The Bus From Hell

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Warning!!  The only way for me to write this post is to hold nothing back.  You've been warned...
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It was blissfully sunny in Udomxai on the morning of October 30th.  All prospects would say it was going to be a good day.  I had a lovely breakfast with an elderly Swiss couple I'd met the evening before.  We were all set to take the same bus to Phongsali, Laos' northernmost province, borded on one side by Vietnam and two sides by China.  Why go all the way up there, you ask?  Because very few tourists do.  And I'd heard there was great trekking up that way.

I wasn't aware of the screaming torture I was about to endure.

Before we left the restaurant, I advised the Swiss couple to buy some lunch for the journey.  The road to the north was said to be twisty and desolate: there were going to be no restaurant stops to buy lunch.  I bought myself a tasty-looking sandwich (a baguette, in fact).  Due to unexplainable confusion in the kitchen, I waited for ages and it still didn't come, so I had to re-order it.  The day's first bad omen.  But, when it did come, it looked really good.  No harm done, no harm done.

Armed with my cheese baguette, I made my way to the bus station.  There is only one bus to Phongsali a day, it leaves from Udomxai, and it is an underwhelming sight.

 The Bus From Hell

Just an old, clunky local bus.  Nothing new or out of the ordinary - not for Laos, anyway.  It certainly didn't look like it had come from the burning fires of hell.  But it had.

Most of the seats were taken, not by people but by their bags.  I squeezed myself down beside a large bag, just in front of a Belgium couple.  That made five of us as the entire daily foreign contingient headed for Phongsali: the Swiss couple, the Belgium couple, and myself.  The Belgium guy and I had a chuckle at how long the trip was supposed to take: it was an estimated 9 hours, but anything can happen in Laos, and it could be 12 or more.  Lao roads really can be that unpredictable.

"No," he told me.  "Nine hours.  We'll be lucky.  You'll see."

Just before 9am, everyone suddenly rushed onto the bus and claimed the seats their bags had been reserving.  Climbing over me to the window seat was a Lao guy about my age.  I tried to chat with him (using my strange Thai-Lao hybrid language) and I think he really appreciated that, because he suddenly heaped snacks on me, including a box of soy milk.  I wasn't sure if soy milk was the right kind of drink for this journey, as the road north is infamous for being twisty and mean.  But I drank it and enjoyed it, dammit.

Inside the giant tin can

After the bus got going, one of the crew shuffled down the aisle handing out empty, red plastic bags, confirming that we were in for a long, rough ride.  I turned to the other foreigners and chuckled, "You guys know what those are for, right?"  It struck me that they were so small.  What would happen if someone filled their bag up?

Sitting in front of me, on the other side of the bus, was a mother and her baby.  A very small baby.  I didn't much like where this was headed.  If adults struggle with this trip, how was a baby going to fare?  But we had a good start: the baby slept and didn't cry at all.

In fact, I had a bit of a snooze myself, which was a pretty good effort seeing how the driver was hell-bent on taking the curves in the road as fast as possible.  I jolted awake when the whole bus leaned ferociously to one side, tipping some people into the aisle and causing passengers to cry out in alarm.  Just as suddenly, the bus rightened itself, and we rounded the corner without tumbling off the harsh cliff.  The bus driver didn't seem to care how close we'd come to plummeting to our deaths; he kept on the same reckless pace.  I decided that I hated him.

Amazingly, all this time, the baby in front of me still hadn't uttered a peep.

We made a pit-stop an hour or so into the journey.  The road was as bumpy and twisty as any mountain road could possibly be.  I don't get motion sickness, but I was glad for the brief stop anyway.  The seats weren't comfortable and the bumping around only made it worse.

I figured I could do with a cold drink, so I bought a dark green fruit-and-vegetable juice that I would often drink in Thailand.  It seemed a bit gluggy, but I'd taken it out of the fridge so I was sure it was all right.

Rats?  No thanks.  Enough to make someone sick...
A Canadian backpacker boarded our bus at this stop, adding one more to our foreign contingent.

The road from hereon was dust.  At first I was kind of glad, because it meant the driver was forced to drive more carefully.  (Maybe I would live to the end of this journey after all!)  But the dust was really a curse.  It was way too hot to close the windows of the bus, so they were wide open.  And the road was as parched as a desert.  Dust poured in through the windows and filled the air we were breathing.

My bag, sitting between my legs, after a short time

It was dusty enough to write your name on your armrest with a finger.  I was forced to make a mask out of my handkerchief, and the other foreigners managed something similar.

Mask up!

 The Swiss couple

The Belgian couple

Even despite all the dust, the baby remained suspiciously quiet.

I drank that juice I'd bought.  I wondered if it tasted a bit off (this juice can turn really quickly if not stored properly), but it was cold and the bus so hot, so I drank it like a badass.

At around 12:30pm the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere.  The driver just parked on the road, everyone got out, and those who had food ate it.  I washed my hands and face (so much dust!), but my stomach wasn't in the mood for eating yet.  Even though that cheese baguette looked really, really good.

Parking bay?

 Views

 Dusty much?

20 minutes later we were bumbling along again, breathing through handkerchiefs as if our health depended on them.  The Lao guy who had given me the soy milk dismounted, and an old man with an even bigger bag climbed onboard.  He called out in a croaky voice, desperate to find a seat, and I indicated to the empty seat beside me.  I got up so he could fit through to the window.  He threw his bag on one seat and sat down on the other, leaving me standing in the aisle.

The other foreigners lost it.  There I was, showing kindness to this old man, and he'd stolen my seat for his bag!!!  He seemed to catch on to their laughter, though, and forced that massive bag down between his legs so I could squeeze beside him.  Still, I was jutting out into the aisle anyway, so I moved to sit on the back seat beside the Canadian guy.

His name was Silvio, and we were having a good chat.  I don't remember exactly what we were talking about when the bus ploughed into a motorbike.  It was a conversation we would never finish.

SMACK!

The bus pulled to a ferocious stop.  For a few heart-pounding seconds I had no idea what had happened.  Everyone crowded to the windows.  Silvio and I, sitting right at the back, had the best view.  The road behind us was stained with crazy tyre marks swivelling towards a fallen motorbike.  Beside it, two men were sprawled pathetically on the asphalt.  They just lay there like tattered dolls.  They just lay there.

I don't know what took everyone so long.  The driver, the bus crew, any passenger... someone should have been right out there, tending to these people.  It struck me that even if I could speak their language, the damage had been done - what could I possibly do?  I felt helpless.  All I could do was watch as one of the men slowly, dizzyingly, stumbled to his feet.  He couldn't even stand up straight.

His friend just lay there on the road.

The man on his feet seemed to grow conscious of his friend with heartbreaking desperation.  He reached down and started yanking his friend's arm.  And he just kept stumbling around, pulling at his friend's arm, moving his friend's body around the road like a limp thing.  It was as if he believed he could pull his friend to his feet; that he would simply jump to life and everything would be okay.  It was one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen.

Sickness shot through me like a fever.  I tore my gaze away and curled in a ball, trying to breathe and trying to keep my stomach inside me.  I'd been feeling a bit off for the last half hour, and I was sure that gluggy juice had something to do with it, but up until this point I could ignore it.  Now it seized me in its grip and there was nothing I could do.  Not for the men outside, not for myself.  I ran off the bus and crouched by the side of the road, clutching my stomach.

Those moments were truly horrible.  I didn't vomit, but I think I would have gladly.  I had to press all thoughts of the accident from my head just to keep myself functioning.  And yet, I remember being strangely conscious of my surroundings too.  Storm clouds rolled overhead, growling thunder.  A few drops of rain spattered around me.  I could also hear the distant drumming and chanting of a nearby forest tribe.

The accident had happened as we hurtled around this corner

I was aware, also, that the bus driver didn't personally see to the two men on the motorbike.  Maybe it was too confrontational, or one of those "saving face" things.  All I saw, as bus passengers moved towards the scene of the accident, was him light up a cigarette and mutter words to his friends that I didn't understand.

More vehicles kept rounding that corner so there was also lots of beeping and shouting going on as well.  I remember seeing this strange vehicle slow as it passed, and the people joking and handing out whiskey to bus crew and passengers.

Strange mode of transport

The police eventually arrived, and as they tried to work out exactly how the collision had played out, I lay down on the side of the road and tried to sleep off some of the sickness.  I'm positive it was that damn green fruit-and-vegetable juice; I could practically feel it churning inside me from all the bus's shaking.

What I learned later is this: both men from the motorbike were alive, though concussed, and at least one of them had sustained a bloody injury.

The bus's side was dented significantly; the motorbike was in worse shape.  After 45 minutes or so, the police seemed to declare that the bus was okay to leave.  I take it to mean that they'd decided it was the motorbike that had been on the wrong side of the road.  At the first "Bpa!" ("Let's go!"), I leapt to my feet and walked back to the bus.  I think it shocked everyone that I'd not only understood but responded to the command, when to their eyes I must've been half-dead, lying on the side of the road as sick as a dog.

I didn't feel much better.  In fact, on top of all my other concerns, my spirits had taken a significant dive because our bus was going to be late.  That meant there was still at least 3-4 hours left to go.

Unfortunately, it didn't get any easier.

The rain helped settle the dust, so when we got back on the dirt road I could survive without my handkerchief.  I lay across the back seat (furiously sweeping the thick layer of dust off it first) and did my best at sleep and recovery, but the bus's constant jerking and jolting made recovery impossible.  Even to someone who, before this, had never suffered motion sickness.

I stirred back to wakefulness as my sickness reached new heights.  I sat there miserably, simply trying to cope, but my body seemed to move by itself.  I reached to open the window beside me, but it would not budge.  Not.  An.  Inch.

There was no choice.  I leaned towards the Swiss couple, sitting right in front of me, and said with all the patience and sincerity in the world, "Excuse me.  I'm really sorry, but do you mind if we could please change seats?  I need the window."

I seemed to have confused them.  It looked like they wanted to oblige, but simply didn't understand my strange request.  Why would I want that window?  I already had one.

The churning in my stomach was growing worse.  I said, still patiently, "I think I might need to... you know..."  I indicated a vomiting action.

"Oh.  Right.  Here you are."  The sweet couple rose to the feet and began to move out into the aisle.  Very slowly.  Too slowly.

"I'm sorry," I gapsed, "but could we please hurry?"

All at once they knew the urgency in my voice.  Their faces went pale and all of a sudden they were scrambling out of my way.  They sat behind me and I stuck my head out the window, gulping in fresh air.  Sweet, fresh air.  Sweet, fresh-

BLEEEEEHHHRRRRRGGHHHHHH!!!

You know, life is so unfair sometimes.  We'd spent most of the last five hours driving through countryside and forest with not so much as a single building.  And now, when my stomach decided to empty itself, we were driving through a town.  There I was, with my stupid foreign head sticking out the side of the bus, spraying dark green fruit-and-vegetable juice vomit.

The sweet Swiss couple didn't stay behind me for very long.  In fact, they moved up the bus very, very quickly.  Meanwhile, I'm sure all the town's residents were wondering just what the hell I'd been eating to make my puke such a hideous green!  Chlorophyll guys, it's just chlorophyll.

The thing about these villages is that the roads are narrow and there are no footpaths, so my expulsion came dangerously close to the street-side locals.  I even had to suck it in and hold it for a few seconds as we passed people, before I could continue freely.  Then there'd be another pedestrian or two and I'd suck it back in... and once we were clear, I'd keep streaming green down the side of the bus.  Like a beautiful moldy fountain.

As it does, vomiting made me feel significantly better.  I'd gotten it out of my system, and I even felt good enough to joke about it with the other foreigners.  The Swiss couple were too far away to hear my quips (and probably glad for it), but the Belgians saw the humour in it, and Silvio had a good laugh.  (Then again, unlike the Swiss couple, none of them had had to evacuate from two seats within the space of a minute.)

I lay back down and tried to sleep again.  But thanks to that incessant shaking and swishing and jolting of the bus, recovery was just not on the menu.  Nope.  But at least I had that window.  No one was going to take my window seat now!

Unbelievably, the second wave came as we passed through another village.

One of the bus crews raced down the aisle to hand me three of those red plastic bags.  I took them and nodded, then as soon as he'd turned his back, I threw them to the floor and kept spewing out the window.  When the body is expelling something, you just want to be completely rid of it.  You don't want it sitting there by your side in a stupid red bag.

A few moments later, however, I realised why he'd given me the bags.  The bus had stopped, a few people were getting off, and he was trying to open the luggage compartment so they could take their bags.  But, with my window above the compartment, he had to stop and wait until my little fountain had stopped before he could open the latch.  Then he closed it hastily and rushed back onto the bus.  My stomach was pretty much empty by this point, but I managed to spurt some stomach-water out the window before we got going again.  A monk, who had just dismounted, had to leap back to avoid it.  I'd never seen a monk jump before.

I was by no means the only sick person on that bus.  I counted at least half a dozen other people spewing at some stage, and I suspect there were heaps more, judging from the colourful grafitti down the sides of the bus.

I went to sleep again, my stomach still churning.  It was getting dark now, but fortunately that last stretch of road was well paved and slightly less twisty.  Still, that counted for little to my stomach, which was on a mission to turn itself completely inside-out.

At 6pm, we finally arrived in Phongsali.  Oh my goodness.  Oh my goodness.

It was dark outside and everyone rushed off the bus, eager to get to their homes or wherever they were staying.  The mother and her baby left too.  The mother had been sick as well, but for the whole journey, that baby had not cried or screamed or squawked once.  I will never, as long as I live, stop being impressed with that.

Furthermore, I was impressed with the Belgium guy.  For everything that had happened, all the drama and danger, he'd been correct.  The trip had taken exactly nine hours.

The other foreigners stood outside where a lone man was waiting to drive them to different hotels in town.  Meanwhile, I again leaned out my favourite window and my stomach pushed, pushed, and pushed!  But there was nothing left in it.  Not even a drop of water.  So what happened is my vocal chords took the brunt of all that pushing.  There was nothing I could do to stop it.  I dangled out that window, scream-retching like a dying animal, as loud as my vocal chords could muster.  It burned my throat and made me rasp with the pain, but once it was done, I felt strangely better again.  I stepped off that damn bus and admired my green-splatted artwork down its side with pride.

The others were probably sick of me by this point, but I assured them I was feeling much better now (and I was).  We shared the taxi, and I was actually useful in helping us get to our different hotels, as the driver could speak Thai.  When the others wanted me to ask him if there was a restaurant nearby, he not only gave directions, but he also commanded me (with a cheeky grin) not to eat anything.  Despite my fatigue I laughed, realising that of course there was no way he couldn't have seen my impression of a dying animal out the window of the bus.

I ended up staying at the same cheap hotel as the Swiss couple.  I apologised to them again, found a room, and almost as quickly found a big bucket to retch into.  A few squirts of water and bubbles came out... and that was my rebellious stomach's final horrah.

I looked at my cheese baguette with regret.  It didn't look so good anymore.  In fact, it looked quite off.  I tossed it in the bin and climbed into the shower, where I sat under hot water for 45 minutes.  I was in bed by 8pm.

I wish I could say it was an easy night's sleep, but when I shut my eyes, I could still feel the movement of The Bus From Hell.  It was, however, the beginning of my recovery.

I was in Phongsali.  I'd survived the most arduous trip of my life.

And somehow, I already knew it was going to be worth it.