Singapore has some great public transportation. I was talking to a taxi driver just last week and he told me that there are over 30,000 taxis on the road at any given time in Singapore. That is a lot of taxis for an Island 15x24 miles.
With that many taxis you would think that it would not be a problem to get somewhere and usually that is the case, however, if you want to go somewhere in the morning say around 8:45..... good luck.
Today we had a doctors appointment, originally the appointment was at 2:00 this afternoon but the office called and changed it to 9:00 this morning. I knew that getting a taxi might be a problem. We could not take the bus because my son just had surgery on his foot and this time of day your foot will get stepped on on the bus.
I was short on cash becauseI have to pay my grocery bill for the month. The plan was to take a taxi to the doctor, take a taxi home to drop off my son then take a taxi to go and get some cash.
Getting to the doctor was no easy feat. I booked a taxi with my I phone app and it was taking a long time to process this is never a good sign. Sure enough I got a message saying there are no taxis available try back in ten minutes. I then called a different taxi company and after waiting got the same message, there are not taxis available. All of this calling has now taken me 20 minutes; we for sure are going to be late to our appointment.
I decided to call the doctor and just tell them we needed to reschedule because I cannot get a taxi, they said "oh no problem, just come when you can, this happens all the time, we will see you later." Ok so we kept calling and in 15 minutes had a booking confirmation.
As we were waiting for the elevator to go and meet our taxi my phone rang. It was the taxi driver he was wondering where we lived. I told him, then I told him again and then again to which he replied "ok ok ok" and then hung up. Uh oh we are not sure now if the taxi will come or not. Our only choice is to head out into the sun and wait for him. Luckily he did end up coming after about 12 minutes.
As you can imagine we are now really late for our doctor appointment but I don't feel stressed over that because they told us it was ok.
We enter the taxi to find that we were lucky enough to get a "stinky taxi" and a very negative talking aggressive driving taxi driver.
Traffic was horrible so our normal five minute ride took 17 minutes and due to the time of day and traffic our normal $6.00 taxi fare was $12.00.
Whew. All of this just too simply go to the doctor. Some days it can get very frustrating to try and get anything done as nothing seems as simple as it should be.
We really miss the freedom of our car, the ability to go to stores that have what we need when we need it and people who understand you and what you are saying.
So when you get in your car this week and head out to Target be grateful that you will be able to get done what you have set out to do.
We are very grateful for the opportunity to live here in Singapore and it has been a very positive experience for our family but we want to keep this blog real and really there are some frustrating days.
:(
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