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…