Stories from the Road 2002
an ongoing travelogue

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The Joys of Travel (part 1)

From Bangkok to Krabi in Southern Thailand

What was supposed to take 12 hours and one bus took 25 hours and four busses. The worst of the breakdowns started around midnight. When the next bus finally arrived it was nearly four in the morning. Initially, our driver's assistant told everyone "10 minutes, 10 minutes." It wasn't the first time he had tried that one on us but we so hoped that this time he meant it. Needless to say, it became the infamous quote of our journey. It was a running joke that with its pronouncement, the hands and fingers also outstretched in the way 10 is universally understood, it would not wear out -- every time bringing a sadistic sort of pleasure to the journey men and women in need of some comic relief. We all sat there on the broken bus, in the parking lot of a gas station, waiting, unable to sleep primarily because of the near freezing temperatures exhaled by the overly enthusiastic air conditioner on board.

Luckily for me, the flaps controlling the airflow from the vent above me were missing. I assumed they must have been broken in someone else's struggle with frostbite. The two fist sized wind tunnels pointed straight down on my lap. And my mention of frostbite wasn't just some abstract way of getting my point across. I trust there is no need for more description. Eventually I had the novel idea to tear pages out of a tourist brochure that I was given at the airport and to try to plug these holes up. Although that helped some, it just forced more air through the also broken vents of the passengers sitting in front of and behind me. I kept looking to my breath to see whether it had become visible yet in this freezer on wheels.

Soon we were all complaining, in as many as 5 different languages, to Mr. "10 more minutes" but instead of turning the engine off, he passed out "blankets" the size and thickness of a t-shirt. Still, we scrambled for these scraps for nothing else but to ward off the already mentioned frostbite issue. The second reason none of us could get any shuteye was due to the video we were all subjected to. All Thai busses that go any considerable distance are outfitted with a large television, video, and incredibly powerful sound systems. We were all hypnotized by the unabashedly bad film that was currently disgracing directors and actors everywhere: "Python."

You might be surprised (or maybe not) to learn that "Python" is a film about a science-creation-gone-bad. A monster python is able to chase down people in cars and hides in people's garages denting-up their sports cars until they come in to find out what all the noise is coming from and are then -- you guessed it -- eaten alive in wrath by the very computer animated snake. So the town's folk must set a trap to kill this creature. Stay tuned...