Spanning 128,000 square miles, Vietnam is not dissimilar in shape, but slightly larger in size, to Italy. To travel down its length from Hanoi in the north to Saigon (officially Ho Chi Minh City but still known affectionately as Saigon) in the south, one can employ various modes of transport. Adventurous and free-spirited mavericks will do it on bikes, while the rest of us can choose planes, trains or automobiles - the automobile giving the significantly cheaper option. Although there is many on offer from a mind-boggling amount of travel agents, an open bus ticket generally has five stops or destinations, at which one can stopover and stay as long as one requires, and then hop back on to the next stop when one desires. Of these five stops, two are overnight and sufficiently long enough to require what is known here as a sleeper bus.
It was a surreal experience that took us from Ha-noi to Hue and then from Hoi-an to Nha Trang. Normally, a 14-hour bus journey would fill anybody with dread, as it did us. But the prospect became easier to swallow when we saw a double-decker-style bus consisting of approximately 32 bunk-beds laid out in three linear rows front to back. Each one no more than 1.5 feet in width and 5.5 feet in length, the beds reclined back to roughly 150 degrees. We construed that it did not look dissimilar to a military hospital. The bars down the sides of the beds substantiated this notion, while we surmised that the reason for the plastic box at the foot of the bed in which feet are placed, was perhaps to keep foot odour contained to a minimum. Great. Maybe this journey won’t be so bad after all.
While the idea of a sleeper bus comforted the instinctive dread we felt of such a long and arduous journey, the reason for the box and bars soon became clear; they existed to keep us from being thrown out of our bunks. Poorly constructed and maintained roads together with what, I assume, is considered normal driving in Asia by a professional driver persistent in swerving and breaking sharply all night conspired to collectively deprive passengers of sleep. Imagine witnessing, on countless occasions, thirty two people in rows sit bolt-upright at the same time in a half-asleep-daze triggered by the driver’s heavy foot. It is like a scene from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. Evidently the grand idea of a ‘sleeper’ bus was a fallacy.
I am sure we got some slithers of sleep at various points throughout the night. Nevertheless, it was an interesting and surreal journey that got us to our next destination and, as the cliché goes, it is apparently all part of the experience of travelling.
It was a surreal experience that took us from Ha-noi to Hue and then from Hoi-an to Nha Trang. Normally, a 14-hour bus journey would fill anybody with dread, as it did us. But the prospect became easier to swallow when we saw a double-decker-style bus consisting of approximately 32 bunk-beds laid out in three linear rows front to back. Each one no more than 1.5 feet in width and 5.5 feet in length, the beds reclined back to roughly 150 degrees. We construed that it did not look dissimilar to a military hospital. The bars down the sides of the beds substantiated this notion, while we surmised that the reason for the plastic box at the foot of the bed in which feet are placed, was perhaps to keep foot odour contained to a minimum. Great. Maybe this journey won’t be so bad after all.
While the idea of a sleeper bus comforted the instinctive dread we felt of such a long and arduous journey, the reason for the box and bars soon became clear; they existed to keep us from being thrown out of our bunks. Poorly constructed and maintained roads together with what, I assume, is considered normal driving in Asia by a professional driver persistent in swerving and breaking sharply all night conspired to collectively deprive passengers of sleep. Imagine witnessing, on countless occasions, thirty two people in rows sit bolt-upright at the same time in a half-asleep-daze triggered by the driver’s heavy foot. It is like a scene from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. Evidently the grand idea of a ‘sleeper’ bus was a fallacy.
I am sure we got some slithers of sleep at various points throughout the night. Nevertheless, it was an interesting and surreal journey that got us to our next destination and, as the cliché goes, it is apparently all part of the experience of travelling.
No comments:
Post a Comment