Nightlife in Montego Bay, Jamaica, right on Gloucester Ave, known as "The Hip Strip," you can find a number of beaches, bars, restaurants, shops, casinos, street vendors and patrolling police personnel and more.
I invited some friends to Jamaica and they wanted to hit the Hip Strip for the famous Jerk Chicken. Well, we ran into a situation that could have really been a costly learning experience, had two policemen not been nearby.
We were all walking down the strip and a street side jerk chicken vendor called us over to his barbeque grill. We were on our way to one further down the street but he caught us with the "Try mine for free!" So we stopped and my friends tried the chicken. They thought it was pretty good. They asked me to try it and I responded that it was "okayyyyy." They ended up buying one piece of chicken breast (Half) from this vendor while I was busy talking to a tour guide about a trip to Dunn's River Falls and Bob Marley's childhood home.
We proceeded down the street to the vendor that we intended to purchase our chicken from. When I tasted this chicken I said: "Now this is jerk chicken!" The others quickly agreed! Someone in our group asked how much and the vendor said $400 (That is Jamaican dollars. $1 US dollar is currently exchanged for $86 Jamaican dollars). At this point one of my friends pull me to the side and told me that the other vendor charged her $4,000 Jamaican dollars (Yes FOUR THOUSAND) for one piece of chicken! At this point, I stopped what I was doing with this vendor and headed back to the previous vendor's barbeque grill, with my friend in tow, right behind me.
As we approached the location of his grill, there stood two policemen one car length away. I informed the policemen that the vendor charged my friend four thousand dollars for a piece of chicken. (Just so you know...... 4,000 Jamaican dollars is currently $46.50 US DOLLARS...... for a PIECE OF CHICKEN?) When we arrived to the vendor's location he wasn't there. The policemen asked the other vendors where he was and ALL FINGERS POINTED just a hundred feet or so to him (That was pretty funny). The policemen motioned for him to come here. The location of the vendor's grill was just about where the back of the burgundy Toyota Tundra is located, to the left of Margaritaville (Montego Bay, JA) below.
When the man arrived to his station, the police wasted no time with casualties, they went right into the questioning: How much did you charge this young lady for the chicken? To which the vendor responded: "I didn't charge her anything she just gave me some money." YIKES..... if we had tried to confront this man without the police present the response would possibly have been: "You only gave me $300." Thank Goodness for the police. The man pulled the four thousand dollars that my friend paid him, from his pocket and the police made him give my friend her $3600 in change!
Moral to the story: If you are purchasing goods in a foreign land and you have a local friend present, interrupt your friend who is talking about a bus tour and confirm with the friend before making the purchase.
This ugly situation was cleared up pretty easily and I truly believe that it was ONLY because the police were there. She could have been stuck SICK over paying $46.50 for one piece of chicken. Now that would be a story for years to come.
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