The pa ong chia was basically an illegal taxi service. (The Hokkien term literally means “bully car”. No, not a vehicle driven by a road rage bully but more a pirate taxi service driven by someone trying hard to make a living. The cars were usually very old. (Read on and you will soon realise that there was a reason for using very old cars for this purpose.) All of them ran on diesel because it was very cheap at that time.

Such a service, though illegal, was extremely popular with the public because the fares were very cheap. Passengers paid only 20 cents a trip. (Compare that with today’s taxi fares – I think it is about $2.50 for the first 200 metres travelled or so.) However, there was a catch – passengers had to share the car with any strangers picked up along the way. Those could well be the very first cab sharing days, a move necessitated by the difficult economic circumstances then. That was certainly long before any smart aleck taxi CEO even thought of the idea of sharing cabs.

In the November 2007 issue of Lifestyle (an NTUC monthly magazine), there is an article titled “Pirates And Sons”. It is about an interview with one Mr Seet Lip Phuang, 78, who was a pa ong chia driver in the 1960s. Mr Seet became an NTUC Comfort taxi driver in 1971 and only retired 8 years ago. In the article, he reminisces about his days as a pa ong chia driver.

Despite charging ridiculously low fares, Mr Seet could still make some money and raise a family of 5 children. That was possible mainly because the car cost him only $200 (to buy, not to rent) and diesel cost only 50 cents a gallon (about 3.8 litres). Of course, the cost of living then was very low too. Although $200 was probably not considered as a meagre sum of money to Mr Seet then, it was still a comparatively cheap price to pay for a car. It was a deliberate move as much as a strategic one to buy a cheap car to be used as a pa ong chia. I remember a family friend’s son who drove a pa ong chia in the 1960s too. He was caught more than once by the authorities. Each time, his car was confiscated. (In Hokkien, it was called cheong kong.) Later, he became an SBS driver.

You can read Mr Seet’s story here.

(Also read another Victor’s article in yesterday.sg about the notorious Pa Ong chia here.)