Worst taxis in the world. It's Bangkok without doubt.

I am not talking about the Drivers, Taxis, Cost, Infra or any specific thing but the overall experience. The source is nothing but purely on my observation and limited travel experience over a decade mainly in Asia Pac. So here it goes.

• India

Ugly: Hardware, Cleanliness & Safety.

The experience sucks here due to Hardware (quality of the vehicle) but situation improved thanks to Uber, Ola kind. Most of these cars are new but depending on the luck you would still get in to a dirty car with wrapped plastic over head rests.

Seatbelts are either purely for Display purposes or doesn't exist. The built quality of these cars are just a surrounded sheet metal so do not expect grand safety features. Also the Drivers are poorly trained, and the lack of enforcement tend to make the ride scary at times. 

Average: Communication, Traffic & Professionalism

Majority of the Drivers are able to communicate in English, so communication is not a major issue but the accent, variation of address/name tend to confuse but I never had an issue thanks to the servitude nature of many Drivers Still acceptable IMHO. The only issue is the "expectation" of Tips/Gratuities makes professionalism in to average. That's something the society need to change.

Traffic can be terrible but it can be planned to avoid major disruptions and its either on par or better than majority nation. 

Great: Availability, & Cost

Once again, thanks to Uber, Ola & similar apps the availability of taxis are amazing. I never had to wait more than 10 min in any of the places I have been to. Most of the times in less than 5 min, I can get in to the taxi. Cost is not bad and great compared to the other costs in India (India is a very expensive place to live, work, travel)

Tips: Get a Uber Black or Similar Premium version to be sure about Safety, Communication and the 30 min traffic jam bearable. 

• Indonesia

Ugly: Traffic, 

Major problem in Indonesia is Traffic. Nothing else. So plan your schedule based on traffic and nothing else matters. Don't be surprised if a 5 KM ride ends up you sitting in the taxi for 2 hours during peak hours.

Average: Availability, Cleanliness, Safety, & Communication

Bluebird is everywhere, and majority are Toyota vios kind of stuff or MPV. Seat belts do exists, and if you want to go with Silverbird or Goldbird then you can enjoy the mini vans. 

In the ride sharing, Grab appears to be popular or aggressive, but the cars tend to be old and drivers tend to cancel the booking very frequently. Uber is not bad w.r.t cancellations but cars are much better.  Majority of the Drivers are able to speak few words of English but never expect any mis understanding or problems because of language. the folks are very professional.  

Great: Hardware, Professionalism, & Cost

Typical hardware is Toyota, or similar and large cars are very popular due to "car is for family". So either the normal street hail taxis or ride sharing, the chances are high to get a new, good vehicle. Indonesians are very friendly people and I never experienced any rude behaviour or a driver trying to demand extra money.

Lastly this is one of the cheapest place to ride in a Mercedes for an hour or so for less than 20 bucks. 

Tips: Plan your travel based on "Traffic". Get a Uber Black or Grab Premium or Silverbird to spend some quality time in calls, chit chat with your friends

• Thailand

Ugly: Safety, Professionalism, Cost, Availability, Traffic & Communication.

No meter, and expected to pay double is the norm in BKK. If you get a taxi with meter on by default, just pinch yourself to wake up from the dream. Majority of the drivers are not trained properly (guess farmers trying to make some extra money), can't speak or understand English (or pretend), extremely good at taking long routes, and have no change at all or receipts. 

Thailand has one of the worst road mortality rates in the world and combined with lack of training this makes us to worry about the safety. 

I can go on with the negative experiences and unfortunately I do not have a single positive experience to talk here. Even Uber, Grab couldnt make a difference here. 

Average: Cleanliness & Hardware

Majority of the cars are clean enough and new hardware. Especially those that's going to the Airport (was told there is a rule of max 5 years age for the cars going to Airport). 

Great: ??

None IMHO. 

Tips: Uber Black or Grab Premium or Hotel Car (if you can afford..)

• Malaysia

Ugly: Professionalism & Traffic

Taxis in KL are not that bad actually. Reasonably priced, clean but the drivers can be rude depending on your luck. Rush hour traffic is getting to be close to jakarta/bangkok level of disaster so watch out the schedule, destination. 

Average: Cost, Safety, Cleanliness & Hardware

If there is one market where Uber/Grab changed, then that would be Malaysia. Be it KL or JB or Pengang, the kind of difference Uber/Grab made was enormous. Not only in terms of quality of vehicles, but overall change is great. It's still the same old Perdua or Proton cars with occasional Japanese but the overall quality is much better now. 

Great: Availability & Communication

Taxis are available almost any time of the day. 

Taking Uber in Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport to City

Uber is so popular in US, EU and other developed countries where taking a taxi means you need to extremely lucky to get it first, then prepare a fortune, make sure your sense of smell is dead, and finally be humble to get robbed in the forms of tips. 

In asian countries, taxis are not bad and probably you don't need a uber in places like Korea, Hongkong and Singapore. The raid hailing apps or private car sharing apps like Uber, Grab getting plenty of attention in Indonesia, Malaysia & Thailand however. Reasons are mainly due to lack of discipline and professionalism. Be it faulty meter, taking wrong turns, or not going in that direction or cant understand language etc etc. 

So this is my experience during a recent trip to BKK. I saw the taxi queue which was going through multiple rounds and I tried Uber. There is a fixed price for Uber from Airport to City area and the charges shown was THB 355 including tolls. This is great actually as the traffic conditions are unknown in BKK just as in CGK. 

So the app asked me pickup location which I took the "Level-2, Arrivals, Gate-08". So this is just at the same floor after collecting baggage and you need to get out of the place. There is no strict "arrival pickup" place there but just hang-on there. One small tip is to call the driver and share that you are outside the place. Get a local SIM card and this will be very useful. 

The car came in 4 minutes (GPS/App was showing driver was 4 min away) and the car is in much better shape than any taxi. It was a Mazda-3 and the driver can speak basic english which is again a rarity in bangkok. I don't really know why, but the driver choose not to follow the GPS and made few turns here and there before bringing me to my destination. It was on the express way and its a fixed fare so i didnt really bothered. 

Total time it took was around 40 min and THB 355 including tools was the damage. Compared to regular taxi during non-peak hours or no-traffic hours of  THB200-250+THB55 toll+THB50Airport fee, Uber is much cheaper and most importantly this was charged to my credit card. What was not measurable in $ is the service and the feeling of beating hour long queue and able to converse with the taxi driver in english :) 

Sydney Public Transport

I am in Sydney for a couple of weeks and tried to take the public transport. I don't know why, but whenever I try other public transports my love towards our public transport back home started to go up.

Be it the cleanliness (I know we are not doing great these days), or convenience, or comfort we are way better.  The monthly pass or weekly pass is so damn mixed up you'd end up paying more for this by mixing up the zone system.

The journey time is bad too. Not because of the distance but because of frequency, speed and traffic jams. By the way, understand the Metro bus is 'high frequency' which runs average 15-20 min during peak hours :)

Some tips from my experience is to buy the two way ticket which is relatively cheap. Or they have a pass for tourists for a day with unlimited rides. Get it if you are sure to roam around the city. For longer periods, the myzone ticket is a good bet.

Of course I see the best part of Sydney public transport which is you can get a seat most of the times :)

Singapore taxi fares increased again. Thanks to Comfortdelgro

Source: CNA

I don't deny that Singapore offers one of the best TAXI service at much lower rates compared to London, NY, Sydney. Having said that I'd say we shouldn't compare SG with UK or US but with HK which is similar city in terms of size, population or income status.

SG is far far behind in terms of service levels (availability of a taxi, etc) and much higher rates compared to Hong Kong. I dare say the culprit is the policy which simply drives the monopolistic behavior by ComfortDelGro. If we want to really drive competetion then we should let each taxi companies decide their own fare structure and also allow them to increase/manage their fleet size. For public transport there shouldn't be any COE or addl taxes as one taxi can easily replace 5 or more private vehicles. This helps a lot to manage the congestion and space in SG.
Hopefully the LTA start to 'manage' the taxi services rather than simply allowing them to do as per their whims and wishes.

Ez-link card transaction history

Appstore Link Here

Accidentally found this app for iPhone and this is good info there. This is good to track your transactions and if you suspect you're overcharged you can confirm online without going to the machines @ MRT.

SBS Transit IRIS - iPhone App. What a waste of resources.

I've been using SG Buses but recently realized that the realtime bus information is missing/not accurate. A quick search in Google showed that SBS stopped sharing the bus real time info to 3rd parties. The reason, they've created their own app.

In the first place if the app is not their first attempt. I've used their mobile iris page since their launch. But I opted for other app because of  "bookmarks" feature and ease of use. Now they've "modified" of "updated" their app.
Have a look at iTunes at below link
http://itunes.apple.com/sg/app/sbs-transit-iris/id429899929?mt=8

I think this is the worst app in the market (SG - transport related apps), because it didn't serve the purpose. I am not sure whether this is developed locally/inhouse or just outsourced to some other vendor who doesn't know the public transport mode or how people uses it. They didn't offered Bookmark feature where you can save your fav bus or bus stop. But their Bookmark offers to remember bus no at a specific number and you MUST specify TIME too. That's the weird part. No one takes bus at a specific time every day, forget about keeping an alarm for that.

I guess it went like this.

Exec: Team, we need to show that we're doing some good stuff.
Product folks: How about an APP. After all that is the "in-thing" now.
Exec: But there are 3rd party apps and how to force people to use ours?. Ok I've an idea. First stop giving our feed to 3rd party guys. Then here goes the budget. Get it
Product: Ok. Outsource to some one else. Save 10% budget and write it in to my perf report.
Mgr: How to differentiate? what is the unique stuff?
All: Have a "Reminder" function. No one in the world ever came with a reminder.
All: Great. Let's try to put it under "Innovation" and try to patent it. Release to the public.

Great job done guys.

P.S. I'm sarcastic and very pissed off. I am angry because of the way our big companies are doing "innovation" and treating customers.
I've been using the tools to plan my journey and didn't rely (couldn't afford a car and personally don't like to drive) on a car. Now thanks to SBS, my reliable way of getting bus timings is gone.



One exec, came up with the proposal. Look guys, we need to have an App. First stop giving the feed to 3rd parties