Maybe It’s Me?

The last time I went travelling there was an “incident” with a taxi driver.

Some of you may already be familiar with the story, but for those of you who aren’t, here’s a quick synopsis…

I was in Shanghai, China and I took a taxi from the airport to my hotel downtown.

The taxi driver tried to scam me and was nearly successful.

When I finally realized what he was doing, I got angry and made him give me my money back which should have been the end of the story but unfortunately it wasn’t. Instead, I may have, sort of, more-or-less threatened him so he gave me more money back and I got a free taxi ride and quite possibly a small profit.

Up until recently, I thought this was just a random incident.

I mean, back home in Toronto I don’t use taxis a lot but when I do, I never have any problems. They always get me to where I want to go for a fair price and more often than not, they seem like nice people.

Hell – last winter a cab driver gave me some very useful medical advice.

I had a cold and he told me the best cure is to drink green tea with real lemon and real ginger in it. So I did and it worked.

He also told me to eat lots of mutton, but I just took his word on that one.

However, in Jakarta, Indonesia, I was involved in another incident with a taxi.

And this time, Robyn was along for the ride… uh, sorry – no pun intended.

We’re taking the train east to Yogyakarta and our departure time is 8:00am. The taxi ride to the train station downtown takes 1-1 ½ hours and we want to have plenty of time to get there, so we leave Lynda & Ian’s place around 6:00am.

As with a lot of major cities, taxi drivers in Jakarta are notorious for trying to take advantage of tourists, but there is one company that has a pretty solid reputation…

Bluebird Taxi.

That’s what Lynda & Ian told us, that’s what people we met along the way told us and that’s what various guidebooks told us. We’d already used them a couple of times during our stay and found them to be trustworthy and fair, so we get the concierge to call one for us.

Two minutes later it arrives and we tell him where we need to go – Gambir Train Station.

We say it in both Indonesian and English but just to be sure, we show him our train ticket, which is written in Indonesian, has all of our details and conveniently, has a picture of a train on it.

He smiles, nods and we take off.

We get on the freeway and start cruising along at a good pace. There’s no traffic and we’re happy because it’s 6:15am and we’re now ahead of schedule, so even if we hit rush hour, we’ll still be okay.

Half an hour later, we approach a tollbooth, at which point our taxi driver asks the tollbooth operator for directions.

That’s right. He asks for directions.

And the tollbooth operator points back in the direction from which we just came, meaning we’ve been driving the wrong way for 30 minutes.

It’s now 6:45am, there’s almost 70,000Rp on the meter and we’re farther away than when we started.

Let’s just say, Robyn and I are not happy.

We try to remain calm and chalk it up to a miscommunication. After all, we don’t speak Indonesian and his English is very basic.

Once again we tell him Gambir Train Station, we show him the train ticket, emphasizing the departure time of 8:00am, and then we pull out our guidebook and point it out to him on the map.

And again, he looks like he understands.

Although we’re now a little stressed out, we still have over an hour to get there – it’ll be close, but we can still make it.

Besides, Indonesia isn’t known for following a tight schedule – our 8:00am departure time will probably be closer to 8:30am.

The cab driver turns the car around and we start heading back.

We are now cruising in the right direction and seem to be making good time. There’s still no traffic and our cabbie seems intent on making up for his mistake.

After about 20 minutes, we approach what Robyn and I believe to be our turn-off.

And then, we go right past it.

Hmm.

We don’t know whether to say anything quite yet because Jakarta is a difficult city to get your bearings in and we’re not a 100% sure of where we are. He may know a better route, so we decide to wait a little bit before we interject.

We continue driving and approach the turn-off for a major landmark that we know to be next door to the train station.

Ah, I see… we were mistaken. He knows a shortcut after all!

Shame on us for questioning the judgment of a professional taxi driver!

Yes, I do believe this morning, I will have an order of crow to go with my steamed rice.

And then we drive right past it.

And continue driving right past it to the next turn-off which takes us directly to the ports.

The harbour.

The place where they keep the boats, which is significantly different than the place where they keep the trains.

Our cab driver has no idea where to go!

We frantically point in the opposite direction and say “Gambir Train Station”.

We show him our train ticket.

We show him our guidebook with the city map.

We even make “choo-choo” sounds and try to draw a picture of a train!

And yet, he continues to look at us and point to the freightliners and cargo ships ahead in the distance.

Robyn is ready to hop over the backseat and strangle him, which means for once, I’m the calm and rational one!

I point to a street vendor on the side of the road and we pull over. I show him our ticket and tell him “Gambir Station”. He points back in the direction from which we came – a direction we’re now all too familiar with – and explains to our cab driver where we want to go. A light finally goes off in his head and he sheepishly turns around, acknowledges his error and winces at the daggers Robyn’s staring at him.

It’s now 7:45am, the bill is around 180,000Rp and we’re nowhere close to being where we have to be.

I thank the vendor, who smiles apologetically at us. Our driver turns the car around and I make him switch off the meter. We debate about getting out of the cab, but at this point it’s become a “devil you know” situation and we still have a faint hope we can make our train.

Then we hit the traffic.

And we’re not talking wimpy, car meets streetcar “Toronto traffic”.

We’re talking full-blown, car meets truck meets bus meets motor-scooter meets motor-scooter meets motor-scooter meets motor-scooter meets bicycle packed with 20 massive bundles of recycled cardboard “Jakarta traffic”.

A tense quiet replaces the smog that fills the air, as we finally realize we’re not going to make our train. We continue driving because now we just want to get there and figure out a Plan B.

About 25 minutes later – around 8:15am – the driver just randomly turns the meter back on, without even acknowledging us. We’re too shocked and angry to even argue. Robyn just glares at him while I look up how to say “I’m going to open a can of whoop-ass on you” in Indonesian.

At 8:30am, with the new meter being at 18,000Rp, we finally arrive. We grab our bags, I give the guy 20,000Rp and as far as we’re concerned, our time with him is over.

We run to the front gate and find out that in Indonesia, the trains are actually the only thing that run on time. The front gate officer apologizes and directs us to Customer Service. We thank him and as we head to the office, who should we run into but the cab driver, who’s now insisting we pay him the other 180,000Rp.

We ignore him and keep walking, and he follows us.

He tries to get a police officer involved, but the police officer ignores him too, which makes us smile.

The Customer Service Manager is a really nice man, who thankfully speaks some English. As well, there’s another customer there – Liza – who also speaks English very well and she offers to translate. Phrasebooks or not, our Indonesian is so limited we wouldn’t be able to get our situation across otherwise.

We tell him what happened and he’s very sympathetic. He explains that unfortunately for us, they don’t issue refunds on train tickets. However, he can give us a free ride to the city of Semarang on a train that leaves at 10am. From there it’s a 3 hour bus ride south to Yogyakarta. The only catch is that the train is officially sold out, so we’ll have to sit in the dining car for 8 hours.

It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.

We thank him for his help, take a deep breath and turn around to deal with our cabbie, who’s been sitting behind us the whole time.

Many phrases are going through our brains, with “BUGGER OFF” being at the top of the list.*

*NOTE: Replace the word “BUGGER” with a four-letter word that begins with an “F” and ends with an “UCK”.

However, Liza, who had been great in dealing with the train company, is now talking to the cab driver, trying to negotiate a deal. It’s not exactly what we want to do but seeing as how we probably wouldn’t have gotten the free ride without her, we agree to let her.

Besides, how often in life do you get to negotiate your own bad luck?

We try explaining how he’s already cost us 440,000Rp in train tickets and that we still have to pay another 100,000Rp to catch a bus to Yogyakarta, but he doesn’t see what the big deal is. As far as he’s concerned, he got us to the train station and we’re about to get on a train, so in his mind he’s fulfilled his part of the deal.

And that’s when we realize something…

He’s an idiot.

Seriously.

He’s just a very big idiot and even without the language barrier, he probably wouldn’t have comprehended what we were saying.

I mean, what self-respecting taxi driver doesn't know where the train station is?

Eventually, we agree to give him another 80,000Rp.

It sucks but at this point we’re so tired of fighting, we just want the whole situation to be over. He still has to pay 100,000Rp or so in meter fares out of his own pocket, so I’m pretty sure we ruined his day too!

We thank Liza and make our way up to the train.

The rest of the adventure is great… we meet some nice, helpful people on the train who tell us where to catch the bus down to Yogyakarta and spend the next 8 hours enjoying the beautiful Java countryside.

So if you’re ever in Jakarta and you need to take a taxi, I suggest you bring a map.