How much money do you spend per week taking taxis (we’re talking about personal cash, for those people who have a company expense account)?
0 voters
Do you take taxis all the time or just occasionally? Or are you among those who relies solely on a scooter, or is an MRT fan, or has got all of the city’s bus schedules and routes down pat? Just how much cash do you spend on those yellow vehicles?
I take taxis all the time. I don’t have or want a car or a scooter, and there are taxis everywhere that for a modest fee will drop me off at the door of nearly any destination without my having to worry about finding a parking place. I never have to worry about driving drunk, either.
If its a nice day or I’m not in a big hurry, I walk.
I find a taxi much more appealing too. Main reasons being airconditioning in summer, get you right to the door and they cost bugger all.
Yeah, even though I live practically next door to the MRT and Chung Shan N. Rd. I prefer to jump in the taxi if I want to be somewhere just a few minutes faster than public transportation can provide for me…e.g. work.
I’m perpetually in a rush, so taxis save me a great deal of time and, ultimately, money.
I also enjoy the MRT when I’ve got the time to enjoy it.
I’ll be driving a car and motorcycle when I get back from the States. We’ll see how that goes.
I take taxis only if I’ll be drinking or the weather is really bad, other than that, I find I can get to most places I need to go to much quicker by scooter.
Tainan is small enough that I can motorscooter anywhere within 20 minutes at the max. I never take taxis here. With some exceptions, such as today. Never, ever park your scooter in front of the Caves bookstore on Beimen Road! 99% of the time you can see scooters parked in front on the sidewalk, but every so often the traffic cops get bored and greedy and tow all the scooters parked in front of Caves away. It is totally arbitrary and senseless - all up and down the busiest street in Tainan scooters are parked in front of shops everywhere, except for this spot in front of Caves chosen seemingly at pure random so the cops can plunder parkers’ money. So I had to take a taxi (twice, because the first junkyard I was told to go to didn’t have my scooter, so I had take another taxi all the way over to the Anping police station where they hauled it in) and pay a 250 NT fine.
Look, if you’re going to have a “don’t park” space, it should be:
a) Clearly marked as a no-parking space, which the space in front of Caves definitely is not. No one working in Caves ever so much as went out and told people not to park there, as workers in other stores do when they don’t want you parking in certain places. It’s in front of their store, it’s their responsibility to make their customers aware that the sidewalk is a forbidden area.
b) Consistently enforced. I pass by Caves on Beimen all the time, it being located right in the heart of Tainan after all, and 99% of the time you can see scooters parked in front of the store. Cops should not be allowed to play the “pick a random day once per month to enforce this technicality” game so they can meet their quota of traffic tickets.
[quote=“tigerman”]I take taxis all the time. I don’t have or want a car or a scooter, and there are taxis everywhere that for a modest fee will drop me off at the door of nearly any destination without my having to worry about finding a parking place. I never have to worry about driving drunk, either.
If its a nice day or I’m not in a big hurry, I walk.[/quote]
On weekends, I like to walk. It’s amazing how much of this city you can cover in even an hour.
The problem with taxis is that during rush hour, they can be slower than taking the MRT, although a lot more comfortable. And if you don’t have a solid of knowledge of the streets you can only turn one way on, it can be a bit frustrating.
I remember what prompted me to make my very first post on segue last year was dishonest cabbies. New arrivals, heed my advice, keep an eye on which button the cabby pushes when you get on. Regular fare is the lower left-hand button. Only after 11:00 pm should he be pushing the lower right button, which starts the late-night rate. Don’t get ripped off.
What is the difference between day and night rates ? Do they both start at 70 ?
I usually only take them if it’s late at night, or if I’m in a hurry. Mainly I take the MRT/Bus.
They both start at 70 NT. The difference being that the night rate skips at shorter intervals of both distance and time standing still. For example, at the day rate, it skips once every 2 minutes of standing; the night rate is once every 1:40.
The yellow perils are a convenient and inexpensive way to get around when one’s in a great hurry, or heading somewhere that’s out of the way or awkwardly located, or carrying heavy or bulky things, or drunk or feeling fagged out or ill, or when it’s pissing down with rain. But I’d rather not take them unless I really need to, because they often stink to high heaven inside, the drivers scare me shitless with their speeding and reckless manoevres, and there’s a fairly high chance of having to deal with a surly, foreigner-hating, pig-mannered, rat-minded moron behind the wheel.
Omni, I have taken some stinky cabs in Taiwan , but I wouldn’t say I’ve had them “often.” Nor would I say that there’s a “high chance” of having to deal with a “surly, foreigner-hating, etc.” Do you just jump in the first cab that comes by? I tend to be picky, especially when there’s ten lined up, and if one stinks or the guy is chewing betel nut , I head to the next cab. But I rarely have to do that. And I’ve noticed especially over the past year that more cabs have flowers up front and more polite drivers.
Omni, I have taken some stinky cabs in Taiwan , but I wouldn’t say I’ve had them “often.” Nor would I say that there’s a “high chance” of having to deal with a “surly, foreigner-hating, etc.” Do you just jump in the first cab that comes by? I tend to be picky, especially when there’s ten lined up, and if one stinks or the guy is chewing betel nut , I head to the next cab. But I rarely have to do that. And I’ve noticed especially over the past year that more cabs have flowers up front and more polite drivers.[/quote]
I agree. About half of the drivers I hire are friendly and chatty. If a driver truly hates foreigners, he will simply wave you off, won’t he? That’s happenned to me before. No big deal.
Omni,
You’re probably just too damn nice… and that can be a disadvantage.
When I get into a cab, stinky or not, I set the tone of my relationship with the driver immediately.
I’ve had cab drivers furious at me and demanding that I get out of the cab. But I just sit in the back seat and tell the SOB that he’s losing money waiting for me to get out, cuz I ain’t gonna get out until he takes me to my destination of choice. It helps to be a stubborn (and sometimes menacing) SOB like myself.
It helps you, I guess. Maybe that’s why you’re having so many problems Omni – you’re taking the cabs where Tigerman was the last passenger.
When I say there’s a “fairly high chance” of having an unpleasant taxi driver, I mean perhaps a one-in-five chance, which I consider unacceptably high. For every nasty driver there are at least two polite, friendly ones, but I so hate having to deal with the nasty ones that I can hardly bear to face the prospect that for every five times I flag a taxi down, it’s likely that I’ll have to endure at least one driver exuding those very bad vibes.
Also, I am extremely sensitive to picking up hostile or negative attitudes. So where another person might be totally oblivious to the fact that the driver doesn’t like having him in his cab and is harboring hostile thoughts about him, I invariably sense it and feel uncomfortable.
As for being picky about which taxi one takes, sure, I am if I can be when I’m flagging one down on a busy street with plenty to choose from. But often one needs to take a taxi from a line of them queueing up for passengers, and then I would feel it too impolite and unreasonable to not take the one at the front (I don’t want to upset the guy who is first in line). If that driver or his car looks really bad, I might hang back for a while and let someone else take it so that I can get in the one behind, or I might walk up the road and flag one down, but sometimes I’m in too much of a rush for that. And when flagging down a taxi in the street, especially in an out-of-the-way place or when it’s pouring with rain, one sometimes has to take whatever’s available or else have to wait for ages and ages.
As for the stink in the taxis, it’s much more of a problem in the summer, for obvious reasons. I find that a lot of the taxis, even new, swanky-looking vehicles, have very inefficient air-conditioning and are uncomfortably hot inside – far more are stickily hot than pleasantly cool. When a taxi driver is sitting in one of those all day, he’s going to sweat a lot and his feet are going to get very hot and stinky. An awful lot of people in Taiwan have athlete’s foot, and sitting for hours on end in a hot cab is inevitably going to make such people’s feet appallingly maladorous. Unfortunately, I have a highly sensitive nose, which is often the bane of my life in Taiwan. Many times when I’ve taken a taxi with my gf and have been all but choking and gagging because of the stench, after we’ve got out and I’ve commented on how awful the air was, she’s looked surprised and said she didn’t notice anything wrong with it at all. 
Perhaps I should take a clothes-peg with me, or a scented hanky, to help get me through those olfactorily distressing ordeals.
I have never had an unfriendly driver here in Taizhong.
I must be one of the totally oblivious ones, because I think your 20 percent figure is way off. I’d cut the number fivefold or even tenfold.
How can you be sure you’re not imagining it?
[quote=“cranky laowai”]I must be one of the totally oblivious ones, because I think your 20 percent figure is way off. I’d cut the number fivefold or even tenfold.
How can you be sure you’re not imagining it?[/quote]
That could be the case – I might well be misreading ordinary gruffness for something worse. But it still makes me feel uncomfortable, and puts me off wanting to ride in their taxis unless I absolutely have to.