Today I’ve been out to do a bit of grocery shopping on metered taxis so I thought it’d be interesting and useful to those of you new to Bangkok to offer my take on one of the most popular modes of public transport in Bangkok. So here it is:
You’ll have little difficulty finding a metered taxi in Bangkok - they’re absolutely everywhere! The majority of them are bright coloured in pink, blue, yellow etc. so you surely can’t miss those ones. Just look for the ‘Taxi Meter’ sign and signal to the eager driver and if the taxi is free he will stop and pick you up.
Thanks to the chaotic nature of Bangkok’s traffic, you’re unlikely to get too far too fast in a metered taxi. If you happen to be close to an Underground or BTS skytrain station, I’d then recommend you to use one of those as your usual means of public transport around town, otherwise I’d recommend metered taxis over tuk-tuks any day of the week. Tuktuks are good fun for a 1 off trip but you really can’t rely on them to get you where you’d like to go without a time-wasting stop at a shop, where the driver typically earns nice commission.
As a rule of thumb, the meter starts at a mere 35 baht when you’re picked up. The fares of course are bloody cheap relative to Western standards, with a journey of a couple of kilometres costing between 100-200 baht. In fact, the seemingly long journey from central Bangkok to Suvarnabhumi airport ought to cost no more than 300 baht.
In addition, most taxi drivers in Bangkok are extremely friendly so you might like to make friends and learn a bit of Thai from them too. A few of them can also be more sophisticated than you may think and have some great stories and views to share so next time you get stuck in traffic in a metered taxi you know exactly what to do!
No comments:
Post a Comment