One topic of conversation that almost never fails to come up when a group of newish expats get together is the appropriate price of a rickshaw ride, and tips on how to effectively haggle with the wallah (make the first offer; be willing to walk away; wait until the ride is over, hand them what you think it should cost, don't make eye contact etc). There is no question that foreigners are charged at much higher rates than the locals, and this seems to really bother certain people for both moral and financial reasons. Some see it as more of a game, that they "win" by paying near local prices.
The guidebooks even offer their own differing perspectives. After giving general negotiating tips (i.e. find out what a reasonable price is, stick to your guns and walk away if necessary ) Brandt says: "Do remember that most of these hard-working wallahs can stretch Tk10 much further than you can..." Fodors (talking about India, but same concept) offers the following tip: "Don't bargain too aggressively -- These guys pedal hard for a living, and many are kindly old gentleman." I won't even bother to open up Lonely Planet to see what it has to say, since it is the worst guidebook ever written. (One of the reviews on Amazon is written by me.)
It probably comes as no surprise that I subscribe to the Fodors view of things. I pay at least Tk50 for almost every ride (an exception was when he got lost and took me in a circle and I ended up farther away from where I needed to go than when I started) and if the driver really breaks a sweat I give him Tk100. For those of you not up on your taka to dollar conversion rate (approx. 70 to 1) that amounts to about $.70 and $1.42 respectively. I actually think my philosophy is more like the anti-Brandt. At the end of the day I have a weekly stipend in American dollars that allows me to live a very comfortable lifestyle (which says more about the cost of living here than the amount of my stipend). I think nothing of spending hundreds of takas on dinner or even on an iced frappuccino. Rickshaw wallahs are incredibly poor, the vast majority are illiterate, many come from surrounding nearby villages and most likely live in the slums of Dhaka (which has been described as nearly Medieval conditions). Yeah they can stretch Tk10 further than I can, because they have to. The grossness of Brandt's philosophy is it seems to assume that all other things are equal. OK -- if you find me a westerner here who is making anywhere near the equivalent of what a rickshaw wallah makes then they are more than welcome to do all the negotiating they want. Anyone being paid in Euros, Pounds or Dollars is, very likely, not in this situation.
Not surprisingly, my philosophy on this has garnered some pushback. Some feel that it causes the wallahs to think they have to rely on foreigners to get by (perhaps true -- but way bigger problem than a single rickshaw ride). Some think it causes them to target foreigners (definitely true, but not going away ever, unless there is somehow an influx of poor westerners to Bangladesh). Others are just not swayed by the argument that Tk10 means a lot more to the wallah. I had this discussion with Jack (the husky Christian college kids who gets more stares than I do wherever he goes) and he had my absolute favorite retort: "I guess I'm just hard-hearted about it. I mean you kind of have to be hard-hearted if you are 300lbs and riding a rickshaw."
No comments:
Post a Comment