---
type: Video
title: "Funny Challenge In Sri Lanka's Biggest Market 🇱🇰"
description: Two hours in Pettah market on a challenge to buy each other the most ridiculous thing — a $2.50 fake Apple Watch, a $5 shirt, a wig — and Harry's first note that Sri Lanka's economy is in trouble.
tags: [sri-lanka, colombo, pettah, markets, counterfeits, prices, economy]
timestamp: 2026-08-06T17:40:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BISOsMW8Avk
video_id: BISOsMW8Avk
upload_date: 2022-03-10
duration: 1232
---

# Funny Challenge In Sri Lanka's Biggest Market 🇱🇰

A light one, and useful mainly as a price list. Harry and [Ali](/people/ali.md)
split up in **Pettah market** in [Colombo](/places/colombo.md) with an hour or two
each and a rule: buy the other person the most ridiculous thing you can find, and
he has to wear it.

*Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles.*

## What things cost

Everything below is haggled, and none of it takes long.

- **A counterfeit smartwatch**: asked 600, paid **400 — about $2.50.** It turns on
  and shows a time, and that is the whole of his review.
- **Sunglasses**: asked 550, agreed 400, and **he pays 600** because the seller
  was working hard.
- **A wig**: **300**, and he pays over on the grounds that the price was honest
  without being asked.
- **A counterfeit branded shirt**: asked 990, paid **800 — under $5.**
- **Socks**: **150.** He tries to hand over 200 and the seller will not take the
  extra.
- **Fruit and jelly sweets**: around 100 rupees.

## How the market is laid out

The genuinely transferable observation, and he works it out by getting lost:

- **Stalls repeat.** Long runs of them sell the same things.
- **One block off the main run and the tourists stop entirely** — a working area
  where he is stared at, everyone is at a job, and there is nothing he could buy.
- **One block back and it is the tourist street again**, though he notes even that
  is mostly locals.
- **Indoor halls** hold the densest part of it.
- **The roads through it are live**: cars, tuk-tuks and motorbikes moving through
  the same space as the crowd.
- **Some sellers buy from other stalls and resell on foot**, walking the market
  with an armful of stock. He wonders aloud whether it works.

**Sellers here are not pushy.** He says so twice, and specifically that big
markets usually have people working an angle and he hasn't met one — two days
after the shoe cleaner, a few streets away.

## The first note on the economy

Said in passing and worth flagging, because it is the only time it comes up in
three weeks: **the financial situation in Sri Lanka is bad at the moment**, and
his read is that this is why sellers are so eager to get anyone into their shop.

The trip is filmed in March 2022.

## The exchange

Harry finds Ali a bright wig and gets it on him. Ali's present is **a new pair of
shoes** — a direct replacement for the trainers ruined by the shoe cleaner two
days earlier, which Harry had given away at this same market. He is visibly caught
out, having expected something stupid.

## Key moments

- `[03:12]` The watch stall, and 400 rupees.
- `[06:25]` One block off, and no tourists at all.
- `[06:55]` One block back, and the tourist street.
- `[07:57]` Paying 600 on a 400 agreement.
- `[09:30]` 300 for the wig, and paying over for an honest price.
- `[13:47]` 800 for the shirt.
- `[16:24]` The shoes.
- `[18:34]` 150 socks, and a seller who refuses a tip.
- `[19:36]` The economy, and why the sellers are desperate.

## Extracted pages

- [Sri Lanka](/countries/sri-lanka.md)
- [Colombo](/places/colombo.md)
- [Ali](/people/ali.md)