248,000,000

That is how much the car that I bought yesterday costs. And that is after the 1,500,000 discount I haggled for. At least I got them to include some LCD monitors in the seat headrests.

So, what kind of car costs that much. Well, a Nissan Serena. I can't remember if they had this model in the states. It is a minivan. Not as nice as our previous Honda Odyssey (they don't sell those here). But it did have the most room in the back seat of all the vans and SUVs we looked at. It is our best hope of getting 3 car seats in one row.

So, what is it like to buy a car here? Well contrary to what you may thing, there is not a whole lot of room to negotiate like there is in the US. Which seems weird because most purchases around here are negotiable. There is always room to ask for a discount.

So, we did what you normally do in the US and went to a couple different dealers and tried to play them off on another to get the best deal. After going to 2 dealers, I realized that the price was not going to be coming down a lot so at the second dealer, I made a deal and decided to buy the car there because they actually had one in stock. Otherwise, we would have been waiting until November for a car. Unlike the US, they don't keep a lot of car stock. Just not enough room.

After I agreed to terms with the salesperson, I was directed by Justin's company to have them call an HR person there so that they could handle the car order and payment. It is kind of a weird system but it works out good because we don't know the process and the company gives us a small discount. So for the next 10 minutes or so I listened to the salesperson and the HR person talking in Bahasa Indonesia on the phone. I have no idea what they were saying and I just wonder if the HR person was thinking, "What a sucker." when she heard what we were going to pay for the car.

Some places give what you may call "bulay (sp? - this word is pronounced boo-lay) prices". Bulay is the term Indonesians use for white people. They assume that white people have more money to spend so sometimes they will raise the prices and hope that the bulay doesn't know any better and will pay it.

Although, I think the people in the HR department look out for us. So, I don't think that was the case. But you get kind of anxious when you don't know what is being said.

After they talked for a while, the salesperson handed me the phone and the HR lady told me that I could leave the dealership and that they would take care of the rest. It is in times like these when you kind of feel like a star.

I feel like I should end this post by telling you 248,000,000 is the car cost in rupiah and right now 1 US dollar = about 10,000 rupiah. You do the math.