Catching Cabs In Asia! Not Today Blog 14

Ride-hailing services like Uber and Grab are huge in South East Asia, despite communities trying to ban transport apps to force tourists to use unofficial local taxis.

Getting Around In Jakarta In 2017

When I first moved to Jakarta in 2017, taxi drivers didn’t use sat navs or navigation apps, even though they had smartphones. I would find myself constantly in Blue Birds where the driver had to stop and ask for directions.

Uber, Go-Jek and Grab were on the rise. But too often, drivers could not find my pickup spot, did not know how to read their in-app navigation or asked me to figure out the directions myself. Tourists and expats were tricked by “fake” taxis not using meters or making detours to increase fares.

Arriving In Paradise

Until recently, landing at Bali airport has been a huge headache. Official Bluebird taxis were only allowed to drop off passengers at the airport, not pick up. Like in most airports in Asia, you would walk out of the airport, tired from your flight, overwhelmed by the heat and all you hear are dodgy people shouting “TAXI, TAXI, TAXI, MISTER TAXI, MISTER TAXI” at you. Stress.

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For the past five years, my go-to hack to not get annoyed in airports has been to walk out with headphones in, pretending not to hear. It used to work much better when headphones were still visible and had cables though.

Online Taxis In 2020

Transportation in Indonesia has improved rapidly over the past years. Google Maps has caught on. Ride-hailing options are reliable and still super cheap. Apps like Go-Jek and Grab also referred to as “Super Apps” or one-stop apps, offer so much more than only transportation.

You can send packages within a 20km radius and can track the driver from the point of pick up to the destination. You can order cleaning services, massages, food, medications and the list goes on.

Go-Jek is Indonesia’s first billion-dollar start-up. There are 3860 average Go-Jek trips per minute and still, Go-Jek achieves profitability in all sectors except transportation.

However, the last few months have been very stressful for drivers. Quarantine has caused many people to suffer losses. But whilst demand for taxis went down, food deliveries increased. Many people are still doing all their grocery shopping through online services.

The service sector in Asia is a bomb. I believe that their natural hospitality and kindness provides a foundation to find ways to make life easier for others.

Why Not Today

My only problem with using taxis is the waiting time of usually five to ten minutes until they are in front of my door. Instead of accepting the waiting time, I bought myself a car. In Jakarta. My friends called me crazy for driving in this traffic. They weren’t wrong.

Read here how I was recently involved in a car crash in Jakarta.

My car has been getting repaired for the past six weeks and I am learning patience again. Waiting five minutes for your ride isn’t bad. We tend to be impatient in life. Most of you have never even been waiting in line at the cashier in a supermarket in Jakarta! Haha.

Why not today think about an area in your life where you could be more patient. Try and accept that things might not be as fast as you would like. Your personal stress might not speed things up. You will get it done eventually.

D

Thank you Mon!!!