I smile nicely and speak spanish. "No hablo ingles...." and stare blankly at him for a moment and go back to my book. If he talks again, smile and say "noh Ingleesh" and then go back to my book. Any other attempt I just ignore.

I feel the same. When I first came, it was great to meet lots of people and I always talked to others. Now its kinda just annoying. But I do find it particularly infuriating when Im eating and someone comes and sits down at my table and interupts my peaceful meal just because they "want to make friends with you."

8/10 times, I reply with "对不起，我的普通话不好。" (Sorry, my Chinese (Mandarin) is not good). It's often so bad I can't understand more than half of what they say, and they start laughing to each other, "He thinks we're speaking Chinese! My English is so bad! I'm so embarrassed!"

1/10 times when they have good English, I reply with "Wow, your English is good," and then strike up a conversation which they can't understand, and they quickly show they have no actual English ability beyond a few short phrases.

The other 1/10 times, the person can actually understand what I'm saying, and I'm more than happy to have a conversation with them. I had a conversation on the train with a gynecologist, and he was a very genuine man with very, very good English.

If people just yell hello to me I ignore them. If someone approaches and doesn't look like a creeper then I'll talk for a bit just to be polite. A few times though I've had to tell some of them to piss off.

This teenager comes up to me one day and doesn't greet me or anything. the first thing he says is "I speak Japanese very well", in English of course. He proceeded to tell me about how the pretty Japanese girls at his school were so interested in him. I found this hard to believe since he appeared to have some kind of herpes around his mouth and he spit everywhere when he talked. Total basement dweller.

THat happened to me once while I was walking on the Tiananmen area. A girl out of nowhere pops up and just starts talking in my ear. I got startled because I didn't even see where she came from. Then she was asking me where I was from and all those questions you've probably been asked before too. She did say she wanted to practice her English and I was on my way to Wangfujing. It was sort of weird but I tried to answer all of her questions and then went on my way. 

depends if I find her 'fetching' or not.  :-p  how's that for an old English word !   

if the individual happens to be sporting the XY chromosome I typically give them the same sort of stare Dr. Hannibal Lecter does right before he announces that he would like to 'eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti'.

So much more to look forward to.... I am trying to imply with that picture, that I might have some fun with that.

Has anyone ever thought of saying that they would speak to them, if they were willing to pay?

I get this pretty much every week, mainly due to the places I hang out, social settings but no other foreigners, so in a way it's my own fault.

But yes it gets very annoying after awhile.  I don't know how many times I've exchange phone numbers with people only to never talk to them again or to avoid their calls.

I've taken to giving a lot of dirty looks to the "Hallooo"ers, hoping that they, eventually, get the drift. If you're under 12, I'm very nice. If you're old enough to know better, you get the stink eye.
But even the ones who can speak English tick me off sometimes. I was shopping in the night market with my Chinese boyfriend one night, and a girl comes over and asks if he's my boyfriend (in good English). I said yes, and she looked him up and down, literally gave a sniff and snigger, and walked away. What a bitch!

Depends, some older people told me they wanted to practice their english and were very polite, some were pushy. I didn't mind as I didn't have many people to talk to and always had to use my translator or just use some basic chinese words.

 Next time I'll use I want to practice my Chinese as a pickup line.

I am more than glad to speak English with them.Come on,the more,the better!

When I was in Korea, I was infuriated by Koreans outside the classroom speaking English to me.

I took it as an implication that I was too stupid to learn to speak Korean.

I made up stories about a group of Koreans who actively opposed foreigners learning their language, and which banded together and called themselves the Miriam Ferguson Society.

I posted these stories on Dave's ESL Cafe.

The other forum members kept calling me crazy and paranoid, but that didn't discourage me one bit.

If you want to read some of my stories, go to the Google search engine and enter:

forums.eslcafe.com miriam ferguson society

Depends on my mood, good mood I'll speak and hold such conversation as their English makes possible. If I'm in a bad mood I'll answer in German.