A good overview here for anyone planning to travel to Bangkok.
Indeed, we Bangkokians have a love-hate relationship with our cab drivers. You never know when you hop into a taxi whether the driver will be one of the nicest, most polite people you’ve ever met and an expert driver or some lout fresh off the farm blaring the radio into your ears, belching loudly and picking his nose absent-mindedly as he careens down the road. We’ve actually had to have the driver stop on the side of the road and get out because he was clearly on amphetamines and often drunk.
But major problems are usually few and far between. And man, are our taxis cheap! Flag fall is barely a buck American. Most places within Bangkok will only cost you US$3 or $4 at the most to get to. And the hassle is much less now than it used to be, because now they almost all use meters. Back in my early days, you had to bargain with the drivers just like you still do now with our “tuktuk,” those noisy little three-wheeled motorized vehicles that zip around. Meters were introduced in the early 1990s.
Word of warning to newbies: Never EVER get into a cab that does not have a meter in it. Never EVER allow a taxi driver to get away with not turning the meter on because he wants to bargain the price with you; instead, hop out and flag down another. Never get into a taxi that is parked near a tourist site or bar area; instead, walk down the road a bit and hail one that’s passing.
The wife and I are lucky, too, in that there’s a taxi queue downstairs in our building compound. They have to behave themselves to come in, and if there’s ever a problem, we jot down their number and have our building’s management complain to the taxi compnay, after which the driver is not allowed back into our compound.
You forgot one of the most important things to keep in mind, while traveling by taxi or any car, always, always, but ALWAYS check your six before opening a door, lest you end up with a biker embedded in it.
Not really, but they have the umpteen clowns in a car circuss act pretty much nailed down. I´ve counted up to 8 passengers riding a Tuk Tuk… could have been more, the mass of legs and arms was confusing and I could only count the heads on one side of the vehicle.
Just about the only time I had my life flash before my eyes was in a Bangkok cab…
It was my first or second visit to Thailand, and I had thought I was a pretty cool dude with regards to crazy Se Asian driving, because of my lengthy experiences in Vietnam. But in Saigon, the craziness happens at 40 or even 30kmh - in Bangkok it can happen at 100…
I was in the front seat (hey, I’m Australian, we ALWAYS do this) of a cab and we were screaming along out of the airport very late at night. Main road, not much traffic, maybe doing 70kmh. We’re in the right lane (Thais drive on the left, so the fast lane) overtaking a few tuk-tuks, trucks, and things. So far so good. Now, whereas in the West, you’ll get notification of a lane closed to roadworks maybe several blocks back, in this case the notification was a solid concrete barrier across our lane, up ahead. At the time I saw it (rapidly approaching) we were just in line with the back end of a long semi truck in the adjacent lane.
“No problem”, thought I, “He’ll just ease off the gas a bit and slot in behind the rig.”
Nuh uh.
He floored the cab.
I can see the concrete block getting worryingly close. I’m counting the axles of the semi trailer as we pass. It seems to take forever. The concrete is just about upon us, and as I prepare to scream my dying breath, the cabbie “threads the needle” in front of the semi.
“So Mistah”, he asks in a casual drawl, “How you like Thailand?”
I couldn’t help liking the guy. He nearly killed me, but I ended up giving him a tip and not regretting it.
I’ve seen entire families on a single motorcycle in Thailand. Father driving, mother in back with baskets of laundry under both arms, two children sitting between the parents and a smaller one in front of the father. No one wearing a helmet, of course.
The funniest thing I’ve ever seen in a tuktuk were these three gigantic Middle East men in the back of one. They were SO heavy that the tuktuk’s front end would rise up if the driver started off too quickly. There was a real danger of the thing flipping over backward!
I had a taxi driver the other day who must have been on his first day of the job-- young kid, no more than 19 or 20. He had NO idea how to navigate the central area of the city. I wanted to go from Wireless to Sukhumvit Soi 3 and he ended up getting on the expressway by mistake (!) – I would have stopped him but I didn’t realize how clueless he was until it was too late. Should have gotten his number and reported him, but he was so apologetic that I didn’t have the heart…I figure he’ll sink or swim, as it were.
On the other hand, I also had the great taxi driver (on the same route, but at rush hour, so it took 30-40 minutes) who spoke pretty decent English and wanted to get into a conversation about the American Democratic nomination (when it was still in question). It was really interesting hearing his views. There was also the guy who spoke no English, but obligingly popped a DVD into the little portable player on his dashboard so I could watch “Alien vs. Predator” (I didn’t ask, he just assumed, I guess).
There’s a blog somewhere that is composed entirely of pictures of the inside of Bangkok taxicabs-- the decorations, amenities, etc. It’s fascinating, but I can’t remember the site right now…anyone else seen it?
Actually, I think I’ve already linked to that in a separate thread. I’ll see if I can find it later.
In the meantime, since I have a Bangkok crowd here, I’ll throw out some more odds and ends that I wasn’t sure warranted an entire thread. Here are 19 great photos of Bangkok power lines. The site looks better than it sounds; you’ll see. And here, the same photographer has some weird Bangkok objects.
Here is the Old Bangkok website, which seems to deal mostly with revered old hotels. The page on the King’s Hotel here is especially good. (That’s Field Marshal Praphas Charusatien in the quirky bow tie, the prime minister/dictator of the day.)
The Old Bangkok site mentions the old Intercontinental Hotel at the top. That was one beautiful place. I’d never really paid much attention to it, but before they started taking it apart, the wife and I wandered around the grounds, and it must have been a truly peaceful place to stay. There were even peacocks wandering around loose everywhere. I think all the fauna ended up in the zoo, not sure. The newspapers began running human-interest stories on the place at the time. Many of the staff, right down to the bellhops, had worked there literally for decades. One old bellhop wasn’t sure what he could do now.
They tore it down in 2002 to build Siam Paragon, Southeast Asia’s largest shopping center. It has a large aquarium in the basement. The funny thing is that when it opened, they tried to tout it as the “largest aquarium in the Southern Hemisphere,” no mean trick considering we’re north of the equator.
:smack: D’oh! I misspoke. Praphas was never prime minister. But he WAS deputy PM and holder of one or two Cabinet posts under a few of the dictators of the day, including the entire decade of Thanom Kittikachorn’s regime from 1963-73. Those two were thick as thieves. Praphas even married his daughter off to Thanom’s son.
Heh… Once I was walking down Rama IX road when I felt something fall on my head, slide by the side and come to rest on my shoulder, an electric cable thick as my thumb that some maintenance crew was lowering from the utility posts. Thanks for the warning, guys. :dubious:
That sounds about right. The standard Vietnamese configuration seems to be dad driving, mum riding pillion, and a small child standing up on the footboard between dad’s knees. To this can be added a tiny child sitting on the handlebars, and another child behind the mother, maybe facing backwards.
What I hate is walking into a dangling line that’s come loose. Even in the daytime, it’s not that easy to see it if you’re not expecting it. Something just suddenly thwacks you in the face. Fortunately I’ve not had this happen with a live one. Quite disconcerting.
