Well this beats National Express. When the bus pulled into the bus station, my heart sank as I thought “it ‘s a night bus” . Not seats, but fitted out with about 15 bunks, upper and lower, three abreast. First you have to take your shoes off, and are given a bus-company bag to put them in! The seats are more like day beds, and you can lie down or sit, with your feet sticking out in front of you, a little space for your bag, shelf for food and drinks , and even a TV strategically placed so only about 3 passengers can see it. I will try to get a picture, but don’t want to upset my fellow travellers. Down side?? The low seats are at about floor level, so I’ll probably be stuck here for life and I suspect there’s no loo on board, but that’s probably not a bad thing. So time to relax for the next ten hours!!
The bus stops at Bus Company restaurants which have space to seat about 500 people, and serve cheap, basic food.( the loos vary, if lucky they’re western). I realised after the first stop, that you don’t even need to faff around with your shoe-bag, a bin of flip flops is provided as you disembark.
Being in the front lower “seat” I could see the dash board and a little screen on it…… No of course it wasn’t SATNAV…….just the DVD that was on, and the driver was watching it avidly. So probably a good thing we dragged along at about 40kph, though there were the usual sudden bursts of energy and overtaking. These DVDs which ran continuously, aren’t subtitled or dubbed, but just have quite a soft female voice-over, presumably telling the story, however when there are car chases or shoot outs (a regular feature) the volume overcame whatever I could find on my iPod.
For the first two hours we never really got into countryside, always some sort of habitation or industry. Eventually lots of rice paddies, which are intensely green, followed later by miles of orchards of dragon fruit. These are about 4 or 5 feet high and the branches look like huge Easter cactus. Then more rice, not much evidence of variety here. The villages are a lot more prosperous than in Cambodia, with substantial brick built houses, and neat gardens with crops of vegetables and rice.
Very soon we had mountains on our left. I’m no good at describing countryside but it is very beautiful. We didn’t actually see the sea till towards the end of the journey, and arrived well after dark.
Today there has been torrential rain ,with huge slate blue and black clouds. So much for my beach dream. But I managed about 2 minutes in the sea! See what tomorrow brings…….