem out of place in Coventry were the sun to ever shine, and the clean bold lines of modernism that Morocco does so well.

The beach is a tourist hotspot across the Islamic world, attested to by the long line of Lebanese, Gulf & Turkish restaurants that line it, and the ginger Pashtuns who fill the Pakistani cafe. There's a posh marina with a Zara and policemen who run face control on anyone deigning to come close. Agadir is not like other places, but it is like every place.