Night Bus

I've never had good luck with overnight buses. There was the time in Vietnam when a flood washed out the bridge and we waited 12 hours for the locals to repair it with bamboo and twigs. There was the time in Peru on the way to Arequipa when the bus stopped every two hours for about one hour while the driver got out, hammered the tire until sparks flew, then got back on the bus. So I'm not sure why I thought an overnight bus from Yangshou to Guangzhou was a great idea. Ok, I do know why. It was only 20 bucks. And...it was 'Luxury,' which is all the rage here.

So first of all, it's a bus,

overnight

in China

where the roads are full of bull-sized holes, and drivers are crazy. And not only is it a bus, but it's a luxury bus, which means it has:

three rows of bunk beds,
shag carpeting down the two aisles,
leopard print mattresses,
blankets that smell like they are from the Cultural Revolution and look older,
and - always - kung fu movies.

The beds are metal; they are exactly one inch wider than my hips, and six inches shorter than my body. And though we fought as best we could for a bottom bunk (where we could at least sit up), the 'conductor' (who slept on the floor) yelled at us loudly in Cantonese. We both ended up in top bunks. I only had enough room to prop up on my elbows, barely.

I slept, no I lay, for 11 hours. On a bus. In China. On a glorified luggage rack. On crazy roads, desperately holding on as the bus rocked violently back and forth in and out of potholes the size of bulls, trying to pad the metal with the old blanket.

I listened to the snores of the people around me, who somehow did not fall from their bunks, ate oreos, and watched the nearly-full moon throw the karsts into dark relief against the navy blue sky...

Bangkok tomorrow. We're taking a break from our project to sit on a beach.