“It’s That Building, Right There…”
Greg and I had 10 hours to kill in Taipei on our flight. To kill the time, we decided to go visit the current tallest building in the world, the Taipei 101.
Finding an incredibly tall building turned out to be too much for our cabbie. Greg and I became curious as we got farther and farther away from the Taipei 101. Turns out that our cabbie loves his GPS system a little too much. We were well beyond the entire (massive) city before he realized that he was in the middle of the woods and began to apologize to us. He got off on the next ramp and then preceded to get right back on the same exact road because his GPS told him to.
By the time we got back into town, he had already doubled our trip’s necessary distance. He then felt that the advice he got from his GPS had served him better than we did and decided to drive into town in the opposite direction of the most obvious landmark in the world.
To end this story, we got there. Eventually. I’ve heard of people going overboard with their blind trust in a GPS device, but jeepers, this was enough to make me really really mad.
UPDATE: I’m telling you, people trust these GPS gizmo’s too much, even in Seattle.
5 Responses to ““It’s That Building, Right There…””
Bill Snowden Says:
March 24th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
I suppose I should withhold judgement until I know what he charged you, but the simplest explanation for this one is that he was taking you for the proverbial ride. It is very hard to believe a Taipei cabbie would be unable to find a district home to city hall, several shopping malls, and the world’s tallest building. Of course, he may have been brand new in town, but you’d still think he’d be able to manage simply aiming the car east. Next time, take the subway ;-P.
Chris Brummel Says:
March 24th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Yeah, he charged us full price. BUT, I honestly believe that it wasn’t an act (I was very skeptically watching him to see if I got the feeling of the “ring-around”). He seemed genuinely apologetic, just not sorry enough to avoid taking the foreigner’s money.
I’ve never ruled it out that he’s a better actor than I’m giving him credit for, but I honestly think he zoned out while listening for his GPS.
Peter H. Says:
March 24th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Hi Chris,
First of all, found your site via Gruber’s site. Anyway, something funny to add to your cabbie story in Taiwan.
It’s funny as the name of that cabbie sounds like (off by a small tone) a Chinese word/phrase, “離譜” (not sure if you can see it that)…it is pronounced “li-pu” which funny enough basically means “ridiculous”, “beyond reasonable limits”.
BTW, the cabbies here in Taiwan are generally very good with direction especially in the city (and even the outskirts of the city in my experience as well). If it is their fault of not finding the place that you wanted to go in a reasonable amount of distance/time, more often than not, they will not charge you for the extra part. You probably gotten a rare bad apple. The only bad experiences I have with cabbies are that they will drive a bit crazy sometimes and will stop at the worse place and time in order to pick up a customer.
Daniel Says:
March 25th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Speaking of his registration.. it looks like it expired in Nov, 1998?
I believe the Chinese chars in front mean “valid until”..
I’m not a penny-pincher by any means, but I would’ve paid half-price..
Peter H. Says:
March 26th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Daniel: Actually the license expires in Nov. 2009 as that is in Minguo years (Establishment of ROC in 1912) which is quite still broadly used in Taiwan. I just add 11 years to get A.D years.
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