Lomé

We sorted a flight to Nairobi. Quoted three different prices for the same flight by different people so opted for the Ethiopian Airlines office, at about £210, much the cheapest and we were saved £160 by our student cards (Each). After a quick look around the big 3 story market, the middle floor of which is entirely occupied by cloth and material, never seen so much, muct be tens of thousands of pieces (Mostly printed in Holland). Spotted a couple of voodoo dolls and went in search of some African suits and shirts and haggling over the price. Bought 1 light suit (3500) and a small shirt(2020) and Seb and I started after 2 very heavy material Nigerian suits, blue and brown, printed with Naira and bits of the Koran. Starting price was 11,000, after an our we were down to 8000 each, we pleaded that if we spent more than 8000 in total we wouldn't be able to eat etc. After 15 visits and as many ruses, the price dropped suddenly from 15-13000 for the 2, end of the day price! However we left amd went to haggle over some fruit and veg which we took to the hotel but only ate about 1/4 of it.

Managed to get Seb and Jan out on the town for all of 2-3 drinks before tiredness took over. Better than zero i suppose.

Next day re-engaged the suit vendor and had him down another 1000 by lunch, but there he stuck. He wouldn't budge for several hours . However we found another distraction and went back to look at the voodoo dolls in the market, and ended up wih armfulls of stuff, stools, calabashes, dolls, rattles etc nd had several hours of haggling with an old woman who wouldn't bdge and eventually got the better of us, though we did get a small discount. My favourite items were salt & pepper pots and a vinegar shaker all made from old light bulbs.

The old women are by far the hardest bargainers, tough old birds. Had another couple of digs at the suit vendor but he wouldn't budge, so we offered 11,000, and, when he said no, we walked away in disgust. He chased us down the road and we finally got our suits for 11000.

Struggled back to the hotel under a great weight of stuff, showered and spruced up for our last night (the first of the trip). Had a couple of adjacent drinks then headed up to the Relais de Poste restaurant e we had a couple more drinks and a fairly average meal, which Jan hardly touched. Serenaded by a black minstrel singing well known African songs like "When the saints, Yesterday and El Paso Condor".

Returned tired and pissed to the hotel where I was resting peacefully on the balcony until interrupted by one of the local tarts, - "Was I Alone? Did I have a room? Did I want to go to her place? I declined her kind offer. I then realised that i had been dozing with my trousers undone ( coutesy of Jan apparently (??ED??)) so no wonder she thought i was game.

Spent the whole of the next day trying to work out what to do with all our oversized pile of stuff. Take it to Kenya? Post it to GB? Split it up and send some to NZ? Decided on the final option. After a cursory glance at the nuseum that wasn't open spent the rest of the afternoon wrapping, packing and posting. £20 to send the parcel, think we over did it., that is what teh whole pile cost. (Editos note - Naturally the parcel never arrived back in the UK anyway ).Read more