Haggle Fiend

Well, I'm just hanging round at the moment, I start in kuala lumpar on the 1st june so am trying to think how best to fill the time. Obviously, if i want to keep the blogger as amusing as before i should head up to chiang mai on my own with only a few kip and a pair of flip flops and see what unfolds, but after my last forray into solo travelling i am, understandably, i think you'll agree, reluctant.

So i went out on khao san last nite and had a 'few' singhs, it's lethal stuff that beer, and gives the main monster hangover - see? i could be a travel writer, i even do culinary reviews of foreign beverages. Talking of things culinary i had chicken on a stick THREE times last night after the beer, qualifying me for the 'worst vegetarian in the world' title again. I wasn't even co-erced, i was the instigator of the flesh eating feast! We walked past a street vendor lady selling parts of chicken on a stick on our way to find somewhere that sold beer after 1am, and i was like 'mmmmm, chicken', so we found somewhere that sold beer and had mats on the floor to sit on outside, and i was like
'um, anyone hungry at all? i could just eat something, oh look, a chicken stand'... so three trips to the chicken lady later, between the three of us, i think we ate a whole chicken in total, and it was all my doing...i feel so bad. But on the upside i think i have perfected the art of haggling now... i haggle for EVERYTHING, and i mean everything. I have figured that there are 5 simple steps to this art form:

1) offer them half of what they're asking, they'll look mortified and as insulted as if you'd said their grandma smells of elderberries, but they do bring the price down a fraction
2) you look incredulous and pretend to walk off
3) they chase you and come down a bit more
4) you go up a bit, depends how much you want what you're haggling for (von dutch caps, diesel watches, bits of chicken on a stick, ant buns, tuk tuks, crap postcards and birkenstock flip flops being the main consumer goods over here).
5) transaction complete, you should have paid a LOT less than the asking price.

It's completely addictive and all-consuming this process tho, you get caught up in it like a trance, and i find myself getting wound up by this poor thai peasant, and arguing over 10 frickin bahts (17p?) for a taxi ride that would cost me 17 quid in england! It usually helps if they mention that they have a family to feed, this jolts me out of the hypnotic trance that is haggling, and i realise that i'm a millionaire compared to them and that this is their livelihood, but until they do this i am the tight western haggling fiend who shall not surrender the negotiations and they are the evil money grabbing foreigner paddling their fake tacky wares at extortionate prices, bless 'em.

I also think i left the 2 new zealanders i was out with last night, with the distinct impression that pommies aren't too bright. They asked me if my natural hair colour was brown, twice. First we were talking about the waterfalls in luoam pabang, and i was trying to figure out if i'd got the top cos there were loads of waterfalls and you could climb really high, and the guy's like 'well did you see the river'? and i was like 'no! i didn't even know there was a river, i obviously didn't get to the top' and he's like 'you didn't know there was a river?... at the top of the water fall?'...'oooooh yeah! i s'pose there would be wouldn't there?'. Then we were talking about vegetarianism, and i thought i read somewhere that cows were reliant upon human beings to milk them regularly otherwise their udders would fill up with milk and explode and they'd die, apparently this is not the case, they'd just dry up and stop producing milk. It's amazing what you can learn in a day innit?