Visit South Africa - Part II (Cape Town - Green Market Square)

In this blog I will share some thoughts about places I visited in and around Cape Town.

Green Market Square in Cape Town is situated very close to St. Gorge's Mall and Holiday Inn Express (where I stayed). It offers a variety of African crafts mainly to tourists. Market stalls open at 9.00am but people start putting up their stalls from 8.15am onward. After an early breakfast I explored the Green Market Square with my friend and it happened to be a good idea because traders want to get their first customer early in the morning and would slash their quoted prices if you are good in bargaining.

These are some of the pictures I captured:

Photo by Tharindu

The traders in the market square seem to quote whatever price they want. So it would be a good idea to walk around asking prices before committing to buy. Look at these beautiful wood carvings and bead crafts.

Photo by Tharindu

Photo by Tharindu

 

A friend of mine who had worked in South Africa advised me to bargain at half price. In the UK where I live bargaining is almost non-existent. But I tried my best. One salesman reduced the price of a wood carving initially quoted as R80 to R20 for his first customer of the day, which to me was unbelievable. However, it is sad to be bargaining with these traders who seem to be living in poverty. But the prices they quote seem unreasonably high, may be because they are selling items to tourists whom they perceive as wealthy people or because they want to impress you by reducing the price to show that you are given a discount.

I found female traders to quote more reasonable prices than their male counterparts. For example a pair of carved spoons said to be R120 elsewhere was priced R30 at one store. When my friend bought 3 sets of spoons she agreed to give a multi-buy discount and charged only R25 for each pair. We started talking to her more and learn bit more about the trading. She then told us the prices she pay for items and asked us to buy them giving her a reasonable margin. We bought a lot of items from her - 8 key tags, 3 pairs of spoons, bracelets, carved figures, figures made of beads and so on. Her little son, not much older than my twins, was helping out at her store too.

Photo by Tharindu

So my tips for tourists visiting Green Market Square:
1. Keep your valuables safe
2. If possible try to get advantage of first customer discount
3. Shop around before committing to buy and get an understanding of the price variation across different stalls
4. Always ask for half price and you will be able to get something little more than half price. But if you have seen something elsewhere for cheaper (for example R120 vs R30) try buying from that stall rather than bargaining for less than half price (that is R15). Always think about the costs/time that would be involved and try to be reasonable with your bargain price.
5. Talk to people - take a little time to talk/reply to them and smile - they are nice people