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How to bargain in Thailand without being the person everyone hates
Four Thai lines, an honest answer about where haggling is actually expected, and the two things that move a price more than any phrase does.
Bargaining in Thailand has a reputation problem in both directions. Some visitors will not try it because they think it is rude. Others treat every transaction as combat and grind a market seller down over the price of a bracelet. Both of those come from the same mistake, which is not knowing where the line is.
So here is the line first, and the phrases after.
Where you bargain, and where you really do not
Prices are fixed, and haggling would be strange, at supermarkets, 7-Eleven and every other convenience store, malls and chain shops, restaurants with menus, pharmacies, and food stalls. Especially food stalls. A plate of food is priced thin already, and negotiating it is not sharp, it is just unkind.
Prices are negotiable, and haggling is expected, at market stalls selling clothes, souvenirs, bags and jewellery, at tuk-tuks and unmetered taxis, at tailors, and at anything in a tourist-facing floating or night market. Chatuchak, the beach-road stalls, that world.
If you are not sure which one you are standing in, ask the price and pay it. Nobody has ever been thought badly of for that.
The four lines
These four cover almost everything, and each one has audio here if you would rather hear it than read it.
Start by asking. ราคาเท่าไหร่raa-khaa thâo-rài How much is this? is the full version, and it is worth learning as one lump rather than as four words.
Then, if the number is high, แพงไปphaeng bpai Too expensive does the whole job. It is two words. You do not need a speech.
The line that actually opens a negotiation rather than closing one is ลดได้ไหมlót dâi mǎi Can you give a discount?. This is the polite, normal, entirely expected way to ask, and it is a question rather than a demand, which is the difference that matters. The longer ถูกกว่านี้ได้ไหมthòok gwàa née dâi mǎi Can it be cheaper? says the same thing with more room in it.
And then close. เอาอันนี้ao an-née I will take this one ends the conversation cleanly, which is worth more than the last twenty baht.
The particle is not optional
Put ครับkhráp polite particle, men or ค่ะkhâ polite particle, women on the end of every one of those. It depends on your own gender and not on who you are talking to, and it never changes.
Leave it off and none of the four lines above are rude exactly, they are just bare. The particle is what turns "too expensive" from a verdict into a comment. There is a whole piece on why women have two of them, which is the part that trips people up.
The number problem
Here is what nobody warns you about: the phrases are the easy half. The hard half is understanding the answer. Somebody says a number at conversational speed and you have nothing.
The good news is that market prices live in a narrow range. You need ร้อยrói one hundred and you need the numbers one to nine in front of it, and that is most of it. สองsǒrng two plus rói is two hundred. Learn nine numbers and the word for hundred, and you can follow almost any stall price in Thailand.
If you get stuck, every seller in a tourist market has a calculator and will happily type the number at you. Asking for that is not a failure. There is a converter here that will say any number back to you in Thai, which is a faster way to get your ear in than a list is.
The two things that move the price more than words do
Being willing to leave. Not as a tactic, as a fact. If the price is more than the thing is worth to you, say thank you and walk. Half the time you will hear a better number before you have gone ten metres, and the other half you did not want it at that price anyway. This works in every market on earth and it needs no Thai at all.
Being pleasant. That is not a soft-focus platitude, it is the actual mechanism. Thai market bargaining is a social exchange with a price attached, not a contest. Smiling, taking your time and treating the seller as a person will get you a better number than any phrase in this article. Grinding, sighing and theatrical outrage will get you the tourist price, and you will have earned it.
ขอบคุณครับkhòrp-khun khráp Thank you, man speaking at the end, whether you bought anything or not, costs nothing and is remembered.
What not to do
Do not bargain over food. Do not bargain in a shop with price tags. Do not name a number you are not willing to pay, because if they say yes then you have to buy it, and backing out after a yes is the one thing that genuinely annoys people. And do not treat forty baht as a victory worth chasing: you are arguing over roughly one euro, and the seller is not the one for whom that is a rounding error.
If it does not work out, ไม่เป็นไรmâi-bpen-rai never mind is the right way to leave. It means something closer to "this was never going to be a problem", and it is the most useful thing in this entire article.
Where to practise this
The market chapter and the closing-the-deal chapter in the course are built around exactly this, with audio on every line, and both are free to read on this website. All 34 chapters are readable here without installing anything, or the app will drill you on them until they stick.
Start learning Thai on Google Play
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