A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Emei Shan, China

I'm in a new place, but not without a grueling 24 hours of travel to achieve it. Lijiang, my last base of operations, is a bit remote and not on the train line, so in order to catch a train north (and avoid 5-6 days of bus travel going the long way) I took a bus all day yesterday from Lijiang to Panzhahua. It is not overstating the case to report that the trip was a hideous nightmare.

It was one of those mid-sized buses, very old and packed to the rafters. I was wedged into the back left corner with no legroom whatesoever, an opaque "window" on one side and a friendly Chinese woman with nose-numbing body odor on the other. Actually, it wasn't even like she was "next to" me -- since we had five people sitting in that back seat we were more like one very large person smooshed in strange ways. no telling where one ends and another begins.

Very shortly after the bus started up the twisty mountain road, it became more of a vomitorium than a mode of transportation. Person after personal frantically leaped for the window to puke over the side. Of 23 passsengers on our bus, seven lost their cookies at least once during the trip, and six of those were among the 13 people in the back three rows with me. You can imagine the smell in there. Not to mention the inherent dangerr of opening the opaque window -- I feared the blowback effect from the unfortunate couple in front of me.

On the upside, the bus was moving pretty efficiently up until the point when we got stopped by the cops. We spent 20 minutes in the hot sun for an I.D. and baggage check. As nobody spoke English on the bus, I had no clue what they might have been looking for. Shortly after getting back on the road we were stopped again, this time for an hour and a half at a dusty road construction site. Lovely view. We ended up staggering into the train station (after a brutally bumpy hour ride from the bus station over dirt roads -- I swear this whole country is under construction) a half an hour late for the train we had all hoped to catch.

Meanwhile, I suppose my ankle got a bit of rest, but since I had to maneuver it into so many crazy positions due to the utter lack of leg, knee or foot room in the back seat I suspect most of the benefit was lost.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 10:26 PM