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by AdamJacobMuller
1552 days ago
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Yeah but the thing is the money doesn't really matter to me. I remember being at a stall (I think it was in Istanbul) and picking out these beautiful scarves for some people back home. They probably were marked up 500% from the local price but they were still super cheap, like $5/each. When the guy gave me the final price I rounded up and gave him bills in the local currency (it was probably an extra dollar or two USD) but the guy was just super super happy. The extra couple of bucks for me was meaningless, but, definitely improved his mood and hopefully improved his life. Plus, now, each gift came with a story to tell. On the other hand, I bought a rug while there and did not negotiate enough and when I got home my turkish colleagues laughed at me :( |
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Sadly I notice some haggling tourism, people are being misled by blog posts and vlogs that the culture there is to haggle and that the seller respect you more when you haggle. I find that to be totally unsettling.
I am a local in a developing country, with an upper middle class income, I do not haggle, I give extra tips, my friends from similar income level do so too, some do for things I do not tip for. If you are a tourist and wanna have a local authentic experience you probably should match the behavior of the people of that nation with same income level as you not of the vast majority that can happen to be poor.
Also I won't trust diaspora colleagues, just like how Italians will always insist that the pizza you've ate in Italy was not up to standard and not a real pizza just a round piece of bread with vegetables on top of it and the real pizza is on mr mario's pizzeria in the luigi street in Milan, all diaspora of the world do the same.