I'm gonna spend money, 7/20
Michael Altschul
graveyard, my immediate (good ol' American) reaction was: sweet,
everything will be cheap and I get to put those Moroccan and Turkish
bargaining talents to use. I talked a ricksha who pedaled me around
town in search of a hotel for almost an hour down from 40 R** to 20;
my hotel was listed at 150 R, I actually walked away when they
wouldn't go any lower than 125 R (but eventually returned). A few
hours later, a Malaysian tourist told me that an earthquake had just
leveled many areas of Jogja in late May. Many deaths, many displaced.
Pleased as I was to finally understand what was going on, one word
kept entering my mind: "DICK!"
So while that word resonated within and I considered my heinous
avarice, I decided that the penace was in order: I'm gonna spend money
here and I will not haggle. And spend it I did. I decided to
purchase gifts and souvenirs in Jogja now rather than later. While I
hated the prospect of loading up my pack early, it was acceptable
given the need to pump some money into their local economy. That
night I hired a car to take me and 3 locals to Borodudur and the
environs. When the driver gave me a rate of 350 R for the day and
asked, "It's okay?" I smiled and said, "Yeah, it's okay." He seemed
pleasantly surprised. When I found some wayang (puppets), I paid the
reasonable asking price. Okay there are limits -- I won't pay the
same price for something here that it could be had in the States.
Although I had initially told myself not to bargain at all, I've
ammeded that to pay the first reasonable asking price. So how do I
know what that is? Well, it's funny but I found out when purchasing
wayang that one need only be silent to get the reasonable price. I
discovered this by thinking about what I was purchasing, "Should I get
one for Biggie?" which he took to mean, "I'm not talking because I
want a better price." Same thing happened when I was buying batik
artwork (beautiful!). The list goes on, my pack is full, I made some
good friends in Jogja and learned an awful lot about the government's
response (or lack thereof) to the earthquake.
That established, it was hard to get to that decision. I pride myself
on not being that sucker traveller, on my ability to get closer to the
local price than 95% of other travellers. And, frankly, I had really
looked forward to hard bargaining and bonding with merchants with
bargaining banter. I'll swallow my pride, spend some more money than
anticipated, and live up to my American stereotype as an overpayer.
But I'll also surprise vendors by drinking tea with them, smoking
those nasty clove cigarettes, and learning about their lives.
I had planned to go back to bargaining once I hit Bali, and I have to
some degree. But it's kinda tough here because Bali's never recovered
from that terrorist blast 4 years ago. Damned conscience! Oh well, at
least it will be clear...
** Rupiah: I'll use R to denote Rupiah going forward. I'll also
truncate by 1,000. So 40 R = 40,000 rupiah. Know that $1 = 9,000
rupiah (though I'm getting sick of division by 9, so I'll soon be
considering $1 to be 10,000 rupiah).