I was reading a thread on Bangkok markets on an Irish Travel forum earlier and the subject of haggling came up
One of the local experts posted "you should aim to pay just over one third of the opening asking price so bid just under a fifth. If you spoke Thai you'd pay a quarter or less but that's life"
In 17 years of visiting Thailand I have never seen people haggling the price down this low and feel that it's bullshit advice to give to a newbie.
My understanding is that a market in Thailand is not like a Chinese market where you have to play a ridiculous to-and-fro game to agree a fair price. I have seen Russian and Arab women aggressively haggling and offering 30B for a t-shirt that is labelled at 150B on Threpassit market, much to the disgust of the stallholders.
I am not really one for haggling, I prefer an air-con mall with fixed prices! The BF does haggle, but the most I have ever seen him get would be to knock 10B off a 200B t-shirt or 50B off a 500B jacket/shoes.
Do you haggle? And if so what kind of discount do you get?
In your opinion are the Armchair experts on the Irish Travel forum giving good or bad advice?
And LatinTop before you say it: Haggling a boy down to 250B from his initial offering of 1000B is not what I am talking about!