Visiting a new place? Beware!

If you are going to visit a new place, this post is for you:

We recently went to Egypt and everything including the hotels and the tour guide was pre-booked. On day one the guide took us to the pyramids and bought us our tickets. We took them and went inside the pyramids. When we came outside the guide was waiting for us and asked if we wanted a horse cart ride. We agreed to it and the horse cart took us around the pyramids. It was a 20 minute ride and when we reached back a man was waiting for us with a broad smile on his face. He was the owner of that horse cart and demanded a huge sum of money from us. We did not know that there was a separate charge for this ride. We thought this must be included in the tour plan we had opted for. Nonetheless, we had to pay the money. The guide feigned ignorance when later we told him about this.

Later that day this guide took us to a very expensive perfume shop. He told us that it was the best perfume shop in Cairo (the capital of Egypt) and the prices were reasonable. As we entered the highly ornamented shop the owner came very enthusiastically and served us hibiscus sherbet. He then started showing us different kinds of perfumes and telling in detail about each one of them. However, we had known by then that we could not trust our guide blindly. We did not buy anything form that shop. Later we came to know that the actual prices of those perfumes were almost four times less than what that shop owner was telling!
So the take home message is:
One, make the deal before hand when you try new things at new places; and two, shopping should be the last thing on your mind.

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