Hourly Car with Driver

What You Are Booking

A car and a driver, held for you from the pickup time to the end of the block. There is no meter and no list of stops on the booking. You give the driver the first address, and after that the day is yours to redraw. Stop for lunch, add a stop, sit in a meeting that overruns by forty minutes: the car is outside either way and your bags stay in the boot.

It is the same fleet and the same drivers as the airport work. Sedan, family SUV or minivan, chosen on capacity the way you would for any other booking. The van comes in two tiers: the older Minivan with bench rows, and the newer VIP Minivan with a reclining seat of its own for every passenger and an aisle between them. A party of eight fits either, so you can upgrade the van for the day for the reclining seats alone. Both are in the rate card below. What changes is what you are paying for. A transfer buys you one journey. A block buys you the hours, and what you do with them is not our business.

Hourly Rates

A block costs the same whether the day starts in Bangkok or in Pattaya. Pick the kind of block, the hours that cover your day and the vehicle that fits the party.

The figure is for the block, not for the distance. A 4-hour morning that covers eight kilometres costs the same as one that covers eighty. Longer blocks cost less per hour than short ones, which is why a 10-hour day within one city is only ฿900 more than a 4-hour one in a sedan.

Run past the hours you booked and each extra hour is ฿400, at the same rate whichever vehicle you picked. You settle that with the driver in cash at the end of the day. It is never folded into the price the booking form quotes you, because that figure is the block you asked for and we would rather it stayed honest.

Where It Runs

A block within Bangkok or within Pattaya starts and ends in the same city. That is not a fence around the city: a Bangkok block can run down to the Eastern Seaboard for the day, the zoo at Si Racha or a plant in Chonburi, and be back in town inside the hours you booked. A Pattaya block works in and around Pattaya, out as far as Jomtien, Naklua and the Sattahip side.

A one-way block starts in one city and ends in the other, with the car yours for the stops along the way. It is sold in the same 4, 6, 8 or 10-hour blocks as a day within one city, at the prices in its own table above. A there-and-back block drives to the other city and returns you to where you started, and is sold as 8 or 10 hours only. Either can start in Bangkok or in Pattaya at the same price.

If you and your bags are simply leaving Bangkok for Pattaya, with no stops to speak of, the fixed fare is cheaper than any one-way block: ฿1,400 in a sedan from a Bangkok city address, against ฿2,600 for a 4-hour one-way block. Book the Bangkok to Pattaya transfer for the journey and book hours for the stops you make once you have arrived.

When a Block Beats a Fixed Fare

Three meetings in one morning, in three parts of Bangkok, with a laptop bag you do not want to carry between them. A temple circuit where you cannot say in advance how long you will want at each one. A golf day where the car sits at the club until you are done. An afternoon of condo viewings with an agent whose schedule slips by half an hour before you have seen the second unit.

The arithmetic usually decides it. Two or three separate point-to-point fares plus the waiting in between will land close to a block, and the block does not care if the third address changes at lunchtime. One journey with a known endpoint is still better served by a fixed fare from the route price list. Anything vaguer than that is what the hours are for.

What the Rate Covers

The car, the driver and the hours. Waiting is included by definition, so there is nothing to watch and nothing that ticks over while you are inside a building. The vehicle is the one you picked, held for you for the whole block rather than dispatched trip by trip.

Expressway tolls and fuel are in the price too, so nothing on the road is yours to pay. Parking is the exception, and on an hourly booking it is the only one. If the day takes you into a mall car park or a hotel forecourt that charges, you settle that with the driver as it comes up. Our fixed route fares do cover the airport car park, but a transfer has one known destination and we know what the parking there costs; a day of hours can end up anywhere, so we leave parking out of the block price rather than guess at it. An entrance fee at a park or a temple is your own ticket and works the same way. Child seats work as they do everywhere else on the site, requested in the notes box and covered on the child seat page.

How to Book a Block

Use the form at the top of this page and choose Hourly. Pick the trip: within Bangkok or Pattaya, one way in either direction, or there and back. Choose the block (a there-and-back trip offers 8 or 10 hours only), then choose the vehicle on capacity: sedan for up to 3, family SUV for 4, minivan for 8. The VIP minivan carries the same 8, and the difference is the seats. The price for the block appears as soon as both are set.

On the contact step there is a notes box. Write down the first address, roughly where you want to get to during the day, and anything with a fixed time attached, such as a tee-off or a table booked for dinner. Every booking is read by hand and we come back to you in writing with the driver and the price before the day. Twelve hours' notice is the minimum and more helps for a full-day block.

Hourly Hire: Frequently Asked Questions