Pathien to Chaung Tha – Some Bus Ride

Just north of Chaung Tha beach. Almost pretty enough to make the trip worth it.

At an early morning bus stop in the Burmese delta town of Pathien I breakfasted on sweet tea and fried rice and watched my bus being loaded for the three hour trip to Chaung Tha on the Bay of Bengal. The bus was an old girl somewhere between a coach and a mini-bus that teetered high above skinny wheels. A young guy threw cardboard boxes and striped polyester bags onto the roof where the driver stacked it high. He pointed to my bag, “Chaung Tha?” I nodded and before I could protest it was sailing through the air, my precious ukulele glinting delicately before it was lost under a pile of white sacks. Somewhere a fat Hawaiian man sobbed.

As they lashed down the bulging stack on the roof, the conductor waved me inside and pointed to the very back middle seat. A layer of rice sacks covered the floor so deeply that the aisle now looked like a test facility for new caving apparatus. How the hell was I meant to get through there? A 60 year old woman pushed past me with a smile and crouch-walked to her seat, pirouetting and contorting like a teenager. I backed out of the bus and stretched my dicky back and tight hamstrings, much to the amusement of everyone. I continued the show by crawling on all fours up the aisle, pushing my small backpack in front of me like a dropout from an SAS training course, bumping and squeezing past passengers who sat comfortably cross-legged in the aisle. When I reached my seat many hours later I was facing the wrong way so I had to turn slowly on all fours in the manner of an elephant in a dressage competition. It was all done with the grace and controlled movement of Russian ballet dancer and I could tell the crowd appreciated it. I sat on the ripped upholstery with my feet resting on a rice sack several inches above my seat bottom and peered out from between my knees as the bus continued to fill.

            “Mister, mister!” The driver called to me, “Please.” He shoved a cardboard box tied with string through the side window and indicated that I should stuff it between the seat back and the roof, blocking the bus’s rear window.

            “Mister, please.” This time he held a tiny waif of a girl, maybe six years old with her face prettily painted with pale thanaka paste. She held out her arms but was too shy to look at me. I lifted her through the window to the seat beside me and her mother followed, vaulting lithely through the high window and smiling her thanks. There were now six people sitting on between or under their bags on the back seat. By the time the bus left with a shudder of warped clutch, I counted 54 people on the 36 seat bus including 17 sitting in the aisle. It was stiflingly hot. A young guy sat facing me, using another man as a back rest. We smiled at each other awkwardly from between our knees – aside from the odd kick, I have never anyone’s feet so close to my testicles.

            When the bus left town and slammed into the first of a million potholes I felt a sting between my shoulder blades as I bounced out of my seat. With difficulty I leaned forward and felt behind me. A nail that had once held upholstery protruded from the bare wood and had been playfully poked at my spine. After ten minutes I barely felt it over my cramping knees and screaming lower back. Soon my little neighbour fell asleep on my chest. Her mother lolled against the window, occasionally waking enough to drag her daughter towards her from where she would gradually slump closer towards me with every sway and thump.

Outside I could only glimpse a vista of dusty roads between dry fields and houses made from panels of woven grass and bamboo. Soon the road climbed and wound into low mountains, green and lush with patches of scraggly jungle and fields full of smouldering stumps from the slash-and-burn farming. At the edges of the road grew tall jungle trees roped with vines which rose above broad palm fronds. They were a strange uniform grey, robbed of colour by a thick layer of dust from the busy road. The bends tightened and the road narrowed as we rose. The driver continually had to climb on the brakes as we rounded blind corners too fast and were confronted with trucks and buses doing the same. Every time it happened both drivers jerked upright with surprise like they had forgotten they were sharing the road with other vehicles. At one mid-bend near collision we were forced into a ditch and sticks scraped along the windows as we edged past a fuel tanker.

            My little friend woke and tapped her mother on the shoulder. I didn’t need to speak Burmese to know what she said.

            “Mum. Mum! I think I’m going to be…” She vomited between her legs and over her shoes. Mum grabbed the still-gushing kid and stuck her head out of the window where she stayed for the rest of the trip, pale-faced and dribbling. Where do little kids store all that vomit? She couldn’t have weighed more than 15kgs but there were litres of pale rice-chunder sloshing around her mother’s feet. The driver’s cavalier disregard for the laws of physics combined with the smell, heat and dust set off a chain reaction of sympathy chucking and soon people were leaning over each other and painting the sides of the bus. I watched this impressive display with a kind of detached wonder – I couldn’t have designed a worse bus ride.

            After three hours we dropped out of the hills and passed the beachside hotels, restaurants and draught beer joints of Chaung Tha. At the parking lot that doubled as the town’s bus station I followed the lead of most of the rear half of the bus and slid out of the window. My passage through the tight opening was lubricated by an interesting mix of vomit and powdery dust – I wondered if there might be an industrial application for it. I was aiming for a Dukes of Hazard exit from the window but ended up half falling and staggering, wind-milling arms striking people at random.

            “Mister, mister. Please!” The driver threw my heavy bag off the roof and I caught it neatly with my face. One of the locals I had struck was an enthusiastic young man who gave me a card for a cheap hotel near the beach before stepping quickly beyond flailing range. I felt as though I owed him and jumped on his scooter.

            My room was bare with a cold shower and a hard bed. The electricity only came on between 6 and 10 but it was cheap and offered a free breakfast. In the shower dirty water streamed from orifices I had previously thought dust-proof. My t-shirt was full of holes and stained with blood where the protruding nail had cut my back. I lay on the hard bed and waited for the tetanus to kick in.