Sunday, November 3, 2013

Haggling in Vietnam

Today, for the first time in my life, I argued with a shop keeper. The item in question was a lovely string of polished shell beads with magnets along its length, meaning it could be a bracelet or necklace to fit any one. The Vietnamese shop keeper, a pretty girl in her 20s,wanted 100,000 dong for it, about $6 NZ. Not bad if I was in New Zealand, but very expensive for Vietnam. I wasn't willing to pay that much, so I haggled and got it down to 80,000 dong, then 70,000. Eventually I managed to wrangle it down to 50,000 dong, about $3 NZ. Not bad for my first time haggling, but I strongly suspect a Vietnamese person could have got it even lower.