now you is just doing reducto ad absurdum again again. you know what i meant. your is implying we are all, except you and alien, having 'hundreds of debilitating problems' everyday.

Registered for 8 days and already 40 posts! Judging by the writing style, I would venture to guess that our resident troll has resurrected Once again.

taxis here are the worst that I have experienced in a large city. Shanghai drivers are well dressed, polite, and drive in a fairly safe and orderly manner, for a reasonable price considering how expensive Shanghai is. Hangzhou drivers are generally friendly, and will not turn you away if they are marked as available. Having said that I once did run away from one without paying because he was filling the car up and charging everyone 50rmb each. I was willing to pay 50 for him to take me home immediately, but he pissed me off with his time wasting and greed. The cars were also more modern and spacious, but the drivers did sometimes smoke. Chengdu I didn't take many taxis, but they were nice enough. In Beijing I always took the subway.

Its quite interesting though, as me neither have never had problems with Kunming cabs. And there must have been over 1000 journeys. Only once, and just recently, there was a scam, but it was done at Changshui airport by a 黑车 i.e. "black driver" and this shit happens at any airport.

But heres what happened, a classic thing: the driver took me intentionally to wrong airport hotel, where he got comission. This was a fairly clever scam, as apparently theres an area 10km or so from airport where thre are a bunch of shit-hotels that have applied almost similar names to the good ones. So black drivers takes you to them instead, and pick up comission. How many must not have been fooled by this, and particularly if tired.

Maybe one reason that some people have constant problems is they dont speak Chinese. Theres no bragging here about who can speak or who cant, but if you cant speak Chinese and in general suspect the cabdriver, the odds for having problems will (maybe) go tenfold.

When I starting posting here, a friend said that I would encounter two things:

1. I would be accused of being a particular troll.

2. If I said anything good about China or Kunming, I would be personally attacked.

Guess he was right!

Heh

@forlorn: Matt, is that you?

Sorry "Geezer" but you have the wrong person.

@Tonyaod. Writing style; my thought too, especially when provoked.

Sorry nnoble, but yet again, wrong person. This discussion is getting a little off topic, isn't it?