To see the first part In China…Get on the Bus!

Bus Rides

On the bus itself you have enough room to be comfortable and you are provided with a spit bag in front of you for carsickness or otherwise to keep you from doing it on the floor. When the bus arrives at its final destination, stay put and wait for everyone else to try to be the first off the bus. This phenomenon is extremely curious to watch for most westerners as we witness the guy in the very back of the bus run hurdle over everyone and up to the front with all his bags before the bus even stops. It’s best to calmly collect your things and wait for everyone to pass that way you will avoid having people climb over you.

The bus ride itself is always interesting to me, especially if you get to be in the front seat because the Chinese countryside changes so rapidly and it’s always entertaining to drive to sit up high and look down through the little towns. It’s interesting to see the vast differences between the big cities and the little towns and small farms along the way. Literally everything and anything crosses the road, from a bicycle with 4 TVS on the back, to a motorcycle with 3 meter long pieces of plywood, to ducks, to carriages of fruits and vegetables. The countryside is always a fascinating contrast of the old China and the modern world China is becoming with its huge Sinopec gas station and factories. It’s as if you are watching the modernization of China churning around you as the fields and buildings speed by on the bumpy road.

Night busses

Night busses are frequent and available to most cities in China. However, this is not a recommendable way to travel if you are tall or like sleeping in comfort. While I recommend daytime busses, my experiences with night busses have been such that I don't recommend them to those who have any wanting or need of relative comfort. I suggest paying a tad extra and getting a hard sleeper bunk on a train. While trains provide you either with a soft or hard bunk with clean sheets and a pillow, the night bus will provide you with a cubby in which to lie down. The night busses are not expensive, at times a bit less than the trains, but I would only advise taking them if there aren’t any trains that evening to your destination.

On one occasion, a friend and I bought last minute tickets from Nanning to Sanya. The ticket was much cheaper than the train and left at a more convenient hour. Since the travel time was only a bit more, we unsuspectingly bought our tickets for that evening. This is also a lesson as to why for night travel the cheapest option is not always the best. As you are aware, Sanya is on the southern island of Hainan. Busses do not cross over water without a boat. We bought these tickets knowing this fact full well though not imagining what the journey would end up like. We took the bus from Nanning at about 9pm. The last two cubbies available were on the bottom. The bus cubbies are set up so that there are 2 to 3 rows of cubbies on usually 2 levels. There is one bathroom on the right side in the middle. This presented two issues. Firstly, in

order to go to the bathroom, you must walk up the aisle to the front and go around past the driver. My cubby was next to the bathroom; no one went around. For the initial duration of the drive, I was sitting up in my cubby so I didn’t mind that people would take advantage of the glorious short cut that my cubby provided. I sat there chatting to my friend and eating seeds and paid no mind. It started getting later and we were pretty exhausted from hiking around the whole day so we decided to sleep a bit since they had turned the lights off in the bus and everyone else had taken the cue. I kept getting awoken by people who accidently snagged their shoe on me as they straddled me to hop over to the bathroom. This is an unpleasant awakening when you wake up and there is an old lady squatting over your legs, looking you straight in the eye, as she appears startled that you ask her what she is doing. The second more obvious issue when being placed in the cubby next to the bathroom is the smell. Bus potties are not known for their pleasing aromas, and the pungent stench of the toilet literally made my eyes water. For some reason unbeknownst to me, no one thought that closing the door was necessary and I kept having to get up every few minutes to save us all from odor asphyxiation. After a few hours, I surrendered, turned over away from the bathroom, and fell asleep….

 

To see the continuation of In China…Get on the Bus! Part 3 please stay tuned for next time!

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