A cabbie recently insisted on giving me a discount (against my protestations) because he was so delighted that I endorsed and embellished his scathing assessment of James Soong. (I didn’t tell him what I think about Ayatollah U-turn – he’d probably have thrown me out of the cab if I’d done so.)
In my experience the only crooked cabbies are these ones waiting by the airport busstop. I had to remind one to turn on the meter a while ago and he said “oh yeah, good that you reminded me, otherwise you wouldn’t have had to pay anything”! When I came to Taiwan I first lived in the Happy Family hostel, about 5 minutes walk fromt he bus stop. People used to show up who had been charged 200Nt for the ride there.
But mostly I agree that (as far as charging etc) they’re mostly pretty honest. They are bloody terrible drivers though.
Brian
The most blatant taxi cheating I’ve seen was in Amman, Jordan.
The guy’s speedometer was clocked around so that it sat at 80 km/hr at a standstill, and we were doing well over 150km/hr crusing through traffic. I tried to complain, but his english ability suddenly of course vanished.
Then again, my friend and I we were two drunk guys in a country where alcohol is severely frowned on, and probably offended him more than his extra USD 0.3 did us !