Blow out and bartering

Background: Rick is in Bangladesh to start a coffee roasting company. I brought a small roaster from the states so he could start test roasting some beans. That should suffice.

Saturday night we plugged in the roaster. Step 1 is to run a cycle with no beans so season the roaster and burn off any residue left from manufacturing. We plugged it in making sure to use the step-down transformer since power over here is on a 220 cycle and the roaster is an American 110 cycle machine. Neither Rick or I thought to check the wattage rating of either device. I entered the kitchen about ten minutes into the dry run and smelled smoke. The directions mentioned there may be some smoke or a smokey smell in the first couple runs so we thought nothing of it, and we were excited and fascinated at the machine. I noticed a stronger smoke smell and saw smoke, but not from the roaster, it was coming from the step-down quite voluminously. We unplugged the whole system and determined the step-down was fried. My first thought was wattage and we found the step-down was rated for 500W and we were pulling upwards of 1600W.
A step-down is quite necessary to allow Rick to roast beans so Sunday we went to the electronics market to get a new one. In the states this is a simple process; you go to Wal-mart or Radio Shack or Best Buy whichever is closer and you will pay relatively the same price. We entered one store that is relatively large with random appliances stacked in no certain order and ask if they have a 110 step-down transformer. We received a very confident yes from the salesmen who said "follow me." He led us through the store, to the door, across the street dodging rickshaws, beggars, buses and cars, into another market with booths of stacked electronics as far as I could see; reminding me of the flea market. He walked into one particular cubicle and said something in Bangla and the man behind the counter pulled out a 200W 110 step-down converter. Just what we needed! He pulled it out of the box, plugged it in, it worked and he said "7000 taka." At this point an ignorant person would hand him 7000 taka and be on his way with a new appliance. . . but that is not how it works here. Asking if this was his best price he said he could reduce it 200 taka for us to 6800. We said maybe we will buy it, but we will come back. We walked 10 feet to the next shop owner and asked for the same thing. "6000 taka for you my friend." Next shop: "5500 taka, best price. Next shop, hoping to get him down to 5000 taka he said he could do 5200. We left the market, ate lunch, had a cup of coffee, shopped for some other miscellaneous things in another nearby market and a couple hours later returned to the electronics market. We went to the original shop, within 30 feet of the other stores and bought the appliance for 5200 taka, about 25 dollars less than the originally quoted price.
All in the day of life in Bangladesh.