Sometimes they're not trying to scam you
Travelling alone makes you more of a target for scams, especially here in southeast Asia, so after a few months on the road, I was used to this and just assumed most people were trying to scam me in some way. Usually, this was true... but sometimes it wasn't.
One of the first rules to live by out here is to always ask the price of something before you agree to it. Often in the case of transportation, someone will ask you where you are going and then, once you tell them, herd you onto a nearby vehicle without another word. Especially in the case of taxis or tuktuks, this is dangerous, because if you don't know the price beforehand, the driver can make up basically anything they want when you arrive at your destination, and you have no choice but to pay - it's not like you can say no and walk away at that point, like you can before you get in.
I had a minor slip up in Colombo when I asked the price of a bus before I boarded it at the station. The driver told me, but for whatever reason I was in autopilot and did my usual routine when I was trying to haggle the price. I got a very dirty look, and then he looked like he was spitting venom when he started to talk to one of his colleagues nearby about me. When I boarded the bus then got off a few minutes later to try to put my bag in the rear luggage compartment, he full on yelled at me to get back on and sit down. Oops.
I made a much worse mistake in Kandy with a taxi driver. I used an app similar to Uber to get a taxi to my mom's hotel. The streets in the hills of Kandy are a labyrinth and this guy didn't know where he was going. His excuse was that his "map was broken", even though he got to my pick up point just fine. Pretty suspicious. It was a metered taxi, so his lack of knowledge was costing me money and time. Prior to this, I had read that taxi drivers in Kandy do this on purpose to drive up the cost on the meter, so I was getting annoyed that he was probably faking this whole thing and tried to direct him using the map on my phone. After stopping for directions three times and making several wrong turns, we eventually got there, but by that point he had run the meter up an extra 100 rupees ($1.25). The extra money wasn't a big deal, but in my infinite wisdom, I decided I should teach him a lesson so he thought twice before screwing with other tourists. I handed over 100 rupees less than what the fare said, and told him he didn't know where he was going so he shouldn't collect the full fare. He was not impressed, and we ended up causing a big scene at my mom's nice 5 star hotel, before I finally agreed to give him the fare 10 minutes later.
After telling Mom and Linda and their friends what happened, I was pretty smug, thinking that I'd gotten my point across pretty well. At the suggestion of one of the hotel staff, I wrote a complaint about him in the app as part of my rating for him, basically accusing him of pretending to not know where he was going. As we left the lobby area, the same hotel staff member ran up to me, and told me that the driver had just returned to the hotel. He handed me my locker key from my hostel, and said that the driver brought it back for me because I forgot it in the cab. I was pretty speechless. I was basically being an asshole to this guy because I thought he was trying to scam me, and it turns out he probably wasn't at all. And even if he was, he still went through the trouble of bringing back my key when he could have thrown it in a nearby bush and I would have never known. Not to mention, losing that key might have screwed me over for the next day because I was supposed to check out early in the morning before any staff were working at my hostel, and therefore wouldn't have been able to get my valuables from my locker (and probably would have had to pay the hostel for losing the key).
I immediately opened the app back up and wrote a reply to my own complaint asking them to ignore everything it said.
One of the first rules to live by out here is to always ask the price of something before you agree to it. Often in the case of transportation, someone will ask you where you are going and then, once you tell them, herd you onto a nearby vehicle without another word. Especially in the case of taxis or tuktuks, this is dangerous, because if you don't know the price beforehand, the driver can make up basically anything they want when you arrive at your destination, and you have no choice but to pay - it's not like you can say no and walk away at that point, like you can before you get in.
I had a minor slip up in Colombo when I asked the price of a bus before I boarded it at the station. The driver told me, but for whatever reason I was in autopilot and did my usual routine when I was trying to haggle the price. I got a very dirty look, and then he looked like he was spitting venom when he started to talk to one of his colleagues nearby about me. When I boarded the bus then got off a few minutes later to try to put my bag in the rear luggage compartment, he full on yelled at me to get back on and sit down. Oops.
I made a much worse mistake in Kandy with a taxi driver. I used an app similar to Uber to get a taxi to my mom's hotel. The streets in the hills of Kandy are a labyrinth and this guy didn't know where he was going. His excuse was that his "map was broken", even though he got to my pick up point just fine. Pretty suspicious. It was a metered taxi, so his lack of knowledge was costing me money and time. Prior to this, I had read that taxi drivers in Kandy do this on purpose to drive up the cost on the meter, so I was getting annoyed that he was probably faking this whole thing and tried to direct him using the map on my phone. After stopping for directions three times and making several wrong turns, we eventually got there, but by that point he had run the meter up an extra 100 rupees ($1.25). The extra money wasn't a big deal, but in my infinite wisdom, I decided I should teach him a lesson so he thought twice before screwing with other tourists. I handed over 100 rupees less than what the fare said, and told him he didn't know where he was going so he shouldn't collect the full fare. He was not impressed, and we ended up causing a big scene at my mom's nice 5 star hotel, before I finally agreed to give him the fare 10 minutes later.
After telling Mom and Linda and their friends what happened, I was pretty smug, thinking that I'd gotten my point across pretty well. At the suggestion of one of the hotel staff, I wrote a complaint about him in the app as part of my rating for him, basically accusing him of pretending to not know where he was going. As we left the lobby area, the same hotel staff member ran up to me, and told me that the driver had just returned to the hotel. He handed me my locker key from my hostel, and said that the driver brought it back for me because I forgot it in the cab. I was pretty speechless. I was basically being an asshole to this guy because I thought he was trying to scam me, and it turns out he probably wasn't at all. And even if he was, he still went through the trouble of bringing back my key when he could have thrown it in a nearby bush and I would have never known. Not to mention, losing that key might have screwed me over for the next day because I was supposed to check out early in the morning before any staff were working at my hostel, and therefore wouldn't have been able to get my valuables from my locker (and probably would have had to pay the hostel for losing the key).
I immediately opened the app back up and wrote a reply to my own complaint asking them to ignore everything it said.
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