I can't take being ripped off. "You from Amreeka? We love Amreeka! Come eat here!" They're very excited about us. The vendors treat us very kindly, but when it comes to paying for their product we pay double of what the average Egyptian would pay. It bothers me so much... For instance today Bob and Tara and I took the metro to the Mubarak stop looking for food (after stopping at two other stops that were obviously places where we should not be). We found a place (or the place found us...). If you just glance at a stand a stand tender will come up in front of you and try to get you to buy. We were starving and the food looked decent enough (last night we had a health talk with a nurse so that we know what to eat and not to eat so we dont get parasites or tyfoid like last semester's group) so we got a coke and a water and 3 "shworka" and a "falafel" ( I LOVE falafel). The food was great but when the bill came it was 35 LE. At Naela, the shop next to us in Agouza, sells shworka for 1.75 LE and falafel for .75 LE. They charged us 5 LE for each item! I was like, no way. There was a man standing near by and I pointed at the falafell and said "khamsa genea?!?!" (5 LE?!?!) and he came up to the waiter and talked (well, no one talks here. They all yell.) to the waiter and the waiter kept telling us 35. Finally after some arguing, the man took 20 LE from Bob and gave it to the waiter and the waiter left. Arh! No Egyptian would pay 35 for that, and even 20 was too much. But. Given the fact that 5.64 LE equals one dollars, I only saved like 3 dollars. But still. It's the moral of the thing. And then there was the taxi driver yesterday that after we had decided on 5 LE before getting in the cab, only gave us 3 LE change for our 10. I just looked at him. "itnein genea!" haha He gave us the two other geneas.
I can't wait to go back to the khan market. There you haggle for everything, and I intend on making some good bargains. I want to find a bottle that looks just like the genie lamp from Aladdin. And I'm not paying more than 10 genea.
Falafel!
1 comment:
Ha ha ha... You have got to love haggeling. I am so not good at it. I am just like yeah, that sounds good because I have like no concept fo enxhange rates and all that. But stick together, that is waht my friends and I did in Jamaica when we went to market, because then we can talk amongst outselves and are like "that does not seem to be worth that much" and then we haggled it down. Love you and miss you tons
les
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