Yesterday we took a trip downtown to the Dirt Market with our buddy Travis. The stuff on offer is many and varied but what made the experience for us was the tourist factor. Every day, bus loads of tourists come down to the famous Dirt Market for the experience of haggling with the locals, but all they really do is teach the locals a few things about westerners.
Lessons learned by the market stall holders:
- 1. Westerners are rich
- 2. Westerners are stupid
- 3. Westerners don’t know how to haggle
We bought quite a few items at the market and because we are starting to get used to haggling we didn’t fall into too many traps, however it didn’t mean they didn’t try. Alex wanted to buy a tiny stone ornament, about 2cm long and 3 cm high, made of some miscelaneous black shiny rock extruded from a volcano hundreds of thousands of years ago and shaped by an old woman in a shed in the mountains last wednesday to be sold to tourists; locals aren’t buying these kinds of thiungs. Our conversation with the stall holder went like this:
Us: How much is this? -holding up the tiny stone animal-
Stall guy: -looks us up and down- 500
Us: -snorting and laughing-
Stall guy: Ok, for you I can make it 450.
US: Maybe if it was made of gold and not some rock you found in your cousin’s garden.
Stall guy: Ok, what’s your best price
Us: -looking at each other for a moment- 20
Stall guy: -looking at us quizzically- too low. How about 275? 275 is my best price.
Us: Way too high -turning to leave-
Stall guy: Ok, 150
Us: -starting to leave-
Stall guy: Ok, 100
Us: -Taking a few steps away-
Stall guy: -chasing us out of the shop- ok, ok, ok, how about 75.
Us: -turning to him- make it 50*
Stall guy: ok
So we got got it for ten percent of the opening price.If tourists were told to think about what they are spending their money on, rather than just blindly spending, then it would be much quicker and less dramatic for us to reach a reasonable price.
*50 RMB is about 8 Aussie dollars or 5 Euro.
Comments (6)
Glad to have you back, and looking forward to many more tales of adventure!
Comment by Soph — October 25, 2009 @ 11:13 am
Well, I guess we’ll be watching you for a while before we try buying anything when we come over.
Good to have you back as well!
Comment by Robert — October 25, 2009 @ 1:03 pm
Nice to see you back up and running and that all of you seems to bee in a good shape. Our chinese project is going to start pretty soon. Fortuna is on 4th place and I will not mention Borussia
.
Comment by Stefan — October 25, 2009 @ 6:34 pm
Sounds like fun! 10 percent of the opening price probably still means 1000 percent profit for the stall guy…
Nice shirt you are wearing – when Fortuna will be promoted to the Bundesliga, I´ll reserve tickets for you!
Comment by van Trinkmeister — October 26, 2009 @ 4:25 pm
Funny thing he probably still made 50% profit on the damm thing!
Comment by Dennis — October 27, 2009 @ 8:16 am
I’ll bet my bottom dollar the best bargainer was Alex???
Comment by Pop — October 29, 2009 @ 6:16 am