The Wanderings of busman7

Being somewhat knowledgeable on busing, having spent 25 yrs in the industry, it was interesting traveling in different countries buses.

Note that in Europe I have only ridden on a few shuttle & city buses so any comments are not about buses there. Have yet to make it to South America or Africa.

There is normally 6 classes of inter-city buses in use the world over.

1) the Luxury Coach which is comparable to 1st class airline seating & service, used on both, line runs & charter service Found in Mexico, Central America & SE Asia. Have never seen it in Canada, US or Australia.

2) Coach found the world over, even in the poorest nations used by tourists & wealthy locals.

3) older coaches usually with “tourist bus” written on them but used mainly by middle class locals & a few back packers. These are a pretty good & cheap way to travel & meet local people on day trips, not recommended for overnight travel.

4) the local intercity bus can be old coaches, city buses in Asia or American school buses in CA. These are basic but cheap transportation carrying passengers, goods & chickens (hence the name chicken bus)

5) trucks, vans & pickups that fill in the needs for transportation to outlying areas that the buses don’t service or in addition to city buses.

Used the luxury bus a couple times in Mexico when I first started my trip but soon learned there were less costly alternatives out there that were nearly as good, of course they didn’t come with the A/C waiting room & free toilets.

For any overnight travel or even a long days travel your regular coach is the best bet with A/C & reclining seats they are a pretty comfortable way to travel. A bit more expensive than the lower classes but nothing that’s going to break the bank.

WARNING!!! Some sadist came up with the idea of the sleeper bus in which you find 2 levels of pens in which you can NOT stand or even sit up properly, there is barely room to lie down & unless traveling with a partner they give a whole new meaning to get to know your neighbor. Don’t want to even think what would happen if one  was involved in a serious accident. These monstrosities are best avoided like the plague!!

Your “tourist” bus can make for some interesting travel as they tend to have no seating capacity, there is always room for one more, so there are stools & make shift seats in the aisles. They also tend to stop at the cheaper roadside restaurants (not a bad thing), eat what the locals do & soon soon any with a smattering of English will be practicing it on you, cool. However night time toilet breaks tend to be roadside with women to the left, men to the right. The 38 hr trip from Delhi to Kathmandu, while an experience is NOT recommended nor the overnight run from Vientiane to Hue, which carries more freight than people but hey they are survivable.

Your local buses are the cheapest, most interesting, most crowded, never get filled as there’s always room for 2 more. Normally in CA a few rear seats are removed to allow easy access for larger items, like a vendor taking his helado (ice cream) cart to the next town & selling some of his wares during the trip. Don’t have to worry about getting the wrong bus as in addition to the sign on the bus the drivers helper/fare collector always announces the destination at every stop & also at the markets where bus changes are made meets all incoming buses & even helps you with your bags.

When traveling past the bus routes or even on some busy routes an even cheaper, option is 2 ton truck or pickup with benches for passengers along the sides with freight in the middle which run on a loose schedule. Although the benches can be hard, the natural A/C always works great, just hope there are no dirt roads on the route as huge amounts of dust get mixed in with the A/C but hey you wanted to experience life as the locals live it!

You also find Collectivos, vans or pickups which leave when full.

6) the shuttle van, normally 12-15 passenger vans that due airport shuttles, tourist trips to out of the way places or between cities where bus service is erratic. The major problem with these is that when the manufacturer set the seating he failed to consider that they would be used to transport back packers with their packs but the operator figures it holds 12 so he sells 12 tickets which makes things a tad crowded. Except for airport trips I have learned they are best avoided. Also I believe that in Thailand a person must prove he’s crazy before he’s hired & they’re best avoided all together.

My favorite way to travel is now by boat/ship, didn’t care for it at the start but am now a convert. I don’t mean cruise ship, have seen too many of the sheep from them at the park in Antigua where they have been let loose from the flock for 1/2 hr to get their picture taken by the fountain. I mean ships that transport real people from point A to B.

Ferries are a really cool way to travel, especially overnight, just take your own food with you as they make up for the relatively cheap fare but make their profit on  the obscene food prices. Then you have the river boats from which you get an entirely different perspective of the country. Two trips really stand out, the 2 day slow boat down the Mekong from Huai Kai to Luang Prabang in Laos, tip sit in the back on the benches, to meet more people.

The second which Lonely Planet does it’s readers a great disservice in recommending they don’t take it (as if the the whole $2.40 the government receives in tax is going to make a difference), it also takes hard cash away from the vendors who sell food on board! Is the slow boat down the Ayeyarwady River from Mandalay to Bagan which takes you past villages & scenes straight out of Kipling’s time & was a highlight of the trip.

The 3 day trip through the Mekong Delta from Saigon to Phnom Penh was also well worth the money & beat the heck out any road trip by bus.

Although my Australia trip was on the whole a disappointment, The 2 nights on The Spirit of Tasmania wasn’t. it turned out to be one of the highlights of that adventure, as did the tiny portion of Tasmania I got to see.

My recommendation is that time permitting make use of ships, trains or buses over planes whenever possible as looking at clouds from 30,000-40,000 ft gets monotonous after awhile, like about 5 minutes!

This month, shall get to compare flying to Alaska to returning by ferry, stay tuned.

Have traveled on numerous variations of the usual planes, trains, buses & automobiles, horse drawn carriages, ships, ferries & other sorts of watercraft. To the not so usual hot air balloons, double decker buses, London black cabs, elephants, camels & dugouts.

When it comes to planes Greenland Air’s Airbus on the route from Greenland to Copenhagen is the economy class hands down winner, by a country mile over any airline I have flown. They haven’t heard of “cattle car” seating which is prevalent on most others. The food, which would put some restaurants to shame, is impressive, also an economy class winner in the industry with top notch service.

Their Dash 7’s on the local short hauls are also good with excellent flight crews. The only draw back is they’re a tad expensive but one normally gets what they pay for when it comes to airlines. The notable exceptions being Qantas & Air Canada both of which are on my, NO fly, avoid like the plague list.

JAL which still uses all female stewardesses instead of the other “politically correct” airlines with their mixed crew of “flight attendants” (at least on the NRT-DEL run) seems a touch above the other carriers I have flown this trip with AA, BA & LAN being in the middle rank with a tad more leg room, competent, courteous flight crews, airport check in & flight centre personnel. Then comes Cebu Pacific, Air China, Air Asia & Thai air who have good personal but whose seating falls into the “cattle car” class.

Finally down at the bottom you have Qantas whose SIN-PER flight was tolerable but the best thing that can be said about their “cattle car” affiliates, including Jetstar (who refused to check my bag through) is that by some miracle the planes didn’t fall out of the sky!

Could write a book about my train travels during the past 10 months but shall just give a quick overview here. As anyone following this blog knows, I have travelled by train in England from Newcastle to Birmingham, EXPENSIVE, then a cheap (tad under 20 GBP) from Birmingham to London & return, both trips fine.

I then traveled from Oslo to Vladivostok (except for a few miles on the Sweden/Finland border where there is no train but your ticket covers the bus), via St Petersburg (awesome city) & Moscow (hmmm) with a jog down to Ulan-Bator (wish I’d had 3 weeks instead of 3 days). An absolutely fantastic trip, I highly recommend, in full or any part.

Next was Lhasa to Beijing, a 2 day jaunt from the highest station in the world to a not so nice, heavily polluted city with very few redeeming features, on a train using sleeper cars, built by the Canadian firm Bombardier. The worst designed that I have traveled in but don’t if the Canadians or Chinese were responsible for that blunder, which took away from an otherwise fine experience.

Trip from Hue to HCMC (Saigon) full day + night in a coach seat was nice as was the day trip on “Railcar” from Bangkok to Chaing-Mai, also the hop from Bangkok to Surat Thani. All good trips, interesting with no problems & coach seat with the exception of the 2nd class non A/C sleeper from Bangkok to Surat Thani.

More interesting was the day time run from Yangon to Mandalay followed by the amazing hop, in the mountains, from Hspaw to Pyin U Lwin in Myanmar. The “Jungle Line” from Gemas to Kota Bharu Malaysia is also pretty cool, although not the “incredible” trip Lonely Planet makes it out to be. Also when they sell you the ticket in KL & tell you the train from Gemas doesn’t go all the way to Kota Bharu but you have to change, do NOT believe them as it merely stops for 20 min about 1/2 way, changes numbers, then carries on. Guess nobody told the KL ticket sellers that!

Now for the fun part. To get to Thailand by train from Kota Bharu Malaysia it is necessary to take a taxi to the border crossing at Sungai Kolok then a motorcycle taxi to the station. Of course if you had believed Lonely Planet or the Canadian governments web site you never would have taken the trip anyway as you would have been afraid of tripping over all the heads rolling down the street. Fortunately there is a voice of reason from “the man in seat 61” website that puts the problem in perspective, if you stay around long enough you might possibly see some violence but to just pass through it’s extremely unlikely. However it was interesting traveling on a train patrolled by soldiers in body armor & passing stations with sandbag bunkers.

At Hat Yai the soldiers faded away. Now I had spent the night in Hat Yai a week previously, not knowing how (supposedly) dangerous (at least according to our illustrious Canadian government), as the multitude of Chinese tourists there for the Chinese New Years holiday sure weren’t concerned & it actually seemed safer to me than south Oshawa in the evening. Oh well what do myself + a few thousand Chinese that were there know, compared to the Canadian simple serpent, that has likely never ventured away from his home province, that wrote the advisory?? Bottom line was that after an enjoyable, overnight train ride in coach (no sleepers when I checked in but 2 min before we left one became available for an extra 400 Baht, NO way Jose am I paying 400 Baht for a 2nd class sleeper berth), especially when coach was only 600 Baht, I arrived in Bangkok without incident!

Another fabulous train trip is the, 3rd class only trip from Bangkok’s Thonburri Station to Kanchanaburi, the home of The Bridge over the River Kwai. A 3 hr ride for a measly 100 Baht. If you go on to Namtok you actually cross the bridge, if not you can take a tourist train for 20 Baht on a 20 min ride across +  a couple miles down the line. Have been there 3 times & done it both ways on both trains + walked across. If you should find yourself in the area make sure to stop in at “The Red Neck” bar, on the tourist strip by the river & say Hi to Jimmy & the boys. Should really spend a night in Namtok but I didn’t know that at the time & had to get back to Bangkok. Oh yeah make sure to visit the Hell Fire Pass museum & monument, which was erected by the Australian government, on the old railway line in the area. Can also reach Hell Fire Pass via local bus  from town. Also there is a very good museum on the “Death Railway” in Kanchanaburi, right across from the war memorial cemetery.

Only one line in Borneo & it was closed for repairs when I was there. However traveled from Jakarta, where you can see locals with no money who can ride on the roof of the electric trains for free, free but scary, to Banyuwangi (Manyar  hotel good + cheap near ferry docks) & the ferry to Bali. It’s a 2 day trip with an overnight stop & train change in Surabaya. You also get an idea of just how poor the country is when you see the rice farmers harvesting the crop with sickles & threshing it by hand, hadn’t seen that since Myanmar. That said the railway & equipment are in good shape & had no problems other than the schedule is just there for looks & trains arrive when they arrive, no big deal for a traveler, don’t think locals pay much attention to the clock either. The second leg through the coastal hills was cool.

Took the Qantas (YECH) bird from Singapore to OZ & a cross continent (Island depending on who you listen to) on the Indian Pacific + north from Adelaide on the legendary (overrated) Ghan to Alice Springs, red seats full for the leg to Darwin & finally the Overland, Adelaide to Melbourne (where I had dealings with the Qantas rep from HELL!!

Bought a backpacker rail pass for the Great Southern network which was a great deal for coach seats but sleepers were out of the question at $300/night DUH talk about rip-off!!

Biggest scam I heard was the $3,000.00 cost of a platinum ticket on the Ghan for the 2 day trip from Adelaide to Darwin! That’s more than The Orient  Express charges for the 2 days from Singapore to Bangkok. Sorry OZ but the Ghan isn’t in the same league as The Orient Express, not by a country mile.

Trains were OK, service not bad but comes with a simple serpent attitude of not really caring, all in all not impressive. Glad I took the trips but they don’t measure up to 3rd world/emerging nation, standards!

New Zealand was another matter with my experience on the Overlander being bad from the get-go, when you had to wrestle your luggage down 2 escalators then walk the length of the platform to check it. NOT an impressive start to a trip fraught with problems brought on by poor maintenance. That said the train crew was great. Once on the south island the train performance was good & the crews still great, scenery was also much better.

The worst, by far, trip was on Euro rail from Copenhagen to Amsterdam! There was a night sleeper on the run but what’s the point of a train journey in a new country in the dark? So chose to do it during the day which meant 6 train changes with NO luggage check, have to keep it with you which really adds to the fun when there are no seats, chicken bus Euro style. Absolutely ridiculous in supposed  first world countries!

Have also traveled from Montreal to Edmonton, many snows ago when the line was still operated by CN & done a couple short jaunts on Amtrak in the US.

Some trips were more scenic, others like the Trans-Siberian were real eye openers into the countries visited & showed how we have been misled by our governments & media about how things really are. Never in my wildest dreams would have thought Siberia would be home to major cities & enormous tracts of farm land or  the entire 7 day trip would be on a dual track, electrified line or that Indonesia would be utilizing such antiquated farming practices.

With the exception of the day from hell on Euro rail, all were enjoyable, enlightening & well worth the money. Hard to pick a best but the run from Hspaw to Pyin U Lwin through the mountains of Myanmar tops my list!

Still to come is a rail trip from Anchorage to Fairbanks in Alaska.

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