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A street merchant actually yelled that out to me.<\/span><\/p>\n Instinctively, I laughed.<\/span><\/p>\n Something NOT lost in translation down in Mexico –\u00a0Racism<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Other things said to me as I walked down 5th<\/sup>\u00a0Street in Playa del Carmen:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAre you Japanese??\u201d<\/em>\u00a0I say no.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAre you . . . Filipino??\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Seriously?\u00a0 He went from Japanese to Filipino?\u00a0 Is it possible to go to such complete different ends of the spectrum?\u00a0 Filipinos don\u2019t even like being lumped in with Asians anymore.\u00a0 They\u2019re\u00a0Pacific Islander.\u00a0<\/em>It\u2019s like asking a dog if they\u2019re a lion or a Dodge Stratus.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cKONNICHIWAAAA!!!<\/em>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHey chino, want some weeeeeed?<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 I say no, I don\u2019t smoke.\u00a0 \u201cEets not too late to staaarrrt, amigo!<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 Persuasive argument.\u00a0 Be that as it may, I still say no, gracias.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n But seriously, it was an entire afternoon of getting yelled at by street merchants while shopping at Playa del Carmen.\u00a0 However, it was still a fun and rewarding experience, because this was the kind of Mexico I was hoping to see at some point through my trip.\u00a0 Shanty huts, stray dogs wandering around, dilapidated cars chugging along, spewing gnarly fumes, and of course, straw and tin sheet roofed buildings all over the place.<\/span><\/p>\n The shopping aspect of this chunk of Mexico was kind of overwhelming at first, but it didn\u2019t really take long to realize that it\u2019s really like 4-5 different shops, but then repeated about 40 times over within a two mile stretch.\u00a0 At first, I was excited that there were so many places selling luchador masks, but it didn\u2019t take long to realize that just about all of them were mostly Rey Mysterio or Sin Cara.\u00a0 The fact that I was able to find a Psychosis mask I liked in the first place is still kind of amazing to me.<\/span><\/p>\n One thing I really found amusing was the consolidation of lots of the stores.\u00a0 Deli and Drugs.\u00a0 Tequila, Gifts and Drugs.\u00a0 Drugs and Cigars.\u00a0 Cigars and Tequila.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not talking about them publicizing drugs like weed or cocaine (they verbalize the availability of\u00a0those<\/em>), but prescription medication.\u00a0 Like Viagra, Propecia, Levitra, or whatever name of drugs were available like candy all through this place.\u00a0 The prescription eye drops I use whenever my eyes start to really bother me, Tobradex, was also available pretty much over the counter down here.\u00a0 In the States, it runs about $75 for a 0.3 oz bottle.\u00a0 Down in Mexico, it\u2019s the equivalent of $45, and apparently no doctor\u2019s prescription is necessary.\u00a0 Needless to say, I was tempted, but my available cash didn\u2019t accommodate.<\/span><\/p>\n Also very readily available almost everywhere, aside from religious statues of Mexican Jesus, full bloodied and beat to a pulp, was for some reason, Predators.\u00a0 As in the FOX property, Arnold Schwarzenegger villain Predators.\u00a0 Statues of Predators were fucking everywhere in the Riviera Maya for some reason, and it was pretty amusing to go just about anywhere and see various ornate statues of Predators.\u00a0 Predators fighting Aliens.\u00a0 Predators stabbing Aliens.\u00a0 Predators with chieftain staffs with Alien skulls on them.\u00a0 Down in Mexico, Predators are pretty popular.\u00a0 Also lots of statues of popular comic book characters, such as Batman, Iron Man, Captain America and Wolverine.\u00a0 But nothing takes the cake like one statue, which was of Batman, crucified.\u00a0 I guess even the Mexicans saw the correlation of the Jesus complex\u00a0the Dark Knight<\/em>\u00a0movie trilogy went a little overboard with.<\/span><\/p>\n I \u201cjoked\u201d a lot about wanting to see a cockfight, but really, I just wanted to be one of the guys in the crowd of a cockfight.\u00a0 Those guys always look like they\u2019re having so much fun, and just once I wanted to see if I would have so much fun maniacally cheering and laughing, with fistfuls of cash in both my hands, while watching some chickens flailing around.<\/span><\/p>\n But the most fun part about shopping in deepest darkest Mexico is probably the whole haggling game.\u00a0 Being in an area where pretty much 50 guys are selling the same crap you are, all the merchants are all willing to deal and negotiate.\u00a0 It kind of makes perfect sense now, having seen the other end of the coin, because when I was a kid, I worked at my uncle\u2019s pawn shop for a week, and every single Hispanic person who came in haggled over each and every thing.\u00a0 Down in Mexico, prices are arbitrary and more of a guideline, contrary to how most of it is in the States.<\/span><\/p>\n If you pay the listed price for anything in Mexico, I think I\u2019m going to call you a fool.\u00a0 These motherfuckers mark shit up up to 400%, and if you\u2019re willing to pay without even attempting to fight, it\u2019s your loss and shame for not playing the game.<\/span><\/p>\n When I found my Psychosis mask, the guy at the booth claimed it to be 400 pesos, which for simplicity\u2019s sake and the pathetic state of the U.S. Dollar, call it $40.\u00a0 Fuck if I\u2019m paying $40 for a luchador mask, and I laughed at the guy and walked off, but not before he could plead to make a deal and negotiate.\u00a0 I needed some leverage.<\/span><\/p>\n I found the leverage several blocks down, when I found a guy selling a different colored Psychosis mask for 200 pesos, which sounded better at around $20.\u00a0 But the colors of this particular mask weren\u2019t what I wanted, so I took my newfound leverage back to the first guy.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHey man, there\u2019s a guy selling a Psychosis mask for 200.\u201d\u00a0 250 was his counter-offer, to which I laughed and walked away again, but not before I heard him concede and say he\u2019d take 200 pesos for it.\u00a0 I knew I had him.\u00a0 Now this is where I pulled out the math, and went with the official numbers.\u00a0 I came back and offered him $15 USD, which is slightly under 200 pesos, which I thought I could get him to bite on simply because it was in the holy almighty USD.\u00a0 He countered by asking for two more dollars, and seeing as how I\u2019d already taken him down over 50% of his asking price, I figured what the hell.<\/span><\/p>\n I would have bought other shit just for the sake of playing the haggling game with these guys, but that\u2019s certainly not the wisest move.\u00a0 And apparently Juventud Guerrera has been inactive to the point where his masks aren\u2019t even for sale anymore; the guys down there all know who he is, but they explained that Juvi Juice was \u201cmas viejo.\u201d\u00a0 But I did have particular fun fucking around two adjacent shops, and ultimately getting an alleged \u201c$100 USD\u201d statue for twenty bucks.<\/span><\/p>\n Mexican shopping was fun, and kind of worth the rampant racist remarks along the way.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A street merchant actually yelled that out to me. Instinctively, I laughed. Something NOT lost in translation down in Mexico –\u00a0Racism Other things said to me as I walked down 5th\u00a0Street in Playa del Carmen: \u201cAre you Japanese??\u201d\u00a0I say no.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAre you . . . Filipino??\u201d\u00a0Seriously?\u00a0 He went from Japanese to Filipino?\u00a0 Is it possible to … Continue reading HEY CHING CHONG CHANG<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,83,15,91,89,65,166],"class_list":["post-34380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-mexicans","tag-observations","tag-og","tag-pf","tag-racism","tag-travel","tag-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34382,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34380\/revisions\/34382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}