davethegrinch.net

Dave says:

The Asians have a particular way of going about their bus business and it isn’t the way we go about ours. Riding the bus anywhere in Asia appears at first to be a step back in time; the lack of humanity and civility being almost too much to bare. Then, after enough bum-numbing, vomit inducing, deafening and death defying miles you can’t help but wonder at the total humanity of it all. It’s a humanity that is lacking in the west. We are cut of from our fellow humans by our iPods and desire to just get to where we’re going without interacting with or catching a cold from the guy sitting next to us. Take away the iPod and make the common cold the least of the ailments you have to worry about and the bus becomes the connection between you and your world with a chance to chat to your neighbours in the process.

For those who’ve forgotten our previous explanations or didn’t read them in the first place, here’s the lowdown on how buses in this part of the world work. Firstly, you need find the damn bus. There are generally two places in town from where one is almost, but not definitely, able to catch a bus: the bus stations. Yes, two of them. One for local buses and one for long distance. What actually constitutes local versus long distance appears to be the actual size of bus. Short, shitty ones for the short shitty trips and longer crappy ones for the longer and infinitely more crappy journeys. Now, it is entirely possible to go to some destinations from either station and the trick is know where the best buses depart from, trip length or cost is not important as I will now describe.

Some trips may look short on paper but if they go through many villages they will get longer. Not because of traffic but because of passengers. You see, the bus stops are wherever the bus stops and that is usually wherever the people either wish to alight or board. That could be, and often is, about 50m from where the bus last pulled over. There’s no ‘next stop’ button on the bus and rarely a ‘bus stop’ sign on the street. The trick seems to be to wave at an oncoming bus, if it stops, great, otherwise just stand there wondering why it didn’t pull over for you. Handy if you want the bus, infuriating if you’re on the bus. Sooner or later, 1km has involved 10 stops. Once you get going again, it will be time to stop – this time for fuel. Everyone will get off the bus and head for the less than sanitary bathrooms. Sometimes, the bathroom is right outside the bus or even against it. Five minutes later, the horn honks and everyone clambers back on board for the two minute trip around the corner to the local bus station, where, once again, everyone will alight in order to purchase whatever stinky and wholly unsuitable for bus travel food they can find. Soup in a plastic bag is NOT a good travel snack. The bus may sit at this small town station for a while. Not to give everyone a chance for nourishment but to try and drum up more business. Unlike our world, there is no contract awarded to one bus company, here as many bus companies as there are buses can compete for routes and customers. Shouting and cajoling occur as people are lured onto the idling or moving bus. Once all are aboard, including geese, grain and other rural necessities, it’s time to pull away. But, you may not get very far, if the bus isn’t full to bursting point, the bus may well crawl along the road as the conductor shouts out its destination trying to persuade anyone to climb aboard who vaguely thought they might like to go where the bus is ultimately heading.

Once the driver can get a clear shot at the road it’s time for the in-flight entertainment. It is always, without fail, music video karaoke. Loud, obnoxious and uniform. Regardless of the song, at least a couple of people on-board will know it, or think they do, and will start singing. Often the song isn’t even in the native language of the people and subtitles appear to help everyone out. We have been fortunate to crack the secret of why everyone in Asia can sing any song. The English subtitles that appeared on one bus trip were in fact, phonetic. We could ‘latra lee gay trom pooh’ with the rest of the bus – a brotherhood of man at long last. The songs are so insipid and repetitive, it takes only two minutes to learn the tune and three minutes for it to drive you insane. Any bus that advertises DVD is to be avoided except they all have it so what’s the point. If you’re lucky enough to have a malfunctioning video system, don’t worry because someone on the bus is bound to turn on their cell phone and blast not only crappy music but crappy quality crappy music at you. It doesn’t matter if the passengers are 8 or 80, they all love this terrible music and they all know it. Even the driver loves it too. AHHHHH!

Where was I? Oh yes, cost. The bus is almost always cheap. Pennies in some cases. But there’s a good chance you’ll die on one so the savings you make can be offset nicely against your repatriation costs. Sometimes the bus costs more going back the same route you came out. Why, I’m not sure. Perhaps your survival on the way out has boosted the moxie of the driver. Speaking of which, drivers are often only drivers because they are sitting in the front seat, no other qualification appears to be necessary. If the driver’s fatality rate is low then he gets the easy routes otherwise the tricky, mountainous routes go to those less experienced. Seniority has its advantages.

Our Asian friends overcome the stress of bus travel by immediately falling asleep. Often they are asleep before the bus has even left the station and make a point of both fully reclining their seat before there is anyone sitting behind them and taking up both seats with bags and smelly food. Even assigned seating offers false hope as they often cannot or choose not to read their ticket. This holds true of airplanes as well but fortunately the flight attendants know all their numbers and sort out conflicts with ruthless efficiency. On the subject of flights, many of our Asian friends think the plane is a bus and they can get up a pee whenever they want (i.e. whilst we’re landing) and that seat belts are there to please the airline, not aid in their safety and that rushing onto the plane guarantees them a better seat and rushing off the plane makes their luggage appear quicker. The other day, the girl in the window seat tried to climb over Sarah and I as we were waiting for the jetway to come to the plane as if we were holding up her exit. We both snapped “Wait!” – she immediately understood.

Back to buses – travel sickness seems to be a big problem in this part of the globe. Nearly every bus journey involves someone puking and plastic bags are often handed out before the bus even leaves the station. Blocking the aisle is a plastic bucket that is for trash, puke, pooh and phlegm. Although often the phlegm just finds its way from the back of the throat directly to the floor.

The most important part of the bus is its horn. It tells everyone it’s time to go and tells the other road users that this bus is coming through and if your bus/truck/car/bike/cow/goat/stray dog/small child/grandmother is in the way then it won’t be in about five seconds. It could well be that the extra air pressure caused by the constant sounding of the horn actually propels the bus along faster although that has not been scientifically proven. What has, however, is that air conditioning uses more fuel thereby ensuring that the a/c is turned on only when all are suffering equally. This is usually after a couple of people have puked. That retching sound is the driver’s cue to turn on the air which does a lovely job of circulating the smell of vomit around the bus. Once you are shivering, its time to turn the air off again.

It all sounds so horrendous and, for the most part, it is. We have paid our travelling dues. We have gathered enough stories to keep everyone entertained at Friday night happy hour for years to come and we are too old and too jaded to believe we are somehow ‘finding ourselves’ by enduring the same hardship as the locals. We generally favor trains to buses and planes to trains. The purists will argue that flying is not the way to experience the local culture but I disagree. In China and many of the Asian nations we’ve visited, air travel is cheap and the ever expanding middle classes are using it to get around. We’ve been the only westerners on a couple of flights with the rest of the plane being as Chinese as the the people on the buses and trains. But, there’s something quite magical about taking the bus. You get to witness the country in great detail. For the locals, this can be the only way to get around and so not only do you see the land close up, you see them close up too. Often they will smile at you, sometimes stare, someone will always try to help even though the only word you both have in common is ‘hello’. Most of the time, however, they leave you alone and just for a moment you stop being a tourist and are just another human among the billions, on their way to some place to do whatever it is you need to do.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 12:47 pm and is filed under China, Global Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.