“After the rental hour is up he asks for a discount, if he does not get a discount he takes his money with him!”
The dramatically gorgeous island of Bali, a spinning-top shaped paradise at the mid-point of the Indonesian archipelago there, is under siege by adult learner surfers, report local news sources.
Bali’s surf instructors say they are shocked by the adult learners’ “dirty haggling tactics” with one instructor, Jack Basri, noting that learners from India are the worst he’s ever encountered.
Basri, who is fifty, has been working the Kuta beat since the eighties. He was eleven when he hit the sand with his cooler and drinks; now he owns and runs a surf school and rents boards.
Better pay, same bullshit.
He charges ten bucks an hour for the lesson, three bucks for the board, an amount, he says, infuriates his Indian customers.
‘They are bidders, the price is too crazy when it’s finished. Then after [the rental hour is up] he asks for a discount, if [he does not get] a discount the money is taken again with him.”
In response, Julianto has fixed his prices though, he says, it don’t stop the pale-skin savages from trying to cut a deal.
“Caucasians are also bidding a lot, so we (set) it at the fixed range of IDR 200,000 (USD 12.80),” he said.
I remember, once, age seventeen, refusing to budge fifty cents north on the price of an already arranged fare to Uluwatu on the back of a motorcycle.
At one point the village surrounded me and those famous smiles turned upside down, a move that quickly halted my charge.
I counted the notes into his hand, noting loudly “It seems to me you’re a pretty tricky driver. Very bad man” before galloping away, pride intact.
What’s the most you’ve stiffed a poor brown man in a third world country?
