Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Spending some more time at the beach...

...and Lloyd gets a new shirt!
Every beach has touts selling all manner of souvenirs.  We have usually waved them away with a "no thanks" and they go.  Yesterday, however, Lloyd decided he needed to replace his black silk shirt which is wearing thin on the back.  So, yesterday when this woman approached he asked if she had any big shirts.  She dug through her bag, and the largest one was too small.  "Just a moment, please...I'll be back in five minutes!" and she was...with a couple of large rayon shirts, one with elephants.  Lloyd joked about how he needed an elephant-sized shirt and we all laughed.  I'm sure this vendor will have repeated the story for the rest of the day.  She had enough command of English to get a real charge out of this!

Lloyd trying on an elephant shirt.  The vendor is the little woman with the big smile.

Maybe a little small in the shoulders.

He ended up buying the one that's on the chaise longue.
So with that, the bargaining commenced.  Her asking price was 800 rupees, said with a great big smile.  Lloyd pretended that that was way too much (800 rupees is about $7), and asked for her "best price", and after a bit of back and forth, they settled on 700 rupees.  I think she will enjoy telling this story of an encounter with an elephant-sized foreigner on Unawatuna Beach (5 km southeast of Galle).

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