At the cost of not being mugged, beaten, stabbed, raped, or killed.
It&#x27;s not uncommon in many parts of the world for cab drivers to supplement their income by staging robberies or worse, they&#x27;ll usually take a &quot;short cut&quot; which means they&#x27;ll drive trough some alley in which some guy will come and rob both you and your driver, but in reality only you are being robbed.<p>I&#x27;ve been to a few places in Asia where the policy was simple - you do not hail cabs.<p>Cabs are handled by either the hotel or the office building you are in. You ask for the cab, they ask you where you are going and order it for you.<p>When the cab arrives some one from reception will go check it, they check the driver&#x27;s ID, and if everything is ok they&#x27;ll write down the time, the cab number, and your details and let you board the cab.
If you are not in a place that can hail a cab for you, you usually call the hotel and they&#x27;ll either arrange it for you or tell you a safe place near by where you can get a reliable cab from.
And as far as the driver checks go on more than one occasion the guy from the reception told us to wait for another cab because he &quot;had a bad feeling&quot; which was usually he either did not know the driver, the driver that showed up wasn&#x27;t the one the cab company said would come, or something just smelled fishy to him.