I experienced the worst taxi ride of my life last week.
Honestly, it was an incredibly awkward ride with some instances that provided me cause for worry. I was picked up at the airport and was meant to be taken downtown to the hotel I had a room booked at. It should have been a pretty straight-forward, straightforward experience… Unfortunately the driver’s English was really broken. I was able to communicate the address to him just fine, but once my friend and I got on our way he turned the boombox on harshly loud to a channel I could not understand due to the language. I was willing to bear with that but what I couldn’t stand was how high he was running the air conditioning system in the car. Vents in the back of the automobile were blowing freezing air from the air conditioning system straight on me and it was unbearably cold. The vents in the back didn’t have the same covers as the ones in the front, so I couldn’t close them on my end, so I tried asking the driver if the air conditioning system could be turned down. He either couldn’t hear me over the boombox or didn’t understand, or maybe he simply didn’t care, but whatever the case I was ignored and the arctic blast from the air conditioning system never wavered… What made things even worse is that he answered his phone in the middle of the trip! I was genuinely uncomfortable and didn’t feel safe with that at all. I was cheerful when my friend and I finally arrived at the hotel. When I went to spend money him I provided exact change from what the toll said I owed, and he provided me a rather rotten look for the lack of a tip, although he didn’t deserve one after that.