walburgablack replied to your post “argh i accidentally got sucked in and spent way more than i meant to...”
oh hon. *now* you've been to Asia
incidentally the trick is to say you have half the money they’re asking for, and other things to buy, so yes [object of desire] is pretty but *elaborate shrug*. if you can, say you’ll give a third of what they’re asking for, or what have you.
Ha! I was expecting that, but the price he named was literally ten times what I was expecting to pay and I didn’t know what to do from there. I was like, “I don’t have anything like that much money, are you crazy?” and he was like “FOR YOU I DO SPECIAL DEAL” and it was like I was staring into the eyes of a snake in an old Disney cartoon, it was unreal. I was like “YES SIR OKAY” and that was it.
(Literally at one point he said “tell your friends” and then later was like “never admit to your friends I sold it this cheap” and I was like “you gotta be kidding me” and yet still could not escape.)
Incidentally-- I’m not in Asia yet! Istanbul is on the Europe side of the Bosphorus, in part, and that’s the bit I’m in. Which really just goes to show you *mutter* they’re not two continents really *end mutter*.
I managed to spare myself a tiny bit of the cash I actually had by desperately clinging to the fact that I still needed to buy myself dinner and didn’t want to starve. It was so eerie. I really in hindsight know exactly how I should have laughed at him but at the time I was like OH MY GOD WHAT DO.
Listen, things have price tags on them and it’s really fucking rude to haggle, where I’m from. And that goes for literally everything. Literally everything. Haggling is Not Done. I thought I would be okay at it and then I just. No, dude. That’s not-- no.
So-- I’m buying basically postcards only the rest of this trip, and everyone’s getting printed out photos I took, because I cannot be trusted to buy anything.
(Dude is, if you can believe it, WORSE than me. He’d come back with like, a live sheep, and like, “the guy said I had to buy it so I gave him all my money, what do we do now?” “Dude I sent you to buy a bottle of water what is happening?” “I DON’T KNOW OKAY” “well it won’t fit in carry-on, one of us is going to have to kill it” “NOT MY DEPARTMENT”)
Honestly I’ve had a fantastic time because I’m here with him, though, we’ve had a fucking blast, so there’s that. I mean, we could’ve stayed home and done that, but there’s something to be said for novelty and also having sixteen years of shared inside jokes.
He let me buy him a camera (FINALLY) for this trip, and tonight I taught him about exposure compensation, and it BLEW HIS TINY MIND, so that was pretty entertaining.
