Ant:
"Look my shop?"
"You looking now?"
"Shopping today?"
"Just looking see?"
Not my words, but those of every shopkeeper/stall holder in India. It seems everytime you leave your hotel room you have to run the gauntlet of over enthusiastic, over committed and after a while downright irritating shopkeepers to get to what ever destination you want to get to.
Ok, I agree we are visiting tourist hotspots and they make their living from selling to the tourists but it wouldn't be so bad if maybe they differentiated their goods a little. How many times can you look at the same cotton pants, tops, bags, throws, bracelets and little Indian trinket boxes? Time after time, shop after shop, the same product is everywhere. Maybe they are trying a strategy of blurring your vision with continuous repetition of goods, hoping you will get so dizzy you will part with your cash?
SOS my dad would say - Same old shit!
Its a terrible habit, lying to these people but its like trying to shake off a bad cold, not easy! An answer of "Not today" rumbles a response of "Ok, tomorrow looking!" .. .. urgh!
No peace in walking the streets here.
Eventually, (you will crumble - their system works! - you look at their shop) when you do find something you would consider buying the real fun begins.
The answer to your question of "how much?" is always divided by a minimum of 3 as a base for bargaining. The volley begins ..
"1000 rupees"
"too much, 300?"
"no, 1000"
"too much, thanks".... (start walking away)...
"okay, 800"
"no thanks" ... (walking away again!)
"whats your final price?" - um, are'nt you the shopkeeper and meant to be setting the prices?
By this time your patience is wearing thin and polite as we are, we are getting ruder and more irritated by this stupid game by the minute. What ever happened to fixed pricing? Its hot, its tiring so why add to the stress with needless bargaining? Im sure a couple of tourists pay the prices but surely this isn't worth it. They have fought so hard just to get you to look, why piss us off anymore but haggling with prices?
So you find the item you like and decide to buy as the verbal volley of pricing gets closer to an agreement. You now find yourself arguing about 50 rupees - about 50 pence, 1 dollar! Its ridiculous! You are buying a tablecloth or custom made trousers/top and you are arguing viciously about 50 rupees! Im telling you its not normal - but at least its fun!
Having made your purchase, you exit the store/shack/couple of sticks with items hanging on them only for the next storekeeper/stallholder/stickmaster to scathe you with a "you look my shop too? you buy! make one person happy, me sad, not good! buy here!". Almost a command!
Patience exhausted. One raised hand and a mumbled "no thanks" is all they get - on some occasions this is nearly replaced by a "F**k Off!!!" - as you stroll away!
However, the disease is not only contained to shopkeepers but also applies to cabs and rickshaws (I still have to get into one where the meter does work!), tours and just about anything in the service industry. It seems the only fixed prices are those products that have the price printed on the packaging, but even that is often abused. India is like a giant competition to see who can squeeze the most out of the tourist.
So tomorrow morning after breakfast - in fact once we've finished this post in a hot and sweaty Internet shop and all we want to do is go for a swim, we will run the boulevard of bargaining once again. (and again!)
Ps - If anyone wants any of the detailed items above let us know, we love "looking my shop!"
Sim:
Yesterday I was chatting to the girls that haggle you incessantly to buy things and tried to give them some sales tips. I explained to them that I, like many othercustomers, love looking at all the little things that they have to sell, but that they make it impossible to 'just look' and so chase many potential customers away. Sungeetha and Suko definetly seemed to take this on board, but the others carried on, 'Look my shop'.
Sitting at breakfast drinking fresh pineapple juice, I said to Ant that its amazing how sweet the fresh juice is in India. He said that he had read that they put sugar in the fruit juice. I have read the Lonely Planet inside out and saw nothing about the sweetened juice. But slowly I am starting to realise that many items that you buy in India, aren't what they say they are. The thing is, it is a kind and gentle culture, but if there is moeny to be made and it invloves a sham, then that's what its going to be. The owner of the Juice Shack said that only his restauramt sells real brown bread and theothers simply yse artfifical dyes to change the colour of their bread. Who knows whats in what? The tailors convince you that everyhwhere sells cheap cotton that will go shiny after a while, but there cotton fabric is the genuine thing. Meanwhile their cotton fabric isn't even cotton. Thats India, you got to love it, and just take it as it comes, and if the fish masala is really a street dog masala, it tastes okay. An english guy gave us a tip to always eat where locals eat and not where tourists eat. He said that owners will do what they can to scam tourists but not the locals who they want toreturn for more busniess.
Yoga in Varkala: My first class here was with a Yugoslavian man called Zola who runs classes on the beach every morning and evening. Great idea to do sun salutation as the sun sets with someone playing the flute, but the sand went everywhere and made the whole thing a bit ineffective. The best class was on a roof top of an old guest house. Not really a class as such, more an Ayurvedic Doctor doing yoga with lots of people, like me, doing it with him. He gives brief instructions and is a great man. The class starts at 7.30 am and by 8am the sun is beating down and you just have to move around the roof top in search of a patch of shade to prevent a yoga fry up.
"Look my shop?"
"You looking now?"
"Shopping today?"
"Just looking see?"
Not my words, but those of every shopkeeper/stall holder in India. It seems everytime you leave your hotel room you have to run the gauntlet of over enthusiastic, over committed and after a while downright irritating shopkeepers to get to what ever destination you want to get to.
Ok, I agree we are visiting tourist hotspots and they make their living from selling to the tourists but it wouldn't be so bad if maybe they differentiated their goods a little. How many times can you look at the same cotton pants, tops, bags, throws, bracelets and little Indian trinket boxes? Time after time, shop after shop, the same product is everywhere. Maybe they are trying a strategy of blurring your vision with continuous repetition of goods, hoping you will get so dizzy you will part with your cash?
SOS my dad would say - Same old shit!
Its a terrible habit, lying to these people but its like trying to shake off a bad cold, not easy! An answer of "Not today" rumbles a response of "Ok, tomorrow looking!" .. .. urgh!
No peace in walking the streets here.
Eventually, (you will crumble - their system works! - you look at their shop) when you do find something you would consider buying the real fun begins.
The answer to your question of "how much?" is always divided by a minimum of 3 as a base for bargaining. The volley begins ..
"1000 rupees"
"too much, 300?"
"no, 1000"
"too much, thanks".... (start walking away)...
"okay, 800"
"no thanks" ... (walking away again!)
"whats your final price?" - um, are'nt you the shopkeeper and meant to be setting the prices?
By this time your patience is wearing thin and polite as we are, we are getting ruder and more irritated by this stupid game by the minute. What ever happened to fixed pricing? Its hot, its tiring so why add to the stress with needless bargaining? Im sure a couple of tourists pay the prices but surely this isn't worth it. They have fought so hard just to get you to look, why piss us off anymore but haggling with prices?
So you find the item you like and decide to buy as the verbal volley of pricing gets closer to an agreement. You now find yourself arguing about 50 rupees - about 50 pence, 1 dollar! Its ridiculous! You are buying a tablecloth or custom made trousers/top and you are arguing viciously about 50 rupees! Im telling you its not normal - but at least its fun!
Having made your purchase, you exit the store/shack/couple of sticks with items hanging on them only for the next storekeeper/stallholder/stickmaster to scathe you with a "you look my shop too? you buy! make one person happy, me sad, not good! buy here!". Almost a command!
Patience exhausted. One raised hand and a mumbled "no thanks" is all they get - on some occasions this is nearly replaced by a "F**k Off!!!" - as you stroll away!
However, the disease is not only contained to shopkeepers but also applies to cabs and rickshaws (I still have to get into one where the meter does work!), tours and just about anything in the service industry. It seems the only fixed prices are those products that have the price printed on the packaging, but even that is often abused. India is like a giant competition to see who can squeeze the most out of the tourist.
So tomorrow morning after breakfast - in fact once we've finished this post in a hot and sweaty Internet shop and all we want to do is go for a swim, we will run the boulevard of bargaining once again. (and again!)
Ps - If anyone wants any of the detailed items above let us know, we love "looking my shop!"
Sim:
Yesterday I was chatting to the girls that haggle you incessantly to buy things and tried to give them some sales tips. I explained to them that I, like many othercustomers, love looking at all the little things that they have to sell, but that they make it impossible to 'just look' and so chase many potential customers away. Sungeetha and Suko definetly seemed to take this on board, but the others carried on, 'Look my shop'.
Sitting at breakfast drinking fresh pineapple juice, I said to Ant that its amazing how sweet the fresh juice is in India. He said that he had read that they put sugar in the fruit juice. I have read the Lonely Planet inside out and saw nothing about the sweetened juice. But slowly I am starting to realise that many items that you buy in India, aren't what they say they are. The thing is, it is a kind and gentle culture, but if there is moeny to be made and it invloves a sham, then that's what its going to be. The owner of the Juice Shack said that only his restauramt sells real brown bread and theothers simply yse artfifical dyes to change the colour of their bread. Who knows whats in what? The tailors convince you that everyhwhere sells cheap cotton that will go shiny after a while, but there cotton fabric is the genuine thing. Meanwhile their cotton fabric isn't even cotton. Thats India, you got to love it, and just take it as it comes, and if the fish masala is really a street dog masala, it tastes okay. An english guy gave us a tip to always eat where locals eat and not where tourists eat. He said that owners will do what they can to scam tourists but not the locals who they want toreturn for more busniess.
Yoga in Varkala: My first class here was with a Yugoslavian man called Zola who runs classes on the beach every morning and evening. Great idea to do sun salutation as the sun sets with someone playing the flute, but the sand went everywhere and made the whole thing a bit ineffective. The best class was on a roof top of an old guest house. Not really a class as such, more an Ayurvedic Doctor doing yoga with lots of people, like me, doing it with him. He gives brief instructions and is a great man. The class starts at 7.30 am and by 8am the sun is beating down and you just have to move around the roof top in search of a patch of shade to prevent a yoga fry up.
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