Taxi!

So my mom is here for two weeks and we are trying to be in vacation mode/find a place to live/get to know the city.  The hotel is starting to feel like home and the staff like family.  There is one shining girl in particular who is always chirping, “Hello madame,” and screeching “Yes of course, madame!” to every question we ask.  One night we told her we were on our way to dinner to the restaurant Highway 4 (from the Lonely Planet guidebook.)  I had just spent 30 minutes researching which restaurant I wanted to go to while Mona slept, hunched over my laptop uncomfortably as there is no desk at which to write.  So this little chickie asked us where we were going to eat, and when we told her she scrunched up her face remorsefully and said, “I think I know someplace better for you.”  So while I nodded and smiled at her as she called a taxi, I still got into the taxi and gave the address to Highway 4, a restaurant of high reviews.  On the ride, we passed a poppin restaurant filled with people and good vibes.  I recognized the name as another restaurant from the book that I wanted to check out.  For a split second, I wanted to yell, “stop the car.”  But little good that does when the driver doesn’t speak English.  So after about another mile we arrive at Highway 4. We climb the stairs into the restaurant, but something is amiss.  There is no hostess to greet us and the tables are eerily empty.  However, clanging and voices can be heard from the kitchen, as well as voices from upstairs, so we ascend.  It seems as though a private party is going on in a side room, but all other floors are empty.  We get back to the lobby and hop around from foot to foot, wondering what the hell is going on.  As no one ever shows up, we walk back down to the street.

It’s not the busiest street, so after a minute of hoping for a taxi, we start walking toward the next street up.  But then we see a taxi parked on the side of the road with a sleeping body reclined in the driver seat.  At this moment, we have to go around him, but we are sort of stuck next to him as we don’t quite want to step out into traffic zooming around us.  So Mona being Mona, she knocks the window, and sort of puts her hands up in the air, like, “you gonna drive us?” He says yes and motions for us to get in.  Well, we can’t because the seat is totally reclined.  So we just stand there.  So he gets out and opens the door for us.  And we just look at him and look at the seat, and its sort of getting interesting watching how long its going to take him to realize we can’t get in if the seat is  down.  Finally he gets it, I show him the address of the restaurant that we passed one mile prior, and we are off.  The first thing he does is get on his cell phone like he is trying to find out what the address is.  And he is driving slow.  Really really slow.  So we take a left down a fairly narrow street, and we are starting to get into what I can only call the GHET-TO.  Mind you, the restaurant was pretty much a straight shot down a main road.  So we are creeping along past all these stalls of barber shops and ladies with their heads tipped back getting their faces tweezed.  Motorcycles are flying past us, and we are creeping along and the driver is just having himself a nice ole conversation.  At this point Mona is cussing and every other word out of her mouth is “STUPID!”

So honestly, the road keeps getting narrower, but it’s to the point that we do not want to get out of the car in this ghetto.  We come to a Y and he forks right.  At this point we make it ten more feet, and we are damn near lodged in this alley, with motorbikes pulling up in front of us and behind us as well.  At about this point he realizes that he’s gonna have to back up, but there is nowhere to go.  No one will give way.  When he backs up one foot, motorbikes flow past through the crack like a heavy leak.  People are yelling.  He is still on the phone.  He gives no regard to who he may hit, and does come within an inch of a family of three on a bike.  The angry mother pounds the car with her hand and I feel more pounding from the back of the car.  Mona’s cussing starts getting more frequent and louder.  I’m quiet and amused, because what else is there to do in a situation like this?  He looks back at me and says something in a very desperate manner.  Mona tells him he's stupid.  It takes us about fifteen minutes of backing up and going forward inches at a time to get the car turned around.  We are backing into metal signs and crunching up against parked motorcycles.  We get going out of there, but remember how the road is narrow?  Other cars are driving toward us flashing their brights. Our driver just plows ahead and when there is nowhere else to go, he tries to veer up onto the side walk, and unbelievably, he makes enough room for the cars to get around.  But then we are hung up on something and the car is not moving.  I can see a main road a short ways down a side alley, so we throw the meter amount of money at him and fling ourselves from our trap.  We hail a taxi and make it back to the restaurant that I almost yelled “stop” for an hour before.  If only, right?

The ride back to the hotel costs twice as much as it should, like the meter is on fast forward.  By now I know the roads well enough to also know that he is not taking the most direct route.  It can make you feel like a victim and harden your heart toward what you idealized as a wonderful cultural experience.  But then you gotta think, if I was driving a taxi all day and some foreigners jumped in my cab, would I enjoy the ride a bit in order to not work so hard looking for the next pickup?  And don’t chiropractors do that all the time in the insurance game?  Throwing on ice packs, therapies, and modalities which ultimately grow the dollars per ride, thus not having to attract more patients in to make the “feeding the family” quota?  Who is to say that the path back to health won’t be stronger with the extra attention, or the ride back to the hotel more enriching with the extra bit of sightseeing?  And who’s to say it isn’t being taken for a ride.