Finally, scammed by a taxi driver

Well, it took me over two months so I guess I'm all right. And even though he was asking for 500 baht for a ≈100 baht journey, I managed to get out of it with 150. Partially because some of the fault might have been put on me by one specific logic. And mostly because I didn't really want to fight. Want to hear how it got to that? Well, I'll tell you anyway.

I took the cab from the worst possible spot - Khao San Road. Well, not exactly, at least I waved a passing cab instead of climbing onboard one of the touts but still it turned out to be a time-consuming and somewhat costly journey. I told the exact address of Siam University, and stressed the Phet kasem road. Thanon Phetkasem, Okay? Phet Kasem 245. Okay? Phet Ka-sem.... All was clear and he curved on to the traffic. First we headed towards a larger highway than I had anticipated but as I had only done the journey twice - both via different routes - I guessed that it might be just one more way to the rather large and long road. Well, when the meter started to close in to the 100 baht marker and we were still driving away from the city on a road furthering from the Phetkasem (there is no standard spelling in English but that's the way it's most often written) I said "Wrong way, Thanon Phetkasem!" and I'm quite sure that the driver understood what I meant even though his vocabulary was limited to maybe five words in English. He offered to make a U-turn but I just repeated the road name which he at least understood. Then he showed forward and to the left and I just grunted angrily at him. I was thinking he is trying to make an extra long route to get some more bahts from a stupid falang. But after the meter was showing 30 km and two hundred something, it occurred to me that he might not actually know where we are going. And shortly afterwards we pulled over and he asked if I had a map. Well, being more prepared to drive a taxi in Bangkok than he was I dug up my Lonely Planet pull-out map of Bangkok and showed him exactly where we left and the road we were supposed to be on. They wondered it for a while and didn't reach any conclusion. So he drove forward to some elephant park to see if there would be someone who spoke English there. By my standards, there wasn't. But they still managed to reach a consensus that he was way off (whoop-de-do, give them a fucking medal) and we headed back. And after another 20 km of driving and 47 minutes of waiting in traffic or reading map and navigating with locals (with the meter running) we were on the right road at least. And eventually when the km meter hit low sixties and over two hours had passed from the beginning, we finally reached our destination, albeit if I hadn't been here before I might have missed that as well. Then the driver started to point at the meter and I almost shout-laughed at him. I was a bit sympathetic for him because he probably just misunderstood me. Thought that I wanted to go to Thanon Phetkasem SOI 245 instead of Thanon Phetkasem 245. (Sois being the side streets of major roads, but there is no soi 245 probably on any street, at least not on this one - something a cab driver might want to know). And in Thailand you most often mean the particular soi as direct addresses are not really popular around here. So there was a faint basis for his misconception although I had given him the exact address and never mentioned anything about any soi.

Eventually I had to call out one professor of ours to translate our obviously different views about the fare and after some arguing he still wanted to get the full fare on the meter (503 baht). The professor suggested just giving him some amount of money and mentioned 200 baht, but I had already in my stubborn Finnish way decided that I won't pay more than 150 for the uncalled-for sight seeing. So I took out a 100 baht note and said "Normal price" and in an inexplicable gesture of compassion drew out a 50 baht note and said "extra". He refused it so I just bluntly started walking away with the money in my hand as I had already arrived in my destination and couldn't really care any less if he accepted the money or not (and because that generally works because some money is better than no money). In my mind I offered to pay him 50% extra for the rather short trip made long by him. Finally he submitted and took the money after my back was just going farther and farther away from him and he realized that it is all he is going to get from me. So generally I just wasted two hours and some energy plus the equivalent of 1 euro in cash. Not too bad I think and the memory of it is well worth the extra money.