Most beach resorts that cater to tourists usually have their fair share of vendors. Basically there are two types of vendors - those that are mobile (they walk up and down the beach) and those that are stationary (they man a concession). Now, I’ve been to a variety of tropical beach resorts - Mexico, Caribbean, Costa Rica and Thailand – and from my experience, the mobile beach vendors can either be very aggressive and annoying or relatively harmless. In particular, the beach vendors in the Caribbean can be quite pushy as many of them will not take no for an answer - Jamaican beach vendors are notoriously persistent. To give you an idea of the variety of services and products that are available at your typical Caribbean resort, in Negril - a popular “hip” beach town on Jamaica’s north coast – the offerings range from water sports, hair braiding, necklaces and jewelry to woodcarvings, sex tonic, marijuana and full body massages. In contrast, the beach vendors in Mexico are for the most part very cordial and do not linger. If you let them know you’re not interested – this could be with just a shaking of the head or a simple no – they simply move on.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 7:37 am and is filed under Jamaica, Mexico, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.