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In Egypt, that's true unless you haggle. You can always haggle to get close to Egyptian prices, but if I didn't have my friend with me to show me how to do that

In Egypt, that's true unless you haggle. You can always haggle to get close to Egyptian prices, but if I didn't have my friend with me to show me how to do that, I would have paid American prices the whole trip. I'm sure a lot of places work similarly. At the end of the day, they want to make a sale, doesn't matter who you are just what they think you'll pay.

elcritch 5y ago
Funny, I found shop vendors from some Arabic cultures would almost become offended if you _didn't_ barter with them -- at least if they knew you weren't just a tourist. For the (American) tourists wandering through they'd suck it up and just charge them 10x the price. ;)
- dennis_moore 5y ago
  "This bloke won't haggle!"
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Very true in India too. You stick out as backpacker very clearly, the prices are set accordingly. I found it extremely hard to haggle with my european mentality, and ended up agreeing on still too high prices. It took some time to get better. Then you come back to western world (or anywhere else for that matter) after 6 months of such training and you find out you haggle harder than any locals, sometimes to the point of offense. The most important point in haggling is to not show too much interest. It helps to have an idea about real local prices of items, otherwise its just shots in the dark.
  - Loughla 5y ago
    That was my least favorite thing about traveling/living overseas as a stereotypical looking American. I hate haggling. I hate it more than anything. It's needlessly antagonistic and completely unnecessary. I understand it's a cultural thing, but I hate it more than birds. It was exhausting to buy anything, the entire time. It never got better, even when the shops learned who I was after an extended period of time. Food, water, everything was an argument. I just wanted to exist and check out what was going on around me, not argue with some random shop that my groceries shouldn't be so expensive.
  - throwaway2037 5y ago
    When I have traveled to India, I just wear jeans and t-shirt... and yeah, a backpack. :) Obviously, I am a non-native, but I have not experienced outrageous "foreigners-only" prices ever. This experience includes incredibly remote villages in South India as well as urban centre of Mumbai. That said, I understand that many people have difficult experiences with bartering when they travel in South Asia.
- pcardoso 5y ago
  Also funny, I visited Jordan 2 years ago, right before the pandemic. I was expecting to have to haggle prices like in other places but it just didn't happen, didn't feel I was paying tourist prices at all. Street sellers didn't push us to buy stuff. A street restaurant in Amman that didn't have a menu charged us around €4 for the meal, which was dirt cheap for what we had. All in all it was a very nice experience.
  - mgoetzke 5y ago
    Seconded. Jordan is a pretty great place as far as I experienced it too. Though I was not alone myself, but watching interactions with others it was all very decent.
- have_faith 5y ago
  Is there any difference in the expectations of haggling if it is a man or woman doing it (on the tourist side)? just curious.
- throwaway2037 5y ago
  You wrote: <<some Arabic cultures would almost become offended if you _didn't_ barter with them>> I have also heard the same, but I have zero native-level understanding of any Middle Eastern cultures. Could anyone who lives in the Middle East / North Africa / Horn of Africa comment? I would appreciate any first hand accounts about this stereotype. It's OK if you teach us that it's all "travel guide bullshit"!
car 5y ago
In Egypt, it also helps to be able to read the arabic numerals — eastern arabic [0] that is. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#Comparison_of_different_numerals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#Comparison_of_... Eastern Arabic ٠ ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ١٠
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Yeah, those street markets where there is a "small" deviation between western and eastern numerals if prices happen to be shown.
- contravariant 5y ago
  For some reason I didn't expect you to list them from right to left.
  - pajko 5y ago
    It's "automatic", see https://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/uba-basics https://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup... and https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/ https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/ However that algorithm has a couple of flaws in mixed left and right ordered text, and a couple of control characters have been introduced to solve the issue: https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-unicode-controls https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-unicode-c... Could play a bit in https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html to see how things work.
    - contravariant 5y ago
      Ah is that what it was. Mixing ltr and rtl text always trips me up. To make matters even weirder it seems that sequences of nummerals, such as ١٠ are ltr again. That has some very unintuitive consequences when you try to edit that sentence.
emptyfile 5y ago
In countries like that I just don't buy anything. Life is too short for haggling.
- koolba 5y ago
  Haggling is fun. I’m convinced the modern aversion to haggling in first world countries is because people grow up avoiding all direct confrontation. They think it’s somehow how rude to disagree with someone about the price of the article at hand. The next level of it is when they justify this “politeness” by claiming that haggling is inefficient or a waste of time.
  - cookieswumchorr 5y ago
    in the west buying stuff usually requires no human interaction at all, even the cashiers are getting replaced by automatic checkout. But, on the other hand, you do need negotiation skills, be it in career, private live, or elsewhere. So maybe we all just need to do a year of backpacking and learn how to haggle
    - pbourke 5y ago
      > in the west buying stuff usually requires no human interaction at all And then you step foot in a car dealership, and you might as well be in a souk
      - cookieswumchorr 5y ago
        yup, stuff like cars, or, god forbid, houses, are not only expensive AF, but the buying requires skills most people never had a chance to practice. fuck it, I'm cycling to save the planet and my nerves
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    When all sellers and customers haggle it creates a zero-sum game where nothing useful is achieved and everybody is wasting their time. Fun when you do it once, not so fun when is expected every day. A similar zero-sum game is advertising. Yet, some cultures look down on haggling and embrace advertising with open arms...
Veen 5y ago
When I lived in Morocco, the prices went down the longer I shopped with particular market vendors. The first time I bought oranges, for example, they were eye-wateringly expensive. As I became a regular buyer, the price gradually dropped until they were a fraction of the original cost. (It would probably have been cheaper to begin with if I'd haggled, but I am not great at that sort of interaction).

elcritch 5y ago

Funny, I found shop vendors from some Arabic cultures would almost become offended if you _didn't_ barter with them -- at least if they knew you weren't just a tourist. For the (American) tourists wandering through they'd suck it up and just charge them 10x the price. ;)

dennis_moore 5y ago
"This bloke won't haggle!"
saiya-jin 5y ago
Very true in India too. You stick out as backpacker very clearly, the prices are set accordingly. I found it extremely hard to haggle with my european mentality, and ended up agreeing on still too high prices. It took some time to get better. Then you come back to western world (or anywhere else for that matter) after 6 months of such training and you find out you haggle harder than any locals, sometimes to the point of offense. The most important point in haggling is to not show too much interest. It helps to have an idea about real local prices of items, otherwise its just shots in the dark.
- Loughla 5y ago
  That was my least favorite thing about traveling/living overseas as a stereotypical looking American. I hate haggling. I hate it more than anything. It's needlessly antagonistic and completely unnecessary. I understand it's a cultural thing, but I hate it more than birds. It was exhausting to buy anything, the entire time. It never got better, even when the shops learned who I was after an extended period of time. Food, water, everything was an argument. I just wanted to exist and check out what was going on around me, not argue with some random shop that my groceries shouldn't be so expensive.
- throwaway2037 5y ago
  When I have traveled to India, I just wear jeans and t-shirt... and yeah, a backpack. :) Obviously, I am a non-native, but I have not experienced outrageous "foreigners-only" prices ever. This experience includes incredibly remote villages in South India as well as urban centre of Mumbai. That said, I understand that many people have difficult experiences with bartering when they travel in South Asia.
pcardoso 5y ago
Also funny, I visited Jordan 2 years ago, right before the pandemic. I was expecting to have to haggle prices like in other places but it just didn't happen, didn't feel I was paying tourist prices at all. Street sellers didn't push us to buy stuff. A street restaurant in Amman that didn't have a menu charged us around €4 for the meal, which was dirt cheap for what we had. All in all it was a very nice experience.
- mgoetzke 5y ago
  Seconded. Jordan is a pretty great place as far as I experienced it too. Though I was not alone myself, but watching interactions with others it was all very decent.
have_faith 5y ago
Is there any difference in the expectations of haggling if it is a man or woman doing it (on the tourist side)? just curious.
throwaway2037 5y ago
You wrote: <<some Arabic cultures would almost become offended if you _didn't_ barter with them>> I have also heard the same, but I have zero native-level understanding of any Middle Eastern cultures. Could anyone who lives in the Middle East / North Africa / Horn of Africa comment? I would appreciate any first hand accounts about this stereotype. It's OK if you teach us that it's all "travel guide bullshit"!

car 5y ago

In Egypt, it also helps to be able to read the arabic numerals — eastern arabic [0] that is. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#Comparison_of_different_numerals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#Comparison_of_... Eastern Arabic ٠ ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ١٠

pjmlp 5y ago
Yeah, those street markets where there is a "small" deviation between western and eastern numerals if prices happen to be shown.
contravariant 5y ago
For some reason I didn't expect you to list them from right to left.
- pajko 5y ago
  It's "automatic", see https://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/uba-basics https://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup... and https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/ https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/ However that algorithm has a couple of flaws in mixed left and right ordered text, and a couple of control characters have been introduced to solve the issue: https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-unicode-controls https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-unicode-c... Could play a bit in https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html to see how things work.
  - contravariant 5y ago
    Ah is that what it was. Mixing ltr and rtl text always trips me up. To make matters even weirder it seems that sequences of nummerals, such as ١٠ are ltr again. That has some very unintuitive consequences when you try to edit that sentence.

emptyfile 5y ago

In countries like that I just don't buy anything. Life is too short for haggling.

koolba 5y ago
Haggling is fun. I’m convinced the modern aversion to haggling in first world countries is because people grow up avoiding all direct confrontation. They think it’s somehow how rude to disagree with someone about the price of the article at hand. The next level of it is when they justify this “politeness” by claiming that haggling is inefficient or a waste of time.
- cookieswumchorr 5y ago
  in the west buying stuff usually requires no human interaction at all, even the cashiers are getting replaced by automatic checkout. But, on the other hand, you do need negotiation skills, be it in career, private live, or elsewhere. So maybe we all just need to do a year of backpacking and learn how to haggle
  - pbourke 5y ago
    > in the west buying stuff usually requires no human interaction at all And then you step foot in a car dealership, and you might as well be in a souk
    - cookieswumchorr 5y ago
      yup, stuff like cars, or, god forbid, houses, are not only expensive AF, but the buying requires skills most people never had a chance to practice. fuck it, I'm cycling to save the planet and my nerves
- goodpoint 5y ago
  When all sellers and customers haggle it creates a zero-sum game where nothing useful is achieved and everybody is wasting their time. Fun when you do it once, not so fun when is expected every day. A similar zero-sum game is advertising. Yet, some cultures look down on haggling and embrace advertising with open arms...

Veen 5y ago

When I lived in Morocco, the prices went down the longer I shopped with particular market vendors. The first time I bought oranges, for example, they were eye-wateringly expensive. As I became a regular buyer, the price gradually dropped until they were a fraction of the original cost. (It would probably have been cheaper to begin with if I'd haggled, but I am not great at that sort of interaction).