What’s behind our love-hate relationship with Bangkok’s cabs. By Kevalin Athayu and Sonia Boonchanasukit, illustrations  by Sunchai Kuttikrut.

We’ve all had bad taxi experiences, and it’s easy to compile a list of complaints: they’re noisy, warm and smelly; they’re driven by incompetents (it’s sad when you have a cabbie roll down his window to ask another cabbie where the Grand Palace is) and crooks who use rigged meters or follow very “special” itineraries. Like Stuart Emmrich wrote in the New York Times, “A good rule of thumb for visiting Bangkok might be this: if you can’t get there by boat or by train, don’t go.” Nonetheless, taxis in Bangkok are cheap and plentiful, the opposite of most capitals. And as easy as it is to bitch and moan about cabbies, the fact is their incompetence has a lot to do with how long they’ve been ignored and neglected.

Rules of the Road

The clearest sign that cabbies have got a bum deal is the fact that the recent increase in fares is the first of its kind in over a decade. “It’s like working at a job for 15 years with no pay raise, who would have the tolerance and patience to stick to something like that?” says Hudsadin Eamsherangkul, Deputy Managing Director of Howa International Co., Ltd, the company that runs and finances the all-green taxis. “Think about buses. Bus fares have gone from B2 to B8 whereas taxi fares have been stationed at B35 for over 10 years, during which living expenses have gone up enormously. How do you expect these men to survive?”

Despite all the hype over the recent fare increase, passengers pay on average, 12% more than what they used to. The B35 “flag” (base fare) now only covers the first kilometer (before it was 2km). After that you pay B5-8.5 per kilometer.

Another reason why Bangkok cabs are nowhere near perfect is that there are just too many. We have 90,000 registered taxis and out of that 60,000 are in operation. Unlike New York city where getting a “hack” license (taxi driver license) involves a driving course, medical checkups, language proficiency tests and a number of processing fees, Bangkok regulations only require you to show up with your regular drivers’ license, pay up and drive off. First of all, would be taxi drivers need to pick from the dozen different taxi companies on the streets, (each one represented by a different color.) You contact your company (or color) of choice and they’ll provide you with a car, which can come fully equipped with a meter and a taxi radio. In cases where you buy the car, you don’t need to buy a taxi license plate; you just get your car registered by paying the vehicle registration fee like any other ordinary vehicle. So when the process is as easy as 1,2,3 and there isn’t much red tape involved, you have an overflow of vacant, clueless, colorful cabs roaming about the city.

Colored Service

While it’s rather charming to travel streets filled with over a dozen different taxis, Bangkok officials didn’t just come up with that stunt to liven up the already-lively city.

Bangkok actually started off with two different taxis: the green-yellow and the red-blue. Soon, the city branched off to include other single colored taxis starting with Howa’s all-green. Without stating the obvious, different companies equal different business practices which, in turn, mean varying standards of taxi. Some companies, like Howa, place their taxis in certain “pick up points.” So, most of the time, you’ll find it hard to just hail a green taxi, you have to either visit a pick up point, or call for one (see Pick Me Up this page). 

At the end of the day, cabs are either privately owned or rented out on a daily basis. On average, drivers who rent out their cabs do so for 12-hour shifts either in the morning (4am-4pm) or in the evening (4pm-4am). Rental charges are between B550-650 a day, depending on the company, and they pay about B380-400 on gas, pushing their costs up to anywhere between B630-1,050. The 50-satang per kilometer seems like a pretty measly increase now doesn’t it?

Crabby Cabbies

 Bangkok cabbies are younger, more educated and aren’t necessarily farmers from Isarn anymore, according to Hudsadin’s father and Managing Director of Howa, Dejo Eamsherangkul. He says more and more people from the city are starting to drive taxis; a lot of them retirees. Why? No, it’s not because Bangkok cabbies earn US$1,000 a week like their New York counterparts, but a lot of it is because at the end of the day, it is a profession that allows you to measure your earnings right away. “Instead of buying a normal car, you can buy a taxi and drive it to work. On your way home, you can pick up a passenger or two, drive around a bit to add some extra earnings to your salary. You drive for X amount of hours, you make X amount of trips and you make X amount of money. You get rewarded for the amount of work you do on a daily basis,” says Dejo. Being a taxi driver in the current economical situation is not easy, though. With rocketing fuel prices and the overall increase in prices of everyday commodities and necessities, like food, many taxi drivers make just enough money to get by on a daily basis and have zero savings. Most of them can’t afford to take a day off, like Somsak Yimlamai, a taxi driver who has been at the job for over 10 years. Somsak drives his taxi  for 12-hours a day, seven days a week and is regularly a victim of abuse: “I have had instances where I have taken passengers to their destination only for them to throw a B100 note at my face when the meter clearly read B180. Then they just say, ‘Sorry, no money.’ What can I do? Sometimes, it’s worse. There are times when I get to a final destination, and the passenger just gets out and says they have no cash. I end up getting nothing.”

It seems that even the recent fare increase has done little to ease the daily niggles of Somsak’s profession. He shares a similar view to many other taxi drivers. “When it comes to short distances within the city, it’s fine, we end up making more money. But when it comes to longer routes, we lose money. I don’t understand how that works, but that’s a fact.”

According to Dejo, the government has failed to recognize a very important fact about long-distance journeys. “If you’re wondering why taxis refuse to go long distances, it’s mainly because they might make money on the way there, but what about on the way back. Who’s going to guarantee them passengers? It’s fair to say that the government has failed to realize that that’s a big problem when it comes to taxi drivers taking passengers out of the city center.”

The biggest problem in Thailand is that there is no established process to determine how and when meter fares should be changed. Outside of Thailand, most countries usually have a commission to check up on gas prices and make appropriate fare changes.

The fare increase was supposed to have benefited the taxi drivers, but it seems it has managed to add on to their already existing list of problems. “It starts with replacing the meter, I had to dish out another B1,200 to get it replaced,” says Somsak. It’s not as simple as it sounds. Besides being an additional cost to driver, there are only a handful of places that offer meter-replacement-services. “Not all taxis in Bangkok have had their meters replaced,” says Hudsadin. “That’s because, the parts are imported and every replaced-meter has to undergo a test to make sure it works properly. So the whole process requires time and money. It means it will be a couple more months before all taxis in Bangkok are running on the new meters.”

So lets say the cabbies do get their meters changed. There is another recurring problem that could potentially keep them from making up lost money and that is the unfortunate prevelance of “mafia gangs” that run certain taxi circles. Mafia taxis at the airport once made huge headlines but the AOT seems to have taken control of the situation. However, you don’t see that happening anywhere around the city as of yet. Notice Silom Road at night: there’s a police baracade meant to block vacant taxis from cramping up Silom Road, but word on the street is that a little “protection” can get you in anyway. Or, if you walk out of Siam Paragon after a late night movie, you’ll find these guys all lined up ready to take tourists for a ride. Good luck getting them to switch on their meter.

But besides meter issues, whiny passengers and the horrible economy, taxi drivers are also faced with much more tragic situations, like the Aug 3 incident which involved the disturbed video game-obsessed teenage boy who, in imitation of Grand Theft Auto, hailed a taxi and killed the 54-year-old by stabbing him repeatedly. Ask most people and they would claim that this was simply a freak incident. If you look at the statistics, taxi drivers suffer far more abuse than passengers. In fact, the ratio of incidents reported stands at an astounding eight drivers on the receiving end compared to just one passenger.

A Brighter Future?

Taken as a whole, it all seems to paint a rather dark picture for the state of our city’s taxis. But there is hope for a better future. In fact, the future is being formed now, especially among certain taxi companies, determined to raise Bangkok taxi standards quickly. “We’re trying to raise the bar of Bangkok taxis by providing our drivers with training: this could be in the form of language, like learning the basics of English, or in the form of services provided, like knowing how to perform CPR or first aid. We are also trying to bring elements like a more uniform look where our drivers will all wear company shirts and display badges around their necks,” says Hudsadin.

However, there are no talks of possible “taxi driver general knowledge” tests. We know that many world capitals enforce those—fair to say that we certainly need them enforced here. Just the most important sights, the biggest malls and the most popular hotels will do. As far as the actual cars are concerned, in the future, besides being able to swipe your American Express in a cab, companies are also looking to equip our taxis with full-on tracking and GPS systems. That way when your paranoid mom needs to find out your exact location, all she needs to do is ring up the call center. Plus some of them will also be connected to the 191 police network so they can help report on crimes and suspicious activity. Cabs and cops working together? That would surely be something special on the streets of Bangkok.