For the past month, each and every time Rory and I have moved location we have had the pleasure of bus travel. Bus travel in south east Asia tends to come in two main forms, the A/C mini bus or the A/C coach. The first hurdle you have to overcome when arranging travel is to work out which of these modes of transport you will be taking. The advertisement board will read "Chiang Mai to Bangkok - A/C Bus - BT180" and without a working knowledge of advanced interrogation skills or a medieval torture rack to hand, you have little chance of discovering the type of vehicle you will be issued until it arrives to collect you.
We have experienced both versions of the A/C bus several times and they always share one thing in common, The A/C does not mean it will be pleasantly air conditioned. When I think of the term air conditioning, firstly I think of my friend Glenn Pitcher as he's practically a doctor in the trade, secondly some sort of device that circulates air around an enclosed space providing a form of thermal comfort. This could not be further from the case. So far we have endured 6 hours of a mini bus hot enough to bake bread and shivered on a coach for over 150km in temperatures roughly equal to that of a frozen food aisle in a supermarket. The second scenario would have been slightly more bearable if I wasn't wearing flip-flops, shorts and a vest, it was 30 degrees Celsius outside when I embarked and didn't feel a jumper and long johns were entirely necessary.
The other thing they share in common is that for each ticket you purchase, you are guaranteed to change vehicles at least 35 times. For example, you could be picked up by a taxi from your hotel and taken to a an entirely new travel agents premises 3 streets away, from here you are joined buy 10 other backpackers and shipped to a bus depot on the edge of the city. Here you jump on a coach with 50 others to travel to the ferry. At the port you are provided with a small colourful sticker for a ticket and told to jump on the boat. After a trip across the sea a man with the eyes of a hawk spots your sticker and shepherds you onto the roof of a pickup truck. You are then taken to a local car wash where you meet you next driver and together with 65 others you are crammed into a minibus, made to travel 100km in conditions that a channel crossing illegal immigrant would not be pleased with and dropped off about 2 miles short to your final destination, requiring one last Taxi before you finally arrive. That's a fairly typical journey.
The reason for this post is that last nights journey really took the biscuit. The overnight bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, a ten hour journey which we were promised would be on a coach. After the mandatory swapping of vehicles to begin with, we arrived at the bus station and discovered the bus was already three quarters full. By the time we managed to get our bags sorted and fill in the paper work we were the last two people to be seated. We were left with the choice of 2 seats, one next to a young, reasonably attractive female, with a reclining chair, arm rest and ample space or the middle seat on the back row. Knowing that Rory is more selective about his sleeping conditions than the princess and the pea, I let him have the comfy seat and I walked to the back row. As I got closer I could see that I was sharing the back 5 seats with only 2 others, so things were looking up. My new company consisted of the two grumpiest old German females I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. Within 10 second of me sitting down they had passed various cooked meats to each other, through me, over 200 times, all without so much as a "Danke". Although I was sat in the middle of them, it wasn't too bad as as it meant I had practically 2 seats, mine and a half of the spare seat either side. This didn't last long, for some reason that I still can't comprehend, they decide that as there was space on the seats they would move there bags from the floor, where they were perfectly happy, to the little spare room available. In doing so they now occupied the three seats to the right which, left me and one of the frauleins the two remaining seats to the left. Its still making me angry now. To make the situation worse the man in front decided to recline his chair until he was practically horizontal. This left his head uncomfortably close to my groin, so close that under other circumstances I would have pressed charges. So there I was in between the German versions of Tweedle dumb and Tweedle dee, in a seating arrangement that filled 95% of my field of view with the loose perm of the man in front. Needless to say, I got little sleep. I attempted to read my book but the strip lighting stopped 3 yards short on the back of the bus, meaning that to see the small font I had to tilt the book 45 degrees toward the light with the books bottom edge towards my chin and curl over it as if I was about to use it as a sick bag. I didnt get an awful lot of reading done either. Trying to remain positive I told myself "Only 8 hours to go"
After a short while the lady next to me decided it was bed time. She removed a travel pillow from her bag, like the ones you get on posh planes, and started puffing away. Once it was fully inflated she popped it round her neck and within 10 minutes she was asleep. After experimenting with various positions for comfort she finally found a winner and much to my delight it included me. She was now facing sideways looking towards the window, had her left knee raised next to her on the seat, her right knee outstretched beneath the chair in front and was using my shoulder as a back rest. At that moment in time I would have given almost anything to be in the possession of a pin. The only thing keeping me mildly amused was the reoccurring mental image of the pillow slowly deflating and her wakening to find me deep in a fake sleep. Luckily for her there were no pins in my vicinity, or anything even remotely acute for that matter, so she remained in her dreamy coma until we finally arrived in Bangkok. In my haste to get out of the vehicle I left my newly acquired trilby on the back seat, I had developed a cold overnight and was suffering severely from the effects of sleep deprivation. I don't know how Cliff Richard does it. I can honestly say I've not had 1 seconds worth of "Fun and Laughter" on a bus since I began this little holiday.
