Yes the mass transit system is good and reliable, but sometimes you just want to get to a place like the Jurong Bird Park or the Zoo without changing from MRT to bus. Just take a taxi. The driver of our shuttle from the airport had instructed us to avoid ‘Mercedes, Chrysler and the big London taxis’ and had hinted they would rip us off. Well, you pay for the ride according to the distance you travel and there is a base fee that differs and can be read on the side of the car so you know what you are getting into. All our taxi fares turned out to be exactly like advertised and there were no nasty surprises.
You can wait at designated pickup spots or you can just flag a taxi that is not occupied. Those taxi rides are comparatively cheap. And they are a great way to get into a conversation about the real Singapore experience. One Chinese taxi driver implied that we should not try to learn Malay since ‘noone speaks or understands it, not even my Malay friend’. He told us to learn Mandarin Chinese and did not want to hear about our doubts. He had a German brother in law and we hope we did manage to increase the understanding of our different cultures. In each and every taxi driver we managed to instigate pure envy when we told them about German beer prizes (taxes on alcoholic beverages in Singapore are quite high).
