kung fu cab

I had the weirdest, most disconcerting experience I've had since I got here in a cab last night.

Ireland and I spent the weekend in Dubai so we could go to watch a polo match (more on that later). We called a cab last night when we were ready to leave Dubai. We had stopped by Ireland's friend's place to drop something off. Normally the cabs come within 5 minutes of a call. Our cab didn't show up. Ireland called the cab service back and they said the driver had tried to ring her but she hadn't answered our phone. We knew this was BS for numerous reasons, the most important being we were sitting on a balcony eating strawberries and the balcony overlooked the only entrance gate to the apartment complex and we didn't see a taxi come in.

They sent another driver. He was a young kid with greasy curls. And he was rude. Ireland had to yell at him to get him to listen to her directions to her apartment (this is actually a common thing with male drivers/female passengers here). After Ireland got out I asked him to take me to the merid. To put things in perspective, there's even a merid sign on the highway showing which exit to take to get there. There isn't a person in the world who doesn't know where the merid is (especially since it's right next to the abu dhabi mall - it's like not being able to find the washington monument).

This kid claimed he didn't know where to go. I was like fine, and started to give him directions. He ignored me, and drove down a side street, where there was a man smoking next to his car. The cabbie rolled down his window and said something in urdu. I only picked up a few words because he was talking so fast. Then he started backing up. I was like "dude, what are you doing?" and he said "this man is going to the meridien so I will follow him". I told him I could give him directions but he held his hand up like "stop talking blondie".

I don't know why, but I started to get a bad feeling. I was trying to remember if the smoking man's car had driven past us while I was helping Ireland get her bag out. And, I remembered the cabbie talking on the phone. Normally they do that when they don't know where they are going, and they get directions. But obviously this kid was talking to someone who wasn't giving him directions.

And then some strange man shows up on the side of the road to take us to the merid.

We got close to the merid, and turned on electra street. The merid is where electra dead ends. You have to go either right or left. Left goes to the merid (there are signs) and right goes out to the highway. You have to drive at least 3 miles before you can turn around.

I was watching closely as we headed towards the dead end. At the last second, the car we were following went right. The taxi driver cut a car off to follow. I was sitting in the back seat between the two front seats watching what happened. I was like "no, left" and the driver said "he goes right" and I said "go LEFT". The taxi driver ignored me. We were getting closer and closer to the dead end. So I stood up in the back seat and put my face right next to the driver's face and yelled "F*ing go LEFT f*ing NOW!" Then I put my hand out like I was going to grab the wheel.

The driver made a sudden turn left. We almost hit a concrete barrier, which would have been a bummer for me since I was now standing up in the back seat leaning in to the front seat. And normally I would never use a bad word in public because you can get arrested. The fact that the driver said nothing to me about my language was a little disconcerting.

We pulled into the merid parking lot and the driver drove right by the entrance and started trying to take a one way side road that paralleled the road the car we had been following was on. I was like "what the F are you DOING???? Stop the car!" He stopped the car and said he couldn't see where the entrance to the merid was (yeah, those neon signs and the fact that it's the most lit up thing in the tourist area make me wonder how anyone could miss the entrance). I told him to let me get my stuff out and I looked at the meter to see how much money I owed him.

The screen that's supposed to have his name and taxi number was blank.

It could be that he was a new kid and they didn't have him officially registered as a driver. And he was trying to rip me off (not uncommon) by driving me 6 miles out of my way. But the fact that his phone had been blinking with a call since we split off from the other car made me wonder what was going on since the man we were following was some stranger he "met" on a side street.

Anyway, I'm going to be a lot more careful when I get in a cab. This pak I work with thinks I was almost kidnapped. I was like "Dude, if anyone tries to kidnap me I'll tell them I know kung fu. And then I'll say I'm going to chop socky them if they don't take me where I want to go." He processed that for a minute and said "I don't know what kung fu is." I was like "Karate." And he said "If anyone's trying to kidnap you, say karate instead of kung fu so they understand you."

Noted and remembered.