After a recent Friday night trip to Petaling Jaya, I've decided to change the wording of all my favorite jokes so that instead of lawyers, Kuala Lumpur cab drivers are the foil. For example:

Q. What do you have when you have 10,000 Kuala Lumpur cab drivers at the bottom of the Straits of Melaka?

A. A good start.

Here's another:

The Pope and a Kuala Lumpur cab driver die at the exact same moment, thus meeting St. Peter at the Pearly gates at the same time. St. Peter shows them into heaven, and to their respective residences. The cab driver's heavenly abode was the first stop, a huge mansion with tennis courts, swimming pool, and manicured gardens.

Shortly thereafter, St. Peter dropped the Pope off at his new house, a humble one-storey bungalow with a modest tulip garden.

"I don't mean to sound ungrateful, sir," said the Pope to St. Peter, "but has there been some kind of mistake? I am, after all, the Pope, whereas the man that arrived with me was merely a cab driver."

"With all due respect, sir," answered St. Peter, "We've got 57 popes up here, but that guy was the first cab driver ever."

Though this seems a bit harsh, it is better than the alternative, which is retiring to my apartment and designing a super-deadly toxin that specifically targets cab drivers. It's a coping mechanism that keeps me sane. But make no mistake, there is a special circle of hell for cheating cab drivers.

My way or the highway

One of the most annoying traits of the average KL cab driver is that they don't have to take you where you want to go. They can simply refuse to provide a service. This amounts to, don't laugh, a form of geographical discrimination. In other cases they may quote prices greatly exceeding what a trip on the meter would cost. A Malaysian friend of mine explained a trick to me, though. "I don't ask him if he will take me. I just get in the cab and tell him where I am going. And I insist that he use the meter." What if the cabbie refuses to use the meter, I asked. "In that case I inform him that I won't pay unless he goes on the meter. And I refuse to get out of the cab." My friend is fairly big and intimidating, so I have no doubt this tactic works for him. But there is no reprieve for the rest of us.

In their defense though, I have met a number of honest and friendly drivers. One even explained to me the reason why some of his colleagues try to shave the heads of the Orang Putihs. He said that they obviously had more money, and since the price of petrol has increased but the rate has stayed the same for the fares, driving the cab has become less profitable. Part of me (a very, very small part) sympathizes with this plight. But the other part wants to smash in the teeth of the next cabbie that tries to charge me 20 ringgits to go two kilometers. I can understand price differentials for museums, national parks, and other attractions, but don't try to cheat me and then explain that you're only trying to feed your family.

I wanted to hear the other side of the story, so I tried to find a cab driver to interview. Since my Malay is still very elementary, I needed to find one that spoke English fairly well. And I needed to find one that didn't try to take me to Bangsar via Shah Alam. After a few enraging journeys, I found my man. I learned a great deal about cab-drivery from Mr. Chu, my driver on a recent trip to Bangsar. I asked him why everyone hated cab drivers. He told me basically that one bad apple spoiled the bunch. He explained to me that people frequently didn't know where they were going and blamed the cab driver, when the passenger himself didn't know the location of some obscure lorong someplace. Fair enough.

Bad apples

He also explained that cab drivers often had to pay a corrupt middleman for a license, which is unfortunate. According to Mr. Chu, businessmen with connections in the government acquire licenses unfairly, which they then sell at enormous profit to drivers. He said cab drivers often work 16-hour days, seven days a week, and routinely wait in line for up to an hour to refill their natural gas tanks at the few stations that carry NG. He also told me that a common scheme of unscrupulous drivers was to refuse to run on the meter so they could quote higher fares to unsuspecting marks. He told me that Puduraya bus station was where this happened the most.

Apparently the Muzium Negara is another favorite trolling ground for unscrupulous cabbies. My wife and I recently made a trip to look at the big bugs, and on the way out we were confronted by a cabbie who wanted to charge us RM20 for a ride back to Bukit Bintang, a ride that on the meter costs around RM5. I was so close to decking the guy that I could almost feel his jawbone on my knuckles. "I could go to Klang in a limousine for 20 ringgit!" I screamed. After some choice words, we walked on down the street. After two more cabbies tried to charge us RM10, we finally found an honest driver who took us home on the meter.

I had a nice conversation with the honest cabbie, who informed me that he had only recently started driving a cab, after he was forced out of business selling VCDs on Petaling Street. The only honest driver I could find all day was a copyright pirate by trade. Imagine the irony. I learned all about the VCD business from him, but that's for another article.

On a serious note, though, something has to be done about the cheating rogues that hang out at Muzium Negara, trying to shave the heads of hapless tourists. It's not good for anyone, not the tourists, not the museum, and not for the efforts of Malaysia to bring in tourists. I mean, a trip to the showcase of Malaysia's heritage, history, and culture (and 25 foot crocodile) should not be marred by two-bit con-men.

I reported the guy to the security guard, who told me to walk to the KTM station. Then he went back to reading about Sharifah Aini in the Daily Mail. It became apparent to me that no help was imminent through official channels. So if anyone is interested in forming a torch-wielding vigilante mob to deal with the rascals, contact me at the address attached to this column.

But alas, I have to face reality, and the reality is that this problem is not going to go away anytime soon. So I leave you with the following nugget of wisdom:

Do you know how to save a drowning Kuala Lumpur cab driver?

Take your foot off his head.

KEITH BETTINGER is a Fulbright Scholar living in Kuala Lumpur. He also writes for Asia Times. He's always game for an adventure. Contact him at kisu1492@hotmail.com .