Taxis - f'ing taxies. It's completely true what they say; Bangkok taxi/tuktuk drivers are the scum of the universe. Here's the deal: the taxis/tuktuks target tourists because they can get away with charging them five times what they'd charge a local person. Even worse, the metered taxies will take the looooong way so that they can make extra $$. Once, when we weren't paying attention we let a taxi driver take us an extra 30 minutes out of the way.
The most annoying thing is that Taxis and tuktuks will pick you up and tell you that they'll give you a good deal and only charge you 200 baht ($6.00) or so to take you three miles to the market if you "make one stop" to see their "sponsor." What's happening is they trick tourists (but only white tourists) into going to taylor shops and jewelry shops on the way to their destination so that they can get gasoline certificates from the shop owners. The drivers get the certificates even if we don't buy anything (which we never do) but it's still annoying to pretend that you're interested in their old-woman jewelry or fake armani suites. I can't believe anyone EVER buys anything from those places but they must because they're hundreds of these places!! ANYWAY, so after we figured out the scam we started negotiating for free taxi/tuktuk rides if we agreed to "make one stop." Josh even got a tuktuk driver to pay us 5 Baht to give us a ride home if we stopped at a stupid taylor!! We were so proud of him!
No comments:
Post a Comment