Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Taking Uber in Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport to City

Uber is so popular in US, EU and other developed countries where taking a taxi means you need to extremely lucky to get it first, then prepare a fortune, make sure your sense of smell is dead, and finally be humble to get robbed in the forms of tips. 

In asian countries, taxis are not bad and probably you don't need a uber in places like Korea, Hongkong and Singapore. The raid hailing apps or private car sharing apps like Uber, Grab getting plenty of attention in Indonesia, Malaysia & Thailand however. Reasons are mainly due to lack of discipline and professionalism. Be it faulty meter, taking wrong turns, or not going in that direction or cant understand language etc etc. 

So this is my experience during a recent trip to BKK. I saw the taxi queue which was going through multiple rounds and I tried Uber. There is a fixed price for Uber from Airport to City area and the charges shown was THB 355 including tolls. This is great actually as the traffic conditions are unknown in BKK just as in CGK. 

So the app asked me pickup location which I took the "Level-2, Arrivals, Gate-08". So this is just at the same floor after collecting baggage and you need to get out of the place. There is no strict "arrival pickup" place there but just hang-on there. One small tip is to call the driver and share that you are outside the place. Get a local SIM card and this will be very useful. 

The car came in 4 minutes (GPS/App was showing driver was 4 min away) and the car is in much better shape than any taxi. It was a Mazda-3 and the driver can speak basic english which is again a rarity in bangkok. I don't really know why, but the driver choose not to follow the GPS and made few turns here and there before bringing me to my destination. It was on the express way and its a fixed fare so i didnt really bothered. 

Total time it took was around 40 min and THB 355 including tools was the damage. Compared to regular taxi during non-peak hours or no-traffic hours of  THB200-250+THB55 toll+THB50Airport fee, Uber is much cheaper and most importantly this was charged to my credit card. What was not measurable in $ is the service and the feeling of beating hour long queue and able to converse with the taxi driver in english :) 




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