Hi fellow farangs. Like most of you either living or regularly visiting Bangkok or I guess Thailand in general, we’ve probably come across a heap of taxi or tuk tuk drivers that want to spend more time not working and pick up a big fare without turning on the meter or ones that are so rude you just want to smack out but occasionally, and maybe I’ve been lucky but in more recent times we’ve come across some more decent ones. The reason why I’m writing this post is not to have a go at taxi drivers but because we got a bit annoyed after hearing what happened from a taxi driver today so I wanted to share what happened.

We got into the taxi and the guy without hesitation started driving and picked up that we were speaking both a mixture of English and Thai and we got into a conversation. Turns out he was a decent bloke, well mannered, spoke politely and did all the right things that you would expect for a pain free cab ride home. After a little chatting, he told us what happened to him earlier on in the day. At 6pm, a farang youngish couple he was guessing around ages of 30 jumped into a taxi (you know what traffic’s like at this time of day) from Silom and wanted to go to somewhere down Khao San Rd. As they got into the taxi, quite abruptly they told him to turn on the meter (which is fair enough since lots of drivers these days try to prey on tourists) however what I thought was really rude was when they arrived at their destination, the fare came to 95 baht. The couple argued with the taxi driver that their previous fare was only 75 baht and didn’t want to pay the full metered fare. The poor bloke was telling us he didn’t speak enough English to try to explain to them that the fair was probably higher because of traffic jams. So, in the end, the driver with his little language knowledge said “nevermind” and accepted the 75 baht.

I’ve seen some disgusting behavior from tourists like this where people have taken 2 beers from drink vendors at floating markets and only pay for one thinking they’re great for getting a bargain on something that’s already dirt cheap and you know these little guys don’t charge any more than what you’d pay at a 7/11 or Tesco.

Yes there’s a fair share of scum out there that try to rip off the farangs but there’s also a lot of decent people around. Let’s not taint them too. When we have visitors come over, we do warn them to watch out not to get ripped off in general, but also to be fair. 20 baht for some of us back home can’t even buy a bottle of water, but it could buy a working person here their lunch.

Call me cynical but that sounds like a nice story to tell some passengers if you're fishing for a sympathy tip.

Call me cynical but that sounds like a nice story to tell some passengers if you're fishing for a sympathy tip.

i know what you mean though, i do get quite cynical at times over here...