Petaling Street - Chinatown

Today I visited Petaling Street just after dinner. It has been a long time since I went to Petaling Street. For those who do not know about Petaling Street, Petaling Street is Malaysia’s famous Chinatown. Situated in Kuala Lumpur, it is a long street where you can find almost anything such as shoes, clothings, bags, DVDs and etc. You have to be aware that most of the items sold in Chinatown are immitation items.

What is very interesting about shopping in Chinatown is the bargaining part. You can bargain almost everything sold in Chinatown. They usually priced the items at slightly lower than retail price. Good bargainers can bargain up to 70% cheaper. For example, if you are very interested to buy a watch, once the seller offers his starting price, you can easily slash that price by half. If you are not interested to buy, just see then walk away. There are the usual daily commotions where the sellers gets extremely irritated and starts scolding after bargaining very hard with him and not buying in the end.

To them, you are just wasting their time. Usual bargaining does not take longer than five minutes. To achieve anything lower than half the start price, it really depends on how good your bargaining skills are. Once, I purchased an Omega wrist watch at 20% of the start price. I was lucky maybe.

One thing of caution. Petaling Street is usually packed at night with tourist and locals. Pick pocket thiefs are to be watched out (it is common anywhere packed with people). However, if you protect your belongings, you’ll be okay.

For those visiting Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur in particular, Chinatown or Petaling Street is sure not to be missed. You might just go back home with a new Gucci handbag that looks so original at probably 70% cheaper. Haha.