The Taxi Cabs of Davao City

In Metro Manila most taxi cabs are colored white. There are taxi cabs that are colored yellow and green by one company and white and green by another company. There is also a fleet of taxis that are colored red. But that’s about all the colors that one will see on the taxis in Metro Manila – white, yellow, green and red.

In Davao City, the full spectrum of any imaginable color can be seen on its countless taxis. White, black, grey, silver, yellow, blue, red, orange, pink, aqua, violet – name it, they have it! Some taxis are even named simply by their color like the Blue Taxi or the Orange Taxi. Some have logos like that of credit card companies and are either named Master Cab or Visa Cab.

In Metro Manila, there are taxi units that are either old or whose air-conditioning unit is more of a heater than a cooling machine. Most taxi cabs in Davao City are relatively new. Be assured that these taxi cabs have efficient air-conditioning units. In most cases, one will need a sweater or a jacket to keep warm while inside the car. Seldom can you find an old car used as a taxi. Almost all the taxi cabs have two way radios. A passenger can call up the taxi company and ask to be picked up anywhere in the city. There are even taxi cabs, those which are colored black, that have card readers installed right inside the taxi. A passenger can pay his or her taxi fare by simply swiping a credit or debit card. Another taxi company also has small LCD screens installed inside their units that play videos of infomercials to entertain their passengers.

I remember on my first visit to Davao City in the late 1980’s, the taxi fare was based on a flat rate anywhere in the city proper. There were even tiny cars called Minica, our local version of the mini cooper, which were used as taxi cabs. But there were already taxi units that have two way radios then, and passengers can ask to be picked up anywhere in the city for an additional charge.

Just recently, I took a taxi in Davao City and to my surprise it has a videoke installed inside the car! The small LCD screen was attached to the sun visor in front of the front passenger seat. It comes complete with a microphone and a superb pair of speakers whose sound is very much like that of any KTV sound system. When I took notice of the videoke machine and the microphone, the driver invited me to sing. When I jokingly asked him how much he charges per song, he replied that it was for free. And then I asked him if some passengers do not forget to get off where they were supposed to get off, to which he replied that it actually happened that some passengers forgot their destination. One man even asked the driver to pick up his girlfriend and they enjoyed singing together while riding in his taxi cab.

If in Metro Manila you don’t expect to get a change if the fare was, say for example P80.00 and you gave the driver a hundred peso bill, in Davao City you get the exact change even to the last centavo! I think that’s the best part of riding in a taxi cab in Davao City.