Only two choices for falang w/o transportation:

walk long distances or pay moto taxis insanely high prices.

Motos are 10B for a short trip 20B for a longer trip within Cha Am. Hardly insanely high!

Hua Hin has both kinds of tuk-tuks, with three or four wheels. I use them occasionally. Cheaper than taxis.

Motos are 10B for a short trip 20B for a longer trip within Cha Am. Hardly insanely high!

Agree ... but not everone wants to sit on a mototaxi and you would want very good insurance

Strange that only Bkk sees the need for aircon meter taxis.

Naka.

Left out the songtheaws .... and the samlors ...

but motorcycle taxis are cheap there .... MANY times in Town I'd pay a bit over the going rate though to hire 2 .... (one to drive me home on my bike and the other to drive him back ....

Strange that only Bkk sees the need for aircon meter taxis.

Air-con meter taxis have made their way to Chiang Mai but were allowed because the local songtaew/tuk-tuk mafia were given the taxi concession to operate.

Hua Hin has air/con taxis, but most of them want to go long distance, at least to Cha-Am, preferably to BKK or the airport. As jdinasia points out, songtaews can be hired for private use. I usually use the fixed-route, ten-baht songtaew, such as a few hours ago.

Everytime I wanted to use a mototaxi they would quote an absurd price like 60B for what would probably be 20B in Bangkok. I tried to negotiate and spoke a little bit of Thai, would then walk away go to 7-11 and come back and it was the same story. No choice but to pay triple or walk over and over again, but perhaps you are a better negotiater then me.

On the mainroad, there are alot of buses, pick ups going by though.

I'm a crap negotiator but never experienced that. Maybe you just got unlucky. In my experience naka if you ask them to drive slow they will.

I agree about how good it would be to have metered taxis the length and breadth of the country but could you imagine the chaos in some of the smaller towns?