About Thailand Taxis

I’m Jon Ferris. I came to Bangkok for a job that was meant to last eighteen months, and the city kept me for ten years. Buying a car here never once made sense to me, so I got around every other way there is: the pink and green meter taxis, the orange-vested motorbike lads at the mouth of my soi, the Skytrain when the roads locked solid, the red trucks up in Chiang Mai that stop wherever you thump the roof, and more airport runs at unspeakable hours than any sane person would sign up for.

That first year I made more or less every mistake on offer. A tuk-tuk driver carried me off to a gem shop instead of the Grand Palace and called it a favour. I stood arguing with a tout at the wrong end of the airport while the proper taxi queue ticked along one floor beneath me. I climbed into a songthaew heading the opposite way and paid for the pleasure. Bit by bit the whole thing stopped looking like a wall of confusion and started reading like a system, and I noticed that almost none of it is written down anywhere a visitor would actually stumble on it.

What this site covers

Thailand Taxis is where I put it in order. Not the fares and timetables that go stale inside a month, but how each way of getting around genuinely works, how to use it without the beginner’s blunders, and what to do when the obvious option has just collapsed at the worst possible moment. So you will find:

• How the metered taxis, ride apps and airport queues really work, touts and all
• The Skytrain, the underground and the airport train, and when to skip the road entirely
• Songthaews, motorbike taxis and tuk-tuks, and how to use each without being taken for a ride
• The intercity trains, the long-distance buses and the island ferries, and how the tickets fit together

What I don’t do is pretend everything is fine. Thailand has one of the worst road-safety records anywhere, and I say so plainly wherever it matters.

How the driver-side detail gets checked

I have ridden in these vehicles for a decade, but I have never once driven one for a living, and there is a great deal only the person behind the glass can see. So Wichai Thongchai, who has driven Bangkok’s taxis and ride apps for more than twenty years, reads the guides from the driver’s seat. He checks whether a claim about surcharges, tolls, meter rules, airport queues or how the apps dispatch a car actually matches what happens in the cab. Where a well-meant tip would only annoy a driver or simply fall flat, he says so. He speaks for no taxi cooperative or app company, and nothing here is an advertisement for any of them.

Get in touch

If a fare has drifted, a tip has stopped working, or I have got something plain wrong, I would like to hear it. The Contact page reaches me. Do read the Travel Disclaimer as well: this is know-how and company for the road, not advice pitched at your particular trip.