Taxi Cha Cha Cha

 Catching a taxi in Malaysia was a life experience by itself. It was common for riders to have to wait 30-40 minutes during business hours which could be very irritating if you did it twice a day. If it was raining or in peak traffic hours, you could wait over an hour. I did it for 9 months and knew it firsthand.

Three criteria must first be satisfied before the taxi would take you to your destination ....



Cha-cha-cha-1 - Calling a taxi - The taxi call center would place you in a queue. The more the taxi in the company, the shorter was the queue and thus the quicker a taxi would be dispatched to your area. But if you found another taxi before the committed one, you would be considered 'ditching' the cabbie and you and your telephone number would be blacklisted. From that point forward, you would never be able to get a taxi from the same telephone number.

If you called during the peak hours and you wanted the taxi quicker, the operator would suggest you to pay extra to incent a faster response from cabbies at large. The more you were willing to pay, the sooner you would get a taxi in this over-the-radio bidding game. Now you knew why were there so many empty cabs sped pass you because they were catching a fat cat further down the road.

By the way, it was not a sure thing that a call to the taxi companies would be answered. To control the number of requests, the taxi company flow control mechanism would shut down the call center and NOT answering any calls whenever there was an imbalance of calls vs available cabs.

And there was no way to reserve a cab one day in advance to beat the queue. The taxi company would defer your call to the morning shift when they would start a new queue all over again.



Cha-cha-cha-2 - Negotiation techniques - Now that a cab stopped in front you, you would need to speak to the cabbie softly so he/she would accept you as a deserving fare. Further you had to convince the cabbie to take you to your desired location. Yes, YOU were no longer the boss!. It 'so happened' that the cabbies didn't always want to go to places you would like to go. It was not unusual that a cabbie would reject 5 or 6 fares in front of you in a taxi stand for reasons like the wrong destinations, heavy traffic, wrong side of the town, or not near to the cabbie's girlfriend's house. It had nothing to do with the distance or going to a bad neighborhood. So when you were at the front of the queue, smiled and put up a good show. Yeap ... YOU were not in charge.



Cha-cha-cha-3 - Watch that taxi meter - Once your were granted permission to board the cab, you needed to be on high alert and extra vigilance to ensure that the cabbie would follow the taxi meter and not by their high roller fare quote. During the daily Malaysia rain storms, it had been a common practice for the cabbies to ask for fares proportionally to the size of the rain drops or the length of the storm.

Be on the look out for the new Blue Taxi licensed in 2008. Their meter rate was six times higher than the regular taxi so following the meter might be detrimental to your wallet.

Oh yes, Cha-cha-cha now had a new 4th twist ....



Cha-cha-cha-4 - Watch where you were going - A cabbie would take you for a joy ride to extend the distance of your trip unnecessarily. When challenged with my GPS empirical data, the cabbie acknowledged the wrong direction but continued to drive onward, ignoring my distressed plea which were drown out by the increasing ground speed and the wind noise. Yes, I got to the destination but in cold sweat :-(

These experiences and resentments with taxis were echoed and validated by tourists and local residents alike. Occasionally, professional taxi drivers would speak up and denounce these practices because they had tarnished the image of the country.