Saturday, July 14, 2007

Running The Gauntlet


IMG_3285, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

Getting past the vendors in the parking lot is just the first round of people wanting your money. While walking on the wall itself, dozens of vendors try to sell postcards, tee shirts, crafts, and knick knacks. The post card vendors are the shabbiest and most persistent. They will follow anyone vaguely American looking for a good while before giving up and looking for another victim.

Many of the vendors have semi-permanent locations. Others just pick a section and spread out. The quality ranges from the impressive like the marble carvers to the truly tacky. One lady was selling a small doll that when filled with water, spurted a stream of water from the crotch. Her sole sales pitch consisted of saying over and over again, "Look, pee-pee boy, pee-pee boy." Needless to say, I passed.

2 comments:

Claude said...

Heh heh, "Passed".

That's got to get old after awhile. Are there spots where they pretty much leave you alone?

yellojkt said...

Not really. There are places where they are less aggressive, but you are almost always near a vendor of some sort. As my Asian wife determined, they tend to ignore non-Americans.