In Reply to: fair prices posted by stonesteps on Saturday, 31. May 2003 at 03:47 Bali Time:
And I can give you some guides on what we paid for things this past two weeks. :-)
If you're at all unsure about things, a good move is to go to the Sindhu Beach Market at Sanur and go to Shop 28 - Toot Sie shop. She has fixed prices and is very fair and honest. We bought a lot from her early on and it gave us a good grounding in what to pay elsewhere.
For sarongs, if you're staying in the Kuta - Legian - Seminyak area, the best place is along Jl Double Six. There's loads and loads of sarong wholesalers with very low fixed prices. We found one place - I'll try to locate the card and post the details later - and they have a huge range of styles. Basic printed and plain colour ones started at about Rp9,000 and for fancier ones with beaded trims they were averaging around Rp17,000 each. Some went as high as Rp24,000 but I think those were hand painted. Still very cheap, and probably cheaper than you'd get anywhere else.
T-shirts we found we'd get up to size XL for Rp15,000 and bigger ones for Rp20-25,000 each. All depends how many you buy though, as to the actual price for each shirt. We usually bought 3 or 4 at a time.
I bought silver beads at Bujangga Silver in Tuban for Rp3,000/gram. I'm pretty sure that the rings, necklaces etc were all the same price per gram as well. Slightly different if they're set with stones, but still very inexpensive. I got s/silver stone set pendants for around Rp5-15,000 each, depending on size and how much silver was in them.
Basically though, they'll let you know if you're in the ballpark or not - and they'll overcharge you at any given chance if you let them. :-)
It's all good fun though. The rule we basically played by was that if we thought the item was a good deal, then we were happy, even if we did get overcharged by a few dollars.