Street shopping in Kowloon is a Super free market. Along Nathan road the stores are pretty mainstream, but the side streets are lined with shops where almost everything is sold and they will negotiate on any product to make a sale. These are real shopping streets. There is about 4 feet between stalls and merchants have about a bedroom size space to display and sale their wares. There are specialized shopping streets as well.
There is a street which sells fish for aquariums; a street for ladies products, bags and clothes; a street for sporting goods; and streets for fortune tellers, jewelry and Chinese artifacts. These streets also have stalls set up in the streets each night. One area is a jade market. It is a permanent covered area for merchants to set their wares on tables.
This is an excellent place to practice the art of negotiation. I don't know if we won or lost, but Christina and I both bought products we liked, but offered ridiculously low prices for not anticipating actually buying them.
Chrissy bought a dragon carving which she will use as a Christmas ornament and I bought a lion statue. Both of us felt badly after the man we negotiated with finally broke and gave us the products. But I have to say these bargains have been very well balanced by all the other trinkets we've bought and not negotiated as well.The sales staff will do almost anything to earn your dollar. In one of the regular shops near our first hotel in the new territories, I asked for a specific shoe. The sales girl asked me to wait and ran several stalls down the row to another store, probably owned by the same family and brought back a selection of shoes.
There are many stalls along the roads as well to exchange money and their prices range widely. Across from our hotel the yen exchanges at .60 to the Hong Kong dollar. Down closer to the water front we found an area where it exchanges at .68 to the HK dollar. This area is in a bit dodgy. The first time we walked into this area just off of Nathan Road, Christina grabbed my arm and said, "Let's go." She wasn't really afraid, just uneasy. The entire area was filled with men just standing around. We only saw a couple of women. This is also an area where they sell fake Rolex watches and fake Fendi bags. Yesterday, I returned to this area alone, to change some money. I had just purchased 20,000 yen worth of HK dollars when I walked all of the way through this market. In the very back of the market, I found another currency exchange booth which would purchase yen at .707 to the HK dollar.
There are still many deals to be had in Hong Kong. The Chinese have pledged to keep Hong Kong's social and economic system in place until 2047. It will be interesting to see how the SARs will effect the Chinese Communists. I think that the Chinese will be pragmatic about the markets well into the future. Already they have opened up their markets in other large cities in many parts of China.
No comments:
Post a Comment