April 23: Taxi!

Yell, "Taxi!", in different parts of the world and what turns up will be completely different. No surprise, right? In New York city, a small yellow van will appear, in London, a traditional London cab, in Amsterdam, a Tesla, in Lisbon, a cream coloured sedan, usually a Mercedes and in........well, let's just move on.

Toyota, from 1995 until 2017, built a very conservative sedan, called the Comfort.......

This car was built to be used by the taxi trade in only three places, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, so when we yelled, "Taxi!", on our recent visit to Hong Kong, a Comfort is what appeared. Actually it didn't just "appear" since Comforts were everywhere, as you can see by this picture......

Now Singapore was a different matter, as there was not a Comfort to be seen anywhere, so I guess the appeal of these Toyotas to the wealthy taxi riding folks of Singapore was short lived.

The safety of a sedan body surrounding one's self, should never be taken for granted. Moving on to Malaysia and the Philippines brought a whole new meaning to the word, "taxi". What passed for people movers in these areas might have passed for death traps in many other parts of this planet. Does the term, go with the flow, come to mind? Some examples........

Note the mask on this driver

Not to miss out on the appeal of this open air taxi ride, my wife and I threw caution (and our lives) to the wind, as we hopped on board one of these minimalist taxis for an unexpected island tour.......

Classic or what? And to think we tipped our driver for the experience!

Now least you think I'm using some extreme examples, the more upscale rides were only slightly better (read safer), like this one in Manila..........

Coming full circle back to what passes for a cab in our world, we should embrace the dirty Camrys that ferry folks around Toronto. I, for one, will never complain again (although that Toyota Comfort was really ok).

Or an even better idea, when in Hong Kong, use the hotel's Rolls-Royce courtesy cars.........

Until next time......