DAY 17 – GEEKUS MAXIMUSED OUT
At breakfast I find out that the pretty blond Swedish girl has been hitching around Tunisia by herself and is heading off to Morocco by herself. I gave her my Morocco Lonely Planet as I have a feeling that she is going to need it.
After breakfast I finally do the Bardo Museum, which is chocker block full of cool roman stuff. I’d say it was even better than all the cool roman stuff in the Vatican Museum in Rome. Geek quota fulfilled I headed off to catch a train to Sousse.
I’m getting a little lazy so I came across two new taxi scams today. The first guy put the meter on when I asked then slipped it off when he put a tape in. Now normally that would have pissed me off but he put on something that sounded like Dolly Patron so I had a quick play with the meter and got it going again. I must be getting soft because I ended up paying him twice what the journey was worth and he still had the audacity to moan and bitch when I got out of the cab.
The other guy had a meter which wasn’t attached properly so you couldn’t see the screen. I asked him to put the meter on and I saw him set it correctly and then it flipped back down. Then we started to play the “I must take you much farther than you need to go” game which made me suspicious of him. This is a common trick that taxi drivers use. They take you much further than you need to go or they take you in a round about route to get there. This made me suspicious of him so I flipped up the meter and found out that the price had doubled. Which was funny because the taxi hadn’t moved. I gave him a quick description of what I thought of him and got out and walked.
Sousse is a big resort town and as soon as I am settled I regret going there. Firstly it’s expensive. And secondly I always feel like a bit of a fraud in resort towns when I am backpacking. Partly because I am always little bit less well dressed and a little bit more grubby than the rest of the people there. But also because there is a difference in budget that separates backpackers from the average resort punter who has usually flown in for a huge week long party with a huge stack of cash to spend. I promised myself that I am not going to any more resort towns unless it’s on a huge week long party with a huge stack of cash to spend.
On the up side I had the best sales experience of my tour. I noticed some cute stuffed camels and I picked one up while debating in my head if I could get one around the Middle East without destroying it. Immediately I decide against it as it felt like it has been stuffed with scrunched up paper. Then the fat sales guy comes up to me and says, “How much you want to pay” I reply “Combien?” (French for how much). Despite my feeble attempt at French he spotted me as an English speaker straight off and said “Fifty Diram”. That’s 25 quid for a small toy camel stuffed with scrunched up paper, this is a resort town after all. I laughed said “No merci”, put the camel down and started to walk off. Then the fat sales guy uses his bloated body to block my path and says “Okay, how much you want to pay? How much?” I just kept walking around him and he kept trying to get in my way all the time saying “How much you want to pay? How much you want to pay?” Getting louder and louder with each repetition. Eventually I got past him and he slid into a complete panic and screamed, “Okay five Dinah! FIVE DINAH!!!” I just kept walking thinking why can’t it always be that easy to get down to 10 percent of the starting price.
