Bartering and Haggling in Foreign Lands

I'm preparing several blog posts at the moment to complete my trip to Asia and Europe last year before adding more posts on my recent trip to China. I have lots of photos to upload; expect the new posts to start appearing shortly.

In the meantime I thought this may be an opportune moment to add a post to my Travel Tips.

Street market in Yangshuo, China

One of the fun parts of travelling in exotic lands is wandering and buying in street markets. Very quickly you learn that prices are, to say the least, flexible. I've read a lot of tips on haggling with market vendors when preparing for my travels over the years, but in hindsight I was always too much the Aussie nice guy; never tough or ruthless enough. It is a bit deflating when you think you got the best price for something after a bargaining session with a market trader to then see it cheaper, and better quality, later on in a local supermarket or duty-free store. Particularly when your wife is the one who notices.

Prior to my latest trip I learned some effective techniques from the wise people who post on the reddit sub-group r/china and tried them in China and Malaysia. I was quite surprised to see how well they worked.

• Always choose a market where there are many vendors, so that it is easy to walk on to a new seller if you don't succeed with the first. The same applies to tuk-tuks or autorickshaws; select from a group when possible so that others can join the negotiations and offer lower rates.

• Take some time to choose your goods and don't look too excited or interested. Be fussy; look at quality. The goods will probably be fakes but that doesn't mean they are necessarily poor quality. When you find what you want, ask the price.

• Look in open astonished wonder at the first numbers punched on the ready-to-hand calculator for haggling with laowai (foreigners) but don't be offended that the trader thinks you are silly enough to pay that much.

• Punch in less than 20% of the asking price. Insensitively ignore the wail of anguish and haggard look of "you're stealing the food from the mouth of my baby" (only one allowed in China) and watch the numbers come down to half the original or less on the calculator. If the vendor appears truly offended, apologise profusely and walk on to the next stall. Now you know to go a little higher next time. You may also get a surprise at the new price offered as you walk away.

• Go back and forth on the price offers until the vendor appears to have reached rock bottom. Then still offer less.

• When the vendor eventually refuses to go lower, walk on. If the vendor lets me go, I now know the real price for the next stall in the market. But usually I'm not let go and the vendor chases me calling out successively lower prices (suddenly they seem to know numbers in English) until I might, reluctantly, accept one.

Petaling Street, Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Later, if you see the same item in a regular store check the price and hope it is higher than you actually paid. It always was for me this time, but not always in the past. It can help if you see it in a store before you go to the market, so that you know the regular retail price.

Using that technique in China and Malaysia I rarely paid more than 30% of the original asking price and always less than the store price. I based the store price on known fake copies, not genuine designer brands, because that is almost certainly what you get in street markets. I also felt no guilt, because invariably after the deal was struck and the cash paid the vendors were smiling and happy; possibly that means I still paid too much, but when both parties are happy that seems like a win/win to me. By the way - cash counts. Street market vendors rarely take credit cards and the rare few who do won't drop the price very much when cards are involved.

One of the differences when I was buying goods in China is that I was reasonably sure that was where they were made, along with souvenirs for most of the other tourist countries in the world. If you buy a fluffy Koala in Australia or Alpaca in Peru, guess where it was probably made.

Among other things after this trip I now have a $3 Casio digital watch (it was cheaper than a new battery for my old one) and some nice silk YStL and Hugo Boss shirts that cost $6 each. Well, at least the silk feels genuine; I learned how to tell on my unwanted (it reduced the tour cost) but interesting detour to the silk factory en-route to the Great Wall. My wife also has a lovely large $20 Chloé leather handbag. However, I suspect that neither Casio, Yves St Laurent, Hugo Boss, nor Chloé are getting a cut from those sales.

And always smile when you're bargaining - apart from your looks of consternation at the prices offered. Keep it friendly; it makes a difference.

Happy haggling.

Cheers, Alan