Cabbies

Read the above from thestar.com this morning. This is something that really irks me back in KL. I cannot understand how a civilized country like ours can have such uncivilized taxi drivers.

I know many times, I have been complaining about the cheena here and talking about how uncivilized they can be, the spitting, the quarrels, the loud talking etc. But Malaysians who have been the Shanghai will experience one thing which we could never experience back in Malaysia – civilized and honest cabbies.

Let me list down how civilized cabbies in Shanghai are:

• In Shanghai, when we enter a taxi, they will greet us and ask us our destination.
• When we tell them our destination, their first question to us is which route do we want to us to get there – this is to ensure that they are using the route of our preference.
• If we enter the taxi near traffic lights, they will not raise the taxi meter until we pass the junction – they do not waste our money with the idle time at the traffic lights before the journey begins.
• If we complain that he took the wrong way, the taxi driver will pull down the meter before we reach the destination. Meaning, he do not charge us for the rest of the journey.
  

Friends in Malaysia, do you get to experience that with our cabbies back at home?

Of course, having said all the above, there are always a percentage of cabbies here that are rude. But so far, honestly, I have not met a lot of these in my past 2 and a half years stay. But one sure negative point about the cabbies here is the way they drive scares the hell out of me!