We boarded some older non-air conditioned buses which dropped us in the bazar. Cows (pic. 2) were browsing through the streets. The bazar wasn't quite what I expected as it was more a general downtown area with stores (pic. 3). I set off to explore. The best stores were the fabric and saree stores. Some were friendly, some were not. This pic. was one of the friendliest (pic. 4). These ladies asked me to take their picture on my way out. They also had a good time playing with the calculator that I have hanging from my purse for currency conversion. I wish I could have bought something there but so far all I had found was incredibly beautiful fabric and sarees which I doubted I could ever successfully wrap.
As I strolled along one taxi cab driver was particularly persistent. Every time I walked out of a store, there he was motioning me to come get in the cab. It was making me a little nervous. I kept running into Princess passengers and after a little chat with a couple who had been here before I decided to hire a tuk-tuk to see the sights. I interviewed a couple, picked one with good English who seemed to understand what I wanted for a fixed price and off I went.
2 comments:
I would like to see a video of your interviewing potential drivers to see just how to negotiate a tuk-tuk ride. I might need to know that someday.
The key to negotiating is to agree to the price and service before you get in. The drivers try to get you in before you agree to the price which allows them to charge too much at the end. The reason I spoke to several is that I wasn't sure that the ones I didn't select understood enough of what I was saying to have a common understanding of what the service and price was.
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