[*Shira*]

I once bought an Oriental rug in Egypt that was priced at $3,000, I paid $800.

Other folks have already posted excellent advice, I'll just add:

• Don't shop when you're pressed for time. Bargaining takes time to do. If you're in a hurry, you'll end up paying more.
• Don't fall in love with an item and decide you absolutely MUST have it. Vendors can sense this, and they'll charge you more. (The same day I bought my rug, another woman in our group bought a similar one for $5,000 because she fell in love with a particular one and gushed to the vendor about how beautiful it was.)
• If it's a big ticket item (such as my rug example), make your opening offer LESS than 1/3 the price they quote you (though I agree that for small-ticket items starting at 1/3 is about right.)
• Be ready to walk away if the price is still higher than you want to pay. Don't allow yourself to become emotionally attached to anything.
• Try to slip away from the rest of your group and shop alone. Bargaining in front of an audience rarely yields a good price because the vendor doesn't want to risk having a herd of other people come forward when they're done with you and say, "Okay, can I have the same thing she bought for the same price?" Also, sometimes the people you're traveling with can say really stupid stuff that undermines your bargaining. Once when I was in Turkey, I made the mistake of hanging out with another woman from my tour group, and when I approached a stall that sold antique clothing items, she stupidly started gushing about how wonderful/amazing the merchandise was, and how in the US we would pay 3-4 times as much as this vendor was charging, etc. I soooo wanted to stuff a smelly sock in her mouth to shut her up because she COMPLETELY undermined any chances of my getting a good price. In the cab on the way back to the hotel, I told her I would do the rest of my shopping alone, without her, because of it.