Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world
journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at
Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.
On the remote chance that someone from the Ministry of Egyptian Tourism might be reading this post, I urge you to gather up all the street vendors and merchants from around your country, put them in a room, and send them a simple message: If you ease up on constantly harassing tourists to buy something from you, we might actually purchase something!
It's staggering the amount of time and energy we spent fending off souvenir salesman during our two weeks in the Middle East. We actually started to devise strategies on how to minimize the pestering, and even though the boys are just 12 and nine, they were not immune to being hounded. Don't make eye contact, don't say a word or answer their questions ("Where are you from?", "For you my friend, no charge to look", "How much you want to spend?"), don't stop to look at anything, and whatever you do, don't ask how much something costs. If you do, you better have a sound exit strategy.
I remembered this side of Middle East travel clearly from my first visit there some nine years ago, but it still didn't make the situation any less irritating. One positive aspect of all this, however, is that it kept our shopping in check, something that had challenged us since we stepped foot outside the U.S. seven months ago. We needed to try to keep our spending down, and buying stuff for a house we don't even have yet, no matter how tempting, was becoming too frequent an occurrence.
On the remote chance that someone from the Ministry of Egyptian Tourism might be reading this post, I urge you to gather up all the street vendors and merchants from around your country, put them in a room, and send them a simple message: If you ease up on constantly harassing tourists to buy something from you, we might actually purchase something! It's staggering the amount of time and energy we spent fending off souvenir salesman during our two weeks in the Middle East. We actually started to devise strategies on how to minimize the pestering, and even though the boys are just 12 and nine, they were not immune to being hounded. Don't make eye contact, don't say a word or answer their questions ("Where are you from?", "For you my friend, no charge to look", "How much you want to spend?"), don't stop to look at anything, and whatever you do, don't ask how much something costs. If you do, you better have a sound exit strategy.
I remembered this side of Middle East travel clearly from my first visit there some nine years ago, but it still didn't make the situation any less irritating. One positive aspect of all this, however, is that it kept our shopping in check, something that had challenged us since we stepped foot outside the U.S. seven months ago. We needed to try to keep our spending down, and buying stuff for a house we don't even have yet, no matter how tempting, was becoming too frequent an occurrence.
Continue reading Jenss Family Travels, Mysteries of Egypt - Part II.
Subscribe to RSS feed
About This Blog