Friday, October 14, 2011

Taxi In Jakarta

Have to praise the efficient and relatively cheap taxi service in Jakarta. Used to pick the fleets from BlueBird or Express. Rest of the taxi operators do not provide the consistent standard, judge yourself. BlueBird is slightly more expensive but the cleanliness never failed. I picked once a taxi of an unheard of company. The driver obviously didn’t change the shirt for days, and the car was smelly. It was an unpleasant journey.


The SilverBird with a fleet of Mercedes catered to the higher class customers, at least triple charge. Guarantee comfortable!


Once a while, the driver would like to strike a conversation. With my limited Indonesian I managed to reply a few sentences. Quite fun… a good way to practice my language, mostly touching the social norms, corruptions, my background…


Yesterday I boarded a BlueBird. The driver looks intelligent, not an ordinary driver face. In this 15min drive, I learned that he was an IT engineer, spent 3 yrs in IBM (Sydney), daughter is going to study in Malaysia, he was about to ask for my contact in Malaysia… but forgotten in the last minute.


BlueBird once tried to bid the license in Kuala Lumpur, but failed. Apparently this was a political issue. This company should be a role model for the taxi operators in Malaysia.