Round The World Tickets
Taxi drivers can be dishonest
When you are on a RTW trip there is no way to fully research each place you’ll be landing, so you have to kind of make some things up as you go, and take your chances. If you have the opportunity to do one small piece of research before you get to any destination, particularly if it’s a second or third world country, you should research airport transportation. If you don’t, there is a good chance you will be consistently getting ripped off and/or getting a really bad first impression of that place.
This might be one of the most useful and least obvious tips I’ve been able to write about. The fact is, that taxi drivers and many others who work at airports are constantly on the look out for suckers and people they can take advantage of. Sure, it occasionally happens in New York City or Paris as well, but in many parts of the world it happens all day every day. Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia all have many airports where any foreigner arriving on their own has a big target on their back.
Simply put, if you land in a not-well-off country, and you aren’t sure how you’ll get to the city center and how much that should cost, you will be potential prey for these con artists. They’ll find you in the baggage claim area, and they’ll be really helpful. They’ll tell you the bus service you read about in Lonely Planet no longer goes, but they’ll take you in their taxi for only a little more. The next thing you know, the charming cabby who finally convinced you this was the way to go will hand you off to another driver he works with, who will likely not speak English, and who will demand a much higher fare once you’ve left the airport. The other guy promised you the great deal, and this guy can’t even understand what you are talking about.
There are also places where an official taxi stand out in front of the airport works in an organized queue, but other cabbies will offer you better deals if you go directly with them. Will they honor that deal? Who knows? The taxi business at hundreds of airports around the world is so hyper competitive, that packs of the drivers and sales agents for the drivers will work together to make you think the public bus no longer stops there, or that the normal fare is really twice what your guidebook says.
One of the really complicated parts of all of this is, some of them truly are being helpful, so it’s easy to let down your guard and start trusting strangers at airports. But the next thing you know, your ride that was quoted as 30 in the local currency is suddenly US$30, and you are being blamed for the misunderstanding. You end up paying it, and then feeling like you suddenly hate this new city, just because some predatory cab driver took advantage of you.
So the bottom line is, trust no one, and try to do some research on the transportation options before you arrive. Even in places where the people are all lovely and gentle, there tends to be groups of conmen working together at their airports.
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