Bus tales

There are, generally speaking, two kinds of buses one can take as a tourist in Vietnam and Laos -- "Tourist" buses come in various flavors of luxury, but all share at a minimum air-conditioning and reclining seats. "Local" buses never have air conditioning and usually have seats that feel like wooden benches covered in vinyl. The only tourists on a local bus are the brave, the curious, the impoverished, or the bamboozled. The only locals on a tourist bus are the driver and the guide.

A few images from three local bus rides I've taken this week.

In Vietnam, from Danang to Hue, about 3 hours:

-- I get to the bus station, and the bus conductor, a woman with a red sun hat flopped over her head and one of the cloth air filters so common here covering the lower half of her face, tells me that the ticket price is 100,000 dong, or about six and a half dollars. This seems outrageously high for a three hour local bus, but my pack is heavy and I don't see another choice, so I pay up. I ask for a ticket, but she claims there are no tickets, and starts pushing me onto the bus -- always a bad sign when someone you've just given money to starts pushing you away from them. On the bus, a friendly university student with good English reveals the real price: 35,000 dong, and all I needed to do to get a ticket was walk 15 feet and take a right to get to the ticket counter. The conductor is obviously pocketing all my money herself, and that, combined with the size of the fraud and the feeling of getting ripped off once too often, goads me into action. I get off the bus, go to the ticket counter, and gesticulate my complaint as expressively as I can. Miraculously, the clerk speaks English and is even sympathetic to my cause. She gets on the PA system (!), calls the conductor in, and gets me my money back.

-- Every seat is filled and the bus bundles out of the station. About half a kilometer out, the driver stops, the doors open, and the conductor starts pulling more people onto the bus, taking their money but again offering no ticket in return. She is surely pocketing this money, along with the driver. Apparently, with so many people waiting at this corner to board, this is a known loading spot -- I can't imagine that the bus company doesn't know about it too. Soon there are people on stools in the aisles, standing in stair-wells, sitting cross-legged on the floor. People start complaining of the stuffiness, of feeling sick. Ultimately, the conductor's greed (or need) overrides even her own comfort, and she ends up sitting with her bum perched on a metal railing, in order to make room for just one more.

-- We've been driving for a few hours. A husband and wife are squeezed against each other; he's on a stool in the aisle, she's sitting on the floor, pressed against his knees. Their six-year old daughter is sitting in the mother's lap. Mother and daughter lean against other and try to fall asleep. The father feels motion sick and dabs a green liquid that smells like menthol on his upper lip and neck. None can get comfortable, or rest. The daughter starts to cry. The father bends over, puts his head next to hers and starts singing softly. She joins in, a simple, lilting, Asian folk melody. Both seem comforted. Later, I offer the daughter an orange. She offers me some seeds that you crack open with your front teeth. We all spend the last half hour together, cracking seeds and extracting their tiny fruit.

Hue, Vietnam to Savannakhet, Laos, about 10 hours:

The first three hours are in air conditioned comfort, but I discover after we cross the Vietnam-Laos border that the rest of the trip will be on a local bus. This is contrary to what the tour operator promised when she sold me and my fellow passengers the tickets. Some of the other passengers lose it when they look in the stifling hot bus, and see that there aren't any seats remaining, only stools. I grab the best spot left available, the stairwell - from my perspective, it has more leg room than a seat, and lots of air.

Later, at a stop along the way, I look outside and see the silhouette of the bus on the ground, with the conductor scrambling about on the roof to untie and throw down bags. I pull my camera out. The image of the conductor's scrambling shadow next to the passengers looking up at him will make, I hope, for a pretty picture.

In Laos, from Savannakhet to Pakse, about 6 hours:

I get to the bus station early to get a seat, and when I board there is an overwhelming smell of garlic. I soon see why - under every seat lie two large mesh duffels of garlic cloves. I have to sit with me legs in the aisles because the garlic leaves no room for my feet. Piled in various places around the bus are bags of rice or fruit, chickens, and a long electric generator. The top of the bus is piled high with baggage and goods.

Once we get going, the bus makes frequent stops for people to mount and dismount, and to make deliveries. At every stop, the air stills, and the heat becomes stifling. Somehow, in spite of all this, I manage to fall into a daze that borders on sleep.

I am awakened by what sounds like an invasion of chicks, a large flock of them coming from all sides. I blink my eyes open, and feel like I'm still dreaming - everywhere I look there are skewers. Chicken skewers, beef skewers, skewers of fried dough powdered with sugar. They are grouped in triplets and quadruplets, spread apart like fleshy golden fans. They bounce up and down through the windows, poke towards me in the aisles. The vendors wielding them, women and children, seem to outnumber the passengers, and their stylized sales calls, chanted over and over again in an incomprehensible Laotian, sound for all the world like a flock of chirping, chirping chicks.