Bargaining in the souq.

Damascus, Syria

 

Monday was a designated shopping day as I wanted to pick up some basic t-shirts from the souq. With Michelle and Bramwen in tow, we all headed back out once again to the Aleppo souq, this time with our negotiating faces on. You see, in the souq, a price tag means nothing, I don't even know why they have them because even with the price tag staring you in the face, your first question to the vendor is "How much is this?" He (and yes, they are all men from what I could tell) looks at the price tag and gives you that price. Right, ok, lines have now been drawn because we both know that I'm not paying the price on the tag.

 

A quick side story on negotiating, since it's kind of funny and sets the context. The previous day, Bramwen was shopping for some silk. In the souq, there is an entire textiles section that sells offers miles and miles of just about any fabric (I think) for sale by the meter. Since Bramwen wanted silk, she headed for the silk alley. One of the first vendors quoted her 28 SP/meter, or roughly 50US cents. She thought that seemed high and kept shopping around, eventually finding several vendors selling the same silk for 5 SP/meter, or less then 10US cents. After purchasing several meters of it, she headed back through the souq, passing the initial vendor who wanted 28 SP/m. Once he learned that she had already purchased stuff elsewhere, his price quickly dropped from 28 SP/m to 3 SP/m. Uh, yeah, that's a bit of a markdown wouldn't you say. So he and Bramwen went back and forth a bit with Bramwen finally just telling the guy "Look, you asked for 28 which was ridiculous, so I went somewhere else and paid 5, sorry but starting at 28 was just crazy..." His response: "Well, that's business." He response: "Not my business..." So, yeah, prices can fluctuate rather wildly in the souq, and it's not like you can't just walk two stalls over and find the exact same item for sale to compare prices.

 

For my purchases, I wanted to get three shirts and ended up going between the above mentioned vendor and my old friend the super-gay vendor, since I figured I'd already developed a sort of rapport with him that maybe that would translate into a good deal. The gay guy started at 1500 SP/shirt, but then rather quickly dropped down to 750 SP/shirt, effectively giving me 2-for-1 on my purchase. After lots of back and forth, it was clear it wasn't really ready to drop much below that so I thanked him and said that I'd go get a second opinion. He was nice, not pushy, over friendly and while the gay routine was getting a little old, it was a refreshing change compared to the other vendors.

 

Rip-off guy wanted 1600/shirt, but very quickly got into sales pitch mode and proved to be rather annoying and harassing with his sales pitch. While the price indeed kept dropping, all the day down to 500 SP/shirt, he didn't quite appreciate the idea that I still wanted to shop around and wasn't about to make the purchase right then and there. This aggravated him a bit, which brought out a rather harsher salesman in him, desperate to make a sale he kept coming at me until finally I just said "Look, write down 500 SP on a business card and I'll think about it, because right now I'm not buying it and I've got to go on." I got the card and the price and headed back to gay guy.

 

Gay guy didn't believe that I could get the shirts for 500 and when I showed him the card he simply said "Well, sorry, you should go back to him because I can't go that low." Something about going back to rip-off guy made me annoyed so I really tried to work out a deal with gay-guy. After many more gay jokes, including one from his cousin that should be censored on this blog but went like this "If you rape me, you can have the entire store..." we finally decided that I could get the three shirts for 1700 SP total, without the need for any sexual favors or anything like that. So I took a 200 SP hit (4 US dollars), but in the end I preferred to deal with the gay guy then with the carnival barker a few stalls up.

 

Getting out of the souq with my purchase proved somewhat challenging as we had to find a path that led us in the right direction but didn't take us back past the rip-off artist. Lord (or Allah) knows what he would have said had he have learned that he lost two sales to the same group of Canadians...

 

The next order of business for the day was to find some old insane asylum that Lonely Planet said was worth a check. After little to no help from some local souq vendors (never a good sign when they are staring at a map but pointing to a location nowhere close to where you currently are) we finally found the place on our own, collecting to Australia girls (Kirsty and Nerida) on the way.

 

There wasn't a whole lot to see in the asylum, other then a courtyard and some narrow hallways leading off of it to small rooms that kept the patients. Like just about any visit to an insane asylum, after seeing the rooms you look around and thank who ever you deem necessary for not making you crazy. During our visit, some local was sort of showing us around, turning on lights and pointing out the names of the rooms. We didn't really know who he ways, maybe a grounds keeper or something, but I do know that at the end he insisted on a tip. That's one of the things I hate but have to deal with. If I ask you a question, or have you open a door or something, then fine, a tip is warranted (I guess), but when you just start telling me things and I keep walking away, that's not tip material. Regardless, he wanted a tip so we all dug out a little change and handed some coins that he clearly deemed to be less then expected. Sorry my friend, but I really didn't need or want the tour and I know the building itself is free to enter. So off we went with a somewhat upset, though slightly richer then before, local...

 

As we all headed out of the old town, Kirsty and Nerida headed off on their own to try and catch a bus bound for Turkey that afternoon. Michelle, Bramwen and I grabbed a quick felafel snack for lunch, then wandered around Aleppo trying to find an open air bar/cafe that was mentioned in the Lonely Planet. Well we found it, but it was closed and didn't look like it had been open anytime recently.

 

Since the girls were intent on finding an outdoor place to catch up on some reading and postcards, I left them and decided to walk around town a bit on my own to see if I could get any interesting photographs. I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to get a shot that I had in my head but just couldn't find a place to take it. (I was hoping to get a shot of all the satellite dishes on the roof tops, preferably with a mosque in the background, but no luck). In the end, I got maybe 1-2 shots of a fading sunset over Aleppo but not the photography I was hoping for.

 

As I headed back across town towards the hostel I stopped at the bus station to purchase a ticket for Hama the following morning. Hama is a small town about 1.5 hours south of Aleppo that is somewhat famous for it's relaxed pace, green space and water wheels (Noria's). As I make my way back to the hostel, I bump back into Kirsty and Nerida who are still trying to track down bus tickets to Turkey. Turns out, they missed the last bus and have to spend the night in Aleppo to catch the next bus in the following morning. So all three of us headed back to the hostel to figure out dinner plans.

 

Outside the hostel we were staying at Nerida bumps into two other Australians, Katharine and Eddie (who I'd bump into several times myself over the next week). The five of us head out to some juice/smoothy stand not far from the hostel and we all order this insane fruit smoothy that has 3-4 inches of fruit piled up on top of the rim of the glasses. It's all balanced rather precariously and sort of feels like a big Jenga game as you remove each piece of fruit. We had another run in with a "tip please" guy when the young kid who brought the tray with 5 smoothies on it was somewhat persistent about getting a tip for bringing us our drinks, even though the owner told us to sit down instead of wait at the juice bar. We finally convinced the kid to go downstairs and that we'd take care of the bill and the tip at the same time. Again, he didn't seem to keen on that and kept coming back up looking for a tip. Since we noticed that the other tables didn't seem to be tipping him, we figured he was hitting on us and ultimately we just ignored him. In the end, he got a small tip from us as we paid the bill and left. But tipping at a juice bar.... /sigh

 

We all grabbed more felafels and kebabs for dinner before Kirsty, Nerida and I headed off to the Baron Cafe for some hot chocolate, cards and back gammon before calling it a night back at the hostel. There wouldn't be much sleep that night as Kirsty, Nerida and Michelle were all catching a 5am bus to Turkey, while I had a 9am bus to Hama. After a week in Aleppo, it was time to move on.

 

Kenny