My Partner has All the Money!
Trip Start
Oct 22, 2005
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57
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Trip End
Ongoing
Today was set aside for shopping, but first we had to drop off our passports to get our Mongolian transit visas. After our false start yesterday we found the place easily and sorted it out. We will be able to pick them up on Monday before we leave on Tuesday morning. With that sorted we headed off to get some warmer clothes as heading North we know it's going to get pretty cold. Strange as we've heard it's in the high 30s (Celsius) back in Australia. In Xi'an we had tolerated the cold, intending to buy warm stuff. We first went to a shopping centre which was really expensive with legitimate designer labels so we then jumped in a cab and found the Sanlitun Yashou Clothing Market. This place was huge with 5 levels of clothes, bags, silk, shoes etc. We spent a few hours and finally tracked down two very warm down jackets and some other stuff for the UK. The jackets are pretty puffy and Rick reckons he looks like the Michelin Man in it! To our surprise we felt we'd mastered the Chinese Ancient Art of Haggling by giving them the price we wanted to pay, then whilst one of us stayed and negotiated the other walked off saying "No, too expensive" or "My wife is not allowed to buy that." The negotiating person would then say "I can't buy it at that price my partner has all the money and they've said No!" This ploy worked every time, as the other person walked off the shop owners would reluctantly agree to our price. Often this was a tenth of the original price. In one store the shop owner laughed at our ploy "She's got all the money! Ahh nice one". Being Grand Master Swindlers they knew all the tricks in the book, but alas I don't think they'd seen this one used with such success before. With our shopping completed, and both of us graduating to Yellow Belt in Haggling, we headed to Pizza Hut with the help of a nice man's directions (luckily he drew us a map that went past the Australian and Canadian Embassies. The Australian one looked so Australian in style we picked it a mile off), and enjoyed a 12 Celebrations Pizza. Yummy!
