Ripped off by the waiter

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I am so bored. I hate this conference. Most of the papers have English titles and English content, but for some reason the presenters all have decided to present in French.

The result is that I can't understand most of the sessions. I can thankfully at least read their slides fairly well, but its hard listening to sessions where you understand every 15th word.

So in the afternoon, I went on strike and headed to the pool. It was quite disgusting because many of the tourists were fat old french ladies who had no qualms about sunbathing topless. Blurk!! Thus, I wandered down the beach and watched tourists go paragliding and kids
riding camels and horses up and down the beach.

After 30 minutes of that, I was really bored, so I decided to be a real rebel and sneak away from the conference all together. So I headed out to the Medina (town centre) of Sousse (the city the conference was in).

It took less than 5 seconds from the time I jumped out of my taxi to be approached my a friendly Tunisian guy. It turned out to be a waiter from my hotel - or told me (I couldn't remember him). He said it was his day off and that he liked wandering through the Medina. After a bit of superficial chatting, he suddenly asked me if I was
interested in buying a leather jacket, because apparently today was the day that the president of Tunisia was visiting England, and thus all English people would receive a 30% discount on leather purchases (he thought I was English). I kind of shrugged and said no, but he
took it as a yes and said he would show me the shop, but couldn't stay to help me because he had to meet a friend.

Before I knew what had happened, I found myself being rushed through the medina through twisting corridors. My paranoid mind though that he was trying to get me lost and would then suddenly turn on me and demand money to lead me out of the maze, or otherwise I would be left to wander forever in the maze that is the medina of sousse. Just as
this thought was finishing, he suddenly stopped and led me into a shop with a shrivelled old man who obviously didn't brush his teeth.

The old man was quite friendly and chatted to me over a cup of mint tea (they have a habit in Tunisia of offering mint tea to all customers). He than brough out a really nice looking leather jacket, which I actually was quite impressed by. I tried it on, it fit well and stuff. He tried to burn it with a cigarette lighter to prove it
was real leather. He poured water on it to show that it was
waterproof. After 5 minutes of his little demonstration (a
demonstration that would have made Danoz Direct proud), I cut in and asked him the price. He tried to avoid the topic and told me to have a look at the jacket in the sun - 'see how nice it looks', 'it is a good colour on you', 'it makes you look fashionable', 'oh - look those two girls walking past were just looking at you - you must be very
attractive in the jacket'.

I stopped him short and demanded the price. After a few minutes of me insisting on the price, he finally caved in and quoted me 1950 dinars (about $2000). I tried to hide the look of shock, but finally said, forget it - thats way too much. I got up to walk out, but he begged me to stay, and said 1450 dinars. I said now, so then he said how
much I wanted to pay. I thought I'd quote a really low price to shut him up so I said 200 dinars. He looked angry, shocked and surprised, and walked out of the room mumbling to himself.

Meanwhile, my hotel waiter friend whispered to me saying that if I liked the jacket, that a good price would be 800 dinars - this is really what it worth. I stuck to my price - the shop keeper dropped further to 650 dinars. He started telling me that it was antelope leather (apparently quite good leather), but I told him there were no
antelope in Tunisia - but he said that these antelope had wandered over from Libya - teach them not to go wandering around the countryside!!

Anyway, I finally told him to get stuffed and walked out. At this, he caved in and said that he would give it to me for my requested price - 200 dinars. Oh oh - problem - because I didn't really want the jacket at all. So I just told him that I didn't want it because he lied to me in the first place and that I didn't buy jackets from liars (okay I was a bit more polite than that) - and then ran for my life.

To my annoyance, the hotel waiter dude came after me and then while talking lead me to another leather shop. This is when I started to suspect that this guy wasn't really a waiter, but rather some dodgy guy who wanders around the place finding tourists to trick into following him into leather shops. So I just told him that I was too tired to shop - that the leather guy had been too traumatic - that I needed a drink - and that I would love for him to join me. That got rid of him quick smart. I turned around to look in a shop window, and when I turned around - he was gone!!

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the bazaar. The only other interesting thing was this shop vendor who I started a conversation with. When he found out I was from Australian, he told me that he hated Australians, and hated Jews. Then started a big long spiel about Palestine and the Jews. Quizzing him more about Australians, he told me that he hated Australians because they were mean (his words) - no other reason. But he said he liked me because I was obviously not Australian. Anyway, I thought he was quite entertaining, so I got him to repeat his whole spiel while I filmed him on my camera. He seemed pretty happy at this - a chance for fame because I told him that I would show it to all my Australian friends. As a reward, he gave me a piece of cake (which I threw in the bin, because if he hated Australians then he may have been trying to poison me).

I also managed to do some extreme haggling - knocked some shoes down from 60 dinars to 20 dinars and got 2 pairs of socks thrown in too!!

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