I was thinking the other day about how organized and structured Canadian and North American communities have become in the last century. Now if my mind is accurate, which I believe is, I travelled to Asia for 6 month back in 2005 and the community lifestyle was a little peculiar to me. Walking down the busy streets of Kuala Lumpur I entered a shop which comprised of tacky western rip-off clothing and over priced souvenirs ( I say over priced because in Asia everything is over-priced until you start bargaining and you learn from experience never to pay asking price). I started browsing the store because I was bored and felt like spending money on random rubbish to entertain myself before my flight next day to Indonesia ( I once bought 2 high voltage tazers for under 10 US dollars), needless to say you can find some pretty interesting things in the run down street vendors. I found nothing, the shop keeper keep on asking “what size are you?! What size are you?!” and I simply ignored him and let stereotypical pompous western mentality work its charm in the highly populated Muslim community. What I found so interesting about this shop and the hundreds of others akin is after the salesmen recognizes that the customer is not interested in any of his knock-off apparel over-priced miscellaneous items he will attempt to take you to his competitors shop to buy his merchandise. In Canada this practice of supporting your competitor would be frowned upon by the even the most novice businessmen and in no way would be taught in a public/private institution.
That being said it is possible it was all a trick or a scam like many things in Southern Asia… TUK-TUKs my god what a frustrating way to get back to your hotel, who knows, maybe they have an alliance with other shops keepers or maybe its family run and he was simple trying to take me to his cousins shop and after they would split the profit, but the idea of supporting your neighbour is a nice thought, right?
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