Casey writes:
The 24 hour bus ride from Luang Prabang to Kunming was, at best, a nightmare. We booked a 'sleeper bus' with beds, but of course, when we re-confirmed our tickets, suddenly there was no sleeper bus available. I was seeing a pattern emerging with our bus bookings and to say the least, I was unimpressed.
Funnily enough, there was another English speaking couple at the bus station who were equally unimpressed. Actually, their fury was so blatant and so pronounced, that I tried to intervene to save the ticket attendant from almost being throttled. My attempt to pacify them failed, and it wasn't until much later when they had calmed down and we were speaking to them properly, that we concluded that they were completely vile individuals. They were working in China, and I innocently asked how much Mandarin they'd picked up. I was met with scoffs and and eye rolls, because "why should we learn Mandarin? They should learn English". This mentality was evident in everything that they did and said, and they sickened me.
So anyway, we boarded the bus (standard seats, but at least there were seatbelts), and after the bus driver lurched and bunny hopped down the road, we were off towards the Chinese border.
And so begins one of the craziest rides of my life. For 9 hours, our bus climbed mountains so high I was worried my nose would bleed. Hugging the sides of the rocky cliffs, I am sure the bus' wheels were hanging off the road each time we overtook a vehicle. The road was so bad we bounced constantly out of our seats, often clashing heads when we weren't concentrating. It was impossible to read, write, or even bring a bottle of water to my lips to drink. I refused to look down into the ravines below (even though the scenery was beautiful), because I've read far too many media reports over the years of tourist buses plunging down cliff faces. The girl behind me was vomiting into a bag, the woman near the front was doing the same, and suddenly before I knew it, I had my own head in a plastic bag, retching constantly for an hour and wishing I hadn't eaten my day-old nutella sandwich.
Finally, after what seemed like eternity, we arrived (alive) at the Chinese border. Immigration was relatively painless, and then wonderful news... the sleeper bus was waiting for us! Oh the joy! I didn't even mind the crush of pushing and heaving Chinese people fighting to get on. We crawled into our bunk beds and within an hour it was dark and I was super excited to get a decent night's sleep.
Wrong. The bed was comfy. The pillow was comfy. The bus ride was smooth. But then the snoring started. The overweight Chinese man next to me started making noises that I can only describe as a pneumatic drill. He honked and snorted and blurted like nothing I have heard in my life. Each snore vibrated my bones and drove into my nerve endings. No hope of sleep for me. At 4am a child started crying, and Snorer sat up with an annoyed look on his face because he couldn't sleep. It didn't last long and the chainsaw started up again.
At 8am we arrived in Kunming, and the China phase of our journey was about to begin. We were so excited!
No comments:
Post a Comment