For those of you who have played the game Crazy Taxi, this was one night of taxi driving that left me happy to arrive at the train station in one piece.  It also made me sad that I do not know where my Sega Dreamcast went.

I saw the taxi and thought this looks like the one I took at Guang Gu where in the end the guy admitted that he was not a real taxi because he does not have a meter.  It turns out that you can buy the glowing/lit taxi lights on the Chinese version of ebay/amazon, called tao bao but the meters are not for sale because the taxi companies usually confiscate them.

Anyhow, someone from our group flagged the guy down and we sat in the cab and we started looking for the meter.  When we asked the guy about the meter, he pointed to where the clutch would be and I realized that we were indeed sitting in a “black” or illegal cab.  I thought well we are already late and we need to get to the train station.  As long as we get there in one piece then we should be fine.

Unfortunately, on the way to the train station I thought we were playing a game of crazy taxi.  I heard someone tell the drive that we were trying to catch a train and then the driver swerved onto oncoming traffic.  So picture us packed in the cab and playing chicken with a truck in a dead on collision.  We then swerve across four lanes of traffic and get back into the correct lane.  This is when I decided that I need to look at the glass half full – so basically I told everyone in the cab that the driver was just trying to get us to the train on time.

After the beeping there was a gas break in the middle of our ride to the train station.  There was this constant peeping and I saw a yellow light on the dash and assumed it was a check engine light.  But I was wrong.  It was the lack of gas light.  The guy drove us to a gas station to fuel up before we finished the trip.  This took care of the beeping and added a few minutes to the stressful trip.

After gassing up the car we once again swerved into traffic and almost got T-ed by an oncoming taxi.  However, we made it to the rest of the way without incident until he refused to drop us off at the train station.  He wanted to leave us at the on ramp going to the train station.  Eventually he reneged and drove us to the train station parking lot.  Because he had no meter and did not want to name a price we gave him what we thought was fair and then ran for the train.

Current Mood: Trip started out relaxing, was stressful in the middle, ended relatively relaxing if you do not include the taxi ride.