Our flight to Rio de Janeiro was early in the morning. We got up at 3:45 a.m. to catch the first León transfer bus to Ezeiza International Airport, but the line for our VASP flight was already a mile long. It was somewhat a chaotic scene. A garbage can caught fire, belching black smoke. Nobody cared. Nobody came. It died down by itself after a while. It seemed that we were pretty close to the end of the line. Still, we were asked the routine question of what kind of seats we would like.
"Definitely non-smoking. Preferably aisle seat towards the front, but only if it's not the first row against the wall because then I can't stretch out my legs at all, and if it's not near the babies because they always cry during landings, and if it's not right next to the bathrooms because you know why. If you don't have aisle seats, I am flexible too. Window seats are good especially the ones next to the emergency exits, but I still don't want to be anywhere close to the smoking section or the bathrooms because you know why. I suppose I can deal with a middle seat as a last resort, but please make sure the people sitting on either side of me are skinny and don't know each other."
"Oh, that would be difficult. You have been downgraded to baggage."
No, not really. He didn't say this, and I didn't say that, although given the ruthless drive to trim service to keep costs down, I wouldn't be too surprised to hear that one day. Flying is definitely not a privileged mode of transportation anymore. But lightnings sometimes do strike. He said, "You have been upgraded to first class." Thence, we got more useless combs and toothbrushes in better pouches, and we got served by more senior but unfortunately less attractive flight attendants.
It was raining and a cool 23 C in Rio. The airport transfer bus made its way through downtown and along the deserted beaches. We got off near Caesar Park Hotel in Ipanema. The beach front hotels are invariably expensive, so we checked out Hotel Vermont about two blocks away from the beach. The guy at the front desk said the price was not the 100 reals listed on the board behind him. "I'll give you this," he said as he wrote down "80" on the back of a business card. I took this as an open invitation to bargain. We tried at Hotel Córdoba in Buenos Aires, but were politely declined. Most innkeepers we encountered on the trip went by the listed price. The prices were reasonable, so we didn't bargain on hotel rates. The other hotel that we checked before had smaller rooms that smelled a little, but they went for sixty-five reals. The room we were shown at Hotel Vermont looked okay, and we weren't particularly eager to walk more in the drizzle. "Seventy-five, and I'll take it," Ed jumped the gun. If the guy was willing to go for 80 down from 100, there's got to be a lot more slack there. I explained that the other place was only sixty-five, etc., etc. The guy crossed out the 80 in the back of the business card and wrote down "70". We probably could have done better, but that price was acceptable.
What type of transactions can be bargained and how willing and skillful people are at bargaining depends partially on culture, but I think the variation from person to person is a much much greater factor. The best bargainer I have ever met is a German. When I was in Singapore in 1994, I visited Tioman Island in Malaysia with three Germans, all students at the National University of Singapore. Their friends, more Germans and Swedes and Americans, joined in another group. We all went out to a restaurant to have dinner. The waiter showed us a big fish. We liked it, and a price was agreed upon. The fish, once cooked, cut up, and distributed among us, looked surprisingly small. The German guy who bargained the price in the first place thought that we should get a reduction. No one complained about the original price. In fact, some thought that we shouldn't ask for a lower price now. I thought that once the fish was in the stomach, we didn't really have any bargaining chips anymore. The happy-go-getter German guy went to chat with the owner, and much to my pleasant surprise, came back with a substantial reduction.
When we first arrived on Tioman, we went to check out prices for the bungalow huts, the most common type of accommodations on the island. One of the two girls in my group made an offer after the asking price. The woman proprietor said nonchalantly, "No, that's too low. You can go to other places to ask." I took it to be a bargaining ploy, and that our correct response would be to make a better offer. The German girl read the situation completely differently. She thought that the woman was very unfriendly, and wouldn't want to stay there. We did then find another place with a more agreeable proprietor. The next day, she and I went to rent a kayake so that we could paddle out along the coast to explore the other little beaches. We got to the rental place, and she said, "It's your turn to bargain." I guess it wasn't too non-obvious that she didn't like bargaining.
I don't particularly like bargaining myself either. However, any time that the fair price of something isn't entirely clear, bargaining is necessary to ascertain at least what's close to fair. The seller knows what the fair price is. Rest assured, he's not going to go any lower. But I don't know what the fair price is. Paying anything more is pure gravy for him. I hate being taken. I take bargaining to be a little mental game with careful probes and daring bluffs. The common goal is to arrive at an agreement that both parties can live with without me getting too ripped off. It's business, and neither party should take things personally.
My parents and I visited Venice in summer 1996. It seemed that around the train station every other building was a pensioni. My mother and I went to one. The desk was on the second floor, and we were shown a room on the fourth floor. The room was a little small and a little dark. I had little idea what the prevalent rates were. The woman at the desk quoted me 120,000 liras. I probed, "The room is a little small. I'll take it for 100,000."
"One hund-red!" the woman replied in an astonished and indignant tone as if I had insulted her little establishment. "You can go to the other hotels." She opened the door to show us out. "One hund-red!"
"Okay, one hundred twenty," said my mother. She actually was okay with this place. I was taken aback by the animated reaction from the woman. Okay, may 120,000 was a very reasonable price. Surely, meeting the asking price would get us the room.
"No, no room is available," she said dismissively. "Bye bye."
"Okay, one hundred twenty like you said," I repeated, even though I was very unhappy about the sudden unavailability of the room and the condescending attitude.
"No, no room. Bye bye." She began to walk away.
"Let's go. There is nothing more to talk about here." But my mother was still hesitant, puzzled by the situation and with false hopes.
"Bye bye," the woman urged. The cleaning woman who took us to see the room watched the whole thing with a blank expression on her face.
From the happy articles in this travelogue you should not get the wrong impression that traveling is all fun and adventure. More often than I would like I have been soberly reminded that the world is far from a perfect place. I am sorely aware that there are places where hospitality is conditional and places where I am not wholly welcome. This little episode in Venice is only a mild case. I would hate to spoil these happy passages recounting the uglier incidents I had encountered in my travels.
It's unfortunate that the few bad experiences could etch so much deeper into my memory than all the good ones combined. When I walk into a hotel lobby, the incident in Venice often drift into my consciousness. I played through the bad incidents in my mind searching for where I had done so terribly wrong. I have to believe that some sort of misunderstanding had played a part, but misunderstanding alone cannot explain everything. I wondered if I had been too sensitive or too insecure about who I am. I doubted the ugly conclusions that I reached. Without the benefit of observing the subtle nuances of the actual incidents, you may find that the selected facts or my particular interpretations presented here are completely open for second-guessing. What I can assure you is that when you are at the receiving end of such infractions, everything feels very real.
I won't let a few bad experiences stop me from traveling. Yet, the bad experiences do make me think twice about how I should approach the once more notorious countries like South Africa. I don't know. Friends who visited South Africa told me that the people were friendly and bad things they feared never happened. Friends from the South often joke about the being Asians in the deep South. Prejudices do not just go away over night because some Supreme Court made a decision or the government changed hands. Old attitudes die hard. What was once done overtly is now practiced with more finesse. It's like humidity. You can't see it, but you can sure feel it. However much I am encouraged by the advances in human enlightenment, the dark side of human nature never surprises me. I do not believe in original sin. However, I do believe that human nature is fundamentally dark, and can only be emancipated by reason, skepticism, and independent thought. "Do not underestimate the dark side of the force."
Ed asked me if I saw the gay couples in the lobby earlier. I was busy doing the paperwork at the front desk. I didn't notice. We checked the LP guide. The section of the beach three blocks over is supposedly a gay hangout. I said I was going to write about this in the travelogue. Ed shrugged, "It's not like we have a reputation to protect."
Rio was all cold (relatively) and wet. We stayed in the hotel and took a long nap in the afternoon. For dinner, we went to restaurant Garota de Ipanema a block from the hotel. The food was excellent.