A Genuine Taxi Meter
For all my 4 weeks here here, I only took taxi from this one company, Mailinh.Whether it’s to go to office, back to hotel, sightseeing or anywhere I wanted to go in and around Hanoi, Mailinh it is.
The other evening, we were somewhere in downtown Hanoi wanted to go to the Old Quater after dinner. I would say it’s probably 2km away if the taxi takes the furthest route.
Because there were no Mailinh taxis nearby, so we just took another company, Taxi CP since it’s only 2km (at the furthest) away.
After 5 minutes in the taxi, I noticed the meter was already at 3.5km and it’s fare is 38,000 VND. I wondered how far could we get around downtown Hanoi in just 5 minutes?
3.5km? You must be joking.
For the sake of comparison, I pay around 60,000 – 75,000 VND daily to office for a 25-30 minutes, 6-7 km taxi ride.
So I kept quiet until we reached our destination. At the end, it was 75,000 VND for 7.5km. Argued with him but like most of the taxi drivers here, he doesn’t understand a single word of English. Instead, he kept pointing to the meter.
At the end, we ended up with 60,000 VND. Till now, I was not really satisfied as the actual far would be just around 20,000 VND. Next time, remember to make sure that the taxi meter is enclosed in a sealed case. This taxi didn’t have teh sealed case.
Anyway, that’s just another bad taxi experience we all get.