Quote:
Originally Posted by Tho66
However, all d taxi drivers doesn't want to lower less than IDR 50K. When I was about to loss hope, an Ojek driver approached me & offered me IDR 20K. I immediately took his offer & the ride was about 10mins.
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Hi,1st thx for sharing the cost of your trip to Batam from the other post.
Now,you just prompted the same question that i had received via PM regarding taxi fare in Batam.
Base on my experience,there are 2 types of people in Batam who will approach a tourist to offer Taxi service. The 1st are the REAL taxi driver,the 2nd are the taxi touts. I realise that most taxi touts wears uniform,i think they have the Car Park Attendant LOOK and very often wears an uniform. They are usually the one that charge at higher rate,and very often,they are not the one who will drive you from point to point. They are like middle-man,who act like OKT pulling customers to taxi drivers. So in order for them to take a cut of commission from the tourist,they will charge a little higher.
The whole trick for a cheaper ride is to find the REAL taxi driver,the actual real person who will drive you from your current location to your destination. And you bargain with him. As i am still newbie in Batam,i can only make out some small significant of a REAL Taxi driver as below :
1. They are definitely not in uniform.
2. They dress simple.
3. They rarely seat around when waiting for customer to arrive from arrival hall.
4. Some are shy and reluctant to approach tourist.They usually start with a softer approach,and not come at you strongly with their ,"Taxi?" tone. In other word,you probably don't see them keep coming at you again when you reject them once.
I like bargaining ,and i believe it's part of Indonesia's commercial culture to bargain.(sellers often also mark up their price becos of this culture too) For my case,it's not to save the S$1.10 - S$2.20 that matters but more for the fun of it (i like to win in a bargain,hehehe...). Even if i got a bargain of 30k or sometime 40k taxi ride,very often i will still tip them an extra 10k and they seems happy about it. And if i happen to take a 50k taxi ride,i most likely won't tip them further. Not forgetting in Batam,my destination is usually from pt A to pt B,then to pt C. (Harbour Bay to Kaha,wait for 5-10 mins then to Formosa)
In case no one realise,recently taxi touts starts their price at 60k (Harbour Bay),comparing with the usual 50k last month (and days before July 2014). And recently Batam keeps raining....
Hope this will help.