Landlord's Wisdom
Guest-house owners seem to be a remarkably friendly bunch but they do have a tendency towrds wisdom after the event. When you tell your host you're off into town to buy a Sri-Lankan SIMM card for the mobile phone, he'll helpfully give you a lift into town. Upon your return, several sweaty hours later, he'll ask you how much you paid. Whatever your response, he'll suck his teeth, waggle his head (how DO they do that?) and say he has a friend who would have charged you half. "Why didn't you mention that before?" you'll wonder.
One day, we spoke to a man at the bus station and pre-booked 3 seats (extra one for the luggage) on an express bus for the following day. We paid half up front, as other guests at our accommodation had done same and all seemed well. Our host, when he discovered this said "Oh my God, this man is a tout, a bad man who takes drugs, he has cheated and robbed you, there will be no bus, you will never see him again, the fare should be 50 Rupees (we'd agreed 250 -about one pound twenty), I could have put you on the bus right outside the gate, you tourists shouldn't trust anyone, you are silly with money and it gives my guesthouse a bad name if you are all getting tricked all the time instead of asking me for advice..." This left us worried, cross and feeling foolish. Next day, at the bus station, there was our guy. Sure enough, no luggage storage on the bus so he dived onto the (very busy) bus, secured 3 seats for us, told the driver where to drop us off, got us our tickets, made sure we were ok so we paid him the rest of the fare. Turns out we paid just about the right amount (local bus may indeed have cost 50 rupees but would have taken 6 hours not 4, we'd have had to change twice and wouldn't have had seats reserved). So, the tout made a few pence, we received a good service and were quite happy with the deal.
Moral: make up your own mind what constitutes a rip-off.
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