day 229, Bus

Get up at 6 and the bloke drives me to a road with several buses going to Vietnam and tonnes of people, after 15minutes of him going round he comes back with bad news, they are all full so he drives me back and tells me that a bus goes to Hue at half 6 and I should go to the bus station in the afternoon and chance my luck. I go off for some breakfast and finish The Time traveller’s wife, which was fantastic, walk around and watch Tom and Jerry cartoons. I go off for some Indian for lunch and back to the hotel to get a Tuk tuk to the bus station, of which he takes me to the right one this time. I buy a ticket to Hue and get told to wait, it leaves at 7 and it is one thirty. I sit down and start reading King Rat, by James Clavell and a couple of hours later I spot two white girls in front of a bus. Start talking to them, anne and sam from Australia who are really nice, they are going to Da nang on what looks like the local bus which is being loaded with everything imaginable. I ask the bloke behind the ticket counter numerous times whether it is my bus, he doesn’t really give me an answer, just smiles and says “local bus”. After the hassle and effort of previous attempts I show my ticket to the guy about to drive the local bus and he smiles and says it’s my bus, the roof is full so Michele goes in the bus, locals start to crowd round so chow down some food quickly and grab a seat, seeing as there are too many people to have a seat each and I’m sure as fuck not sitting on the rice bags in the aisle. I get moved twice by Vietnamese people, third time I think fuck it, so I say no and remain. I start getting shouted at and pushed and pulled but remain, saying where am I supposed to sit, if they find me a seat I will move. More hands are on me and I’m sweating, a mixture of the spice sweats and the unwanted attention. After two minutes of this I get them to get the driver who is only a kid himself, and he smiles at me and points me to a suddenly vacated seat next to an old crow, I move and the people who were shouting and pushing me suddenly smile and we high five. They put a fucking bird in the bus who whistles and hawks sporadically. The old woman beside me has what seems like her life in front of her so her feet come onto my side, she has no shoes and scratchy toe nails, for fucks sake. The bus moves about 40kmh, there are people all around me, one guy has his feet about 5cm away from my face. I put my ipod in only to realise I’m missing an ear bud. The bus goes on for a while, we stop, we go on, we stop, we go on. The bus breaks down. We are off for half an hour while they do shit to it. The bus carries on. It stops. I fucking hate this bus, I fucking hate the woman next to me. I just want to get the fuck out of laos and into Vietnam. I’m struggling to get to sleep. The bus stops at 02:30, everyone gets off. After 15mins I get back on as cold, then I get too hot and realise we’re not moving, so get off. Silver lining is it’s a stunning clear night and the stars are out in force. We sit there for about  3hours, I go back in the bus and attempt to sleep. We start moving again, it’s about 5.