Worst Bus Ride Ever

I should have known it was a bad omen when I arrived at the bus terminal in Da Nang, Vietnam, about 10 minutes after the bus was supposed to leave and there were about 2 people, 20 sacks of rice, 20 pairs of chicken, all on the road bundled together in twos, and a couple pigs just standing around waiting for something to happen. First I thought that the bus had left already and I tried asking the vietnamese guy if I was too late for the 7 o’clock bus.

All he did was smile at me and nod. So I was too late, I asked him. More nodding. Very suspicious nodding. “Can I buy one of your pigs?” I asked him. More nodding and loads more smiles.

I managed to find my bus ticket and pointed at it, then at the bus and then showed him the ticket. More nodding, this time followed by pointing his finger at a bus a bit further down the station. So I wasn’t late after all.

2 hours later I wish I were late. I was tired and hungry, but finally something seemed to happen. An older guy, who seemed to be the driver and 2 other younger men came out of a building and carried a table of some kind with them. This table was put in front of the bus and then they all knelt down. It was an altar, with a little Buddha on it. They then stuck some incense into the tires and kept on praying for another 20 minutes. It just felt so hopeless. Did we really need Buddha’s protection to survive the long journey to Savannaketh in Laos?

Eventually a few other passengers trundled in. Among them was a canadian couple. They came straight over to me. I felt better; at least I would have company on this death bus. Then it went very fast. First the entire luggage was packed into the bus, then the animals, then the asians and then the three westerners. Luckily there was so much space on the bus that I could stretch out over two seats. Now I saw the logic behind the loading pattern as well. You can transport a lot more when you rip the seats out and replace them with stuff you have to take along with you anyways, like bags, rice sacks, backpacks and so on. At that point I started wondering where exactly on the bus my backpack had ended up, after one of the bus boys had taken it.

We all tried to have a snooze, the animals and the humans, but the bloody pigs were on steroids or something, far too much energy. Do pigs have a mating season, I wondered.

What started out as an easy first hour ended abruptly, when we got 20 more passengers at some little town. From then on there were more by the minute. When I was sure that not one more mouse had some space on the bus there were still people joining our odyssey.

By now we were 7 hours into our journey, it was 4 in the morning and I started to drift off. Suddenly the bus stoped, as did the chattering, the lights got switched out and everybody went to sleep. It wasn’t until the next morning, when I realized that we had arrived at the border to Laos, which only opened at 7 for the public.

When the driver woke us in the morning I was knackered. As were the rest, including the livestock. We passed through customs without problems and on we went. We had decided against changing money at the border, as the rate was horrendously expensive. We regretted that when we stopped for breakfast an hour later. We must have looked devastated. The nice smiling man from last evening came over and gave us a plate of chicken and rice, which we shared between us.

I found out from the driver that we only needed another 5 hours. No problem, I thought. Get to Savannaketh, get a room, then a shower and finally a cold beer. Exactly in that order. An hour later the whole bus started to make noises. To compensate for the noise, we just speeded up, which was better anyway. The suspension works a lot better when you skim from one pothole to the next instead of driving through them.

A woman started yelling first, then the bloody chicken joined in and suddenly the whole bus was screaming at the driver, waving their hands in the air. Before the bus had even completely stopped there were people jumping through the windows. Because there was so much luggage on the floor it was really hard getting out the front door. 2 minutes later me, Carly and James were alone in the bus. We didn’t have a clue what the hell was going on. Then one of the metal bars supporting the roof just collapsed next to us. We jumped…

We waited out there in the hot air for about an hour. Everybody was waiting to see if the roof would support the weight of the luggage on top of it or not. Only after an hour did someone start taking the thing s off the roof and into the bus. Then again the normal procedure. First the animals, then the asians and then us. Bugger!!! All that was left was a little space on top of stacks of sacks filled with rice, fruit and other stuff. We had about half a meter to the roof. Now, I’m not that tall, maybe 1,80, but I only had about 1,50m to ’stretch’ myself out. It was pure agony. After a while you can’t feel your legs anymore, because you can’t move them. I would have rubbed them with my hands, but I couldn’t reach them and they started to fall asleep as well. One hour just melted into the next. Carly was crying next to me. I couldn’t think of anything to say to her, there simply wasn’t anything we could do, not even get up and out of the bus, we were so caged in. We tried black humour to get over it, but we kind of were in our own worlds that day. The 5 hours turned into 10. The whole journey lasted for 28 hours. Next time I want to travel that way, I fly.

In Savannaketh we found a nice little guesthouse, had a shower, I found out that someone had squashed my shower gel, my toothpaste and my sunscreen and managed to distribute everything evenly over all my clothes. What a day. I borrowed some clothes from James. Then we went out and bought beer. Lots of it. And cigarettes. We drank it all and smoked it all. Now that the horror trip was over we could se the journey for what it is. A brilliant travellers tale of suffering. It’s hard to top that, but don’t we all think that we have the most gruesome bus story there is? Tell me yours…

Tags: Agoraphobia, Brilliant Tale, Bus, Da Nang, Gruesome, Laos, Savannaketh, Vietnam

Most of the time Boris can be found swimming with the big fish or chilling in his hammock in some far-away region of earth. Once he chewed some betel nut...

Posted in My Pick, Travelogues on 1 September 2006 | Comments Feed

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