Highway to Hell!
Friday, July 14th, 2006When me and Andy purchased our tickets and signed up for the 10 hour overnight bus trip I don’t think either one of us knew how bad it could actually be. I had taken an overnight bus from Phuket to Bangkok that was about 16 hours of hell but compared to this ride it was a first class flight. We also figured that to get from Saigon to Hanoi for $15, a distance that is roughly over 1200 miles and being able to stop at a few cities in between, , we couldn’t complain about much. We waited anxiously at the travel office for the bus to pick us up. Slightly just after 8 P.M. the box on wheels came to a screeching halt out front and we both looked at each other and without saying a word were thinking the same thing…
“This is gonna be good.”
Of course the bus was already packed with passengers which gave us no choice of seating. On these buses the engines are in the rear which means the last few rows, especially the last one, are raised. The last row of the bus has 5 seats. Andy walked down the aisle and proceeded to sit to his left and take the window. I filed in behind him and another guy sat in the middle seat and was able to stretch his legs out straight ahead of him into the aisle. We pulled away and proceeded to make a few more stops to pick up a few more people. We counted a handful of empty seats and knew that the two remaining seats in our aisle would most definitely be taken. As more people piled on the bus and less seats became available it was apparent that people would be sitting in the aisle, which happened.
Me and Andy proceeded to laugh and pretend as if it was ok. Finnally a mom a baby and a granny with one eye took the remaining seats in our row. In front of them were the rest of her kids, three of them piled into one seat. The little bastard sitting in the aisle proceeded to sit there and stare at me and andy. Not cool.
One thing that I should have stated about automobile culture here in Southeast Asia, especially Cambodia and Vietnam is that they beep their horns about every 10 seconds, no joke. They pass recklessly and beep their horns at everything, this makes it virtually impossible to sleep. So as we settled in and tried to get some sleep we kept being woken up by the beeping horn only to turn and see that stupid kid staring at us again. On top of that the guy next to me seemed to be infatuated with this baby…
“goo…goo…ha ha ha ha…goo goo ga ga.”
This loser then proceeded to take pictures with his flash on so he could show the baby. So we have a beeping bus driver, a kid staring at me, enough legroom for a cockroach, and a loser taking pictures on the bus to make the baby laugh. I would get my revenge on the baby later on.
Our first pit stop took us to a dusty gas station. We got out and proceeded to see if there was anything to eat. Andy went to grab a bag of M&M’s.
“How much?” He replied with an expression that said, go ahead and say a high price and see what i do.
The M&M’s cost 12,000 Dong, which is about 75 cents. That is an extremely high price seeing as he paid about 5,000 the day before. He proceeded to take the bag he just grabbed from this cooler and chuck them bag in as he laughed right in this kids face. The kid cursed him out in Vietnamese and we both laughed. After our bus driver had his 6 course meal that took about 45 minutes we pushed onward. As Andy and I tried to find a comfortable spot it got more and more frustrating. Because our seats were higher than the rest it meant that the ceiling was closer to our heads. Andy, standing at 6 foot two inches tall felt the brunt of this. At some point on this next leg of the journey i woke to the sound of andy slamming the ceiling with his fist as he muttered some words under his breathe. I laughed as the sound of that woke everyone else up on the bus.
Finnally just around 1 we reached a stop where people got off. Andy immediately grabbed a seat further up in the bus and the guy next to me did as well. This gave me two seats in the back row to try to get comfortable. For the next 2 hours i pretty much fell asleep and was comfortable…i thought this would be a piece of cake. At the next stop at about 2:30, the bus driver proceeded to have another 6 course meal and waste another 45 minutes. While we waited I went back on the bus to try to get comfortable. The Granny had placed the baby stretched out on all the seats, just to the edge of where my two seat haven began. As the bus then pulled away, every subsequent bump moved the baby further and further into my space and they just left her. I was so angry that I did what every rational human being would do…I farted on the baby’s head while it was sleeping. Yes, i know that’s sick and wrong, but at 3 in the morning without any sleep on a bus ride that horrible, you resort to desperate measures. This baby will most likely have learning disabilities because of me, but i don’t care.
Finnally at just after 6 in the morning with the sun rising over the South China Sea the bus pulled up into the coastal resort town of Nha Trang. Bruised and battered me and Andy found a guesthouse and fell asleep for the rest of the afternoon.
Gagnonius