Egypt
You can guess by the subject, it involves me being conned by a local, and my stupidity.

It stemmed from seeing all the shiny, colourful shishas lined up at the market stalls, amongst all the other tat which I was not going to fall for. But the shishas, they were definitely worthy of my hard earned pennies. Who wouldn't want one! (Anyone with sense apparently)

I approached the stall holder and declared my love for the smoking device, and after asking how much for one he told me it was 40 Egyptian Pounds (about £4). Bargain! thinks I, and walk away to have a meal, with the intention of returning and haggling with him down to about 25 squids.

Upon returning, it was a different chap so I asked again 'How much, good sir?'. '300 Egyptian Pounds, kind traveller!' was his response. But he wasn't fooling me, oh no.
'How dare you. I'll not pay one jot over £250!'...

I should have told by his humongous grin and wringing hands that I had done myself in with my own stupidity, and not taken a zero off the Egyptian pounds equivalent of twenty-five fucking English pounds. In my head, I still had the earlier valuation of £2.50 swimming around, and somehow thought I was paying that instead.

As my girlfriend and I skipped off into the distance thinking we had cleverly bartered with the locals and got a deal and a half. (they were nice enough to throw in the pipes, coals AND tobacco, how lovely!). I swear that as what had jsut happened properly settled in, I could hear them laughing and slapping him on the back, but was too embarrassed to turn around....

The worst thing isn't just that I only went out with 300 Egyptian Pounds, and handed over what was left AFTER paying for dinner, and still alarm bells didn't go off when I handed over the remainder of my wallet to the man. Nor is the worst thing the fact that we couldn't smoke it at the hotel, so we didn't get to use it there, instead forking out to use theirs.

The absolute worst thing is that when we returned home, the first time we used it, my girlfriend kicked it over on a mates carpet, meaning that we had to pay about £300 for the replacement of the carpet with all the burnt coal marks on it. This then broke the fucking thing, so we ended up paying about £325 for a fucking £2.50 shisha which we never even got to use properly...

Makes me want a roll-up...
(Scrumpy does not negotiate with terrorists,, Sat 2 Oct 2010, 13:00, 1 reply)

You kicked over a shisha?
Don't you put it on a table?
(lemonadegame, Mon 4 Oct 2010, 23:06, closed)