Aggressive vending

A surprise for me in first visiting a tourist area in the Philippines was how aggressive some of the cafés and restaurants were: I could be walking along outside, clearly in conversation, and somebody would step partly into our path, saying something and proffering a menu. It further transpired that much of the speech I hear in public is directed at me and in English, just not in a manner that I recognize as being either; my ignorance is indeed blissful.

In time, I have learned to walk around largely oblivious: I keep my eyes on my companions or the ground or the traffic and do not register the many unsolicited attempts at engagement, not that I find them intelligible anyway. (I also keep half an eye further upward, I sometimes have to stoop under things.)

A recent example was in a local market. We were looking at produce and, as my wife R. and I discussed the dragonfruit, I could hear a vendor's approaching voice, loudly: Dragonfruit, sir! Dragonfruit! I mean, really, what the fuck? Just leave me alone to discuss the produce, if I want engagement then I might raise my eyes to the people behind the displays. I drifted away and we bought dragonfruit from a different stall, the lady there spoke more normally and more usefully, about matters like how ripe the items were. Maybe the next day, on our walk home, tricycle drivers (cheap motorcycle-sidecar taxi) were aggressive enough to annoy R.; again, it's not as if we'd looked at the transport wistfully.

I wonder how much cultural difference there is here: if it's simply that it's more acceptable to be in one's face or if, also, median recipients are enough different that such a sales tactic actually wins more business than it loses. I also wonder how much it depends on if the recipient seems local or, like me, Caucasian. (Where we walk in our day-to-day life here, I appear to be the only Caucasian person.)