A burmese bus ride.

Hurry the bus leaves at eleven.  Be sure you are on 15 minutes early.   At two minutes to eleven the engine roars to life and the full bus pulls from its spot, over to a parking area where more folks are waiting and a bunch of freight needs to be loaded, unloaded and rearranged to be loaded again.  Once the onions, burlap sacks,  backpacks, saws, canisters of something, wood and blankets are all arranged, the owners of those things join the people on the already full bus by sitting in the asiles or on the asile fold out seats and we are finally on our way.  On our way to a tea stand 200 yards away where the driver meets with friends for a quick cup as all of the passengers look on from their seats.  At noon we are started back up and hit the road for a filling station on the outskirts of town.  After another quick stop at a shade tree air compressor stand to blow out the engines air filter (apparently not something the gas station can do) we really start in earnest towards our destination.  After two more stops to pick up and drop off a few young fellas and some crates of packaged snacks, we at least double the distance traveled before a stop for lunch at 1.  After lunch we drop off the saw and cannister guy and pick up a nice family of 6 with just some luggage.  Another stop to speak at some length to woman who had sticks for the driver slowed us slightly, but not as much as did picking up a few road workers, old food carying ladies and groups of school children.  All said 128 miles took us seven hours to traverse on our express bus.  At speeds averaging 25 miles an hour, the train is the better option for when you really need to be somewhere quick.

On the way back we decided to try riding the 128 miles in the back of a shared pickup.  These vehicles are everywhere, have iron bars and a roof caging the bed,  and they are less expensive to use than busses.   The cost per seat is directlly related to the state of repair that the truck is in and roughly coorelated with the position in the truck you will occupy.  The three spots up front with the driver are each double the fare of any of the six to ten spaces on two front facing bench seats in the bed.  Slightly less are one of the 10 spaces on the rear facing U shaped bench that snakes around the bed behind the first two benches.  The two spots on the floor by the feet of those on the U bench are a real bargin as are the 4 standing room only spots on the bumper.  Roof seats up with the baggage are available as well.  The roof will hold as many as care to ride.  I counted 12 roof riders during one of the rest stops, but being on one one of the front benches, I did not always have an accurate tally.  In all we had 36 people on our shared pickup.  That is more than we had on the bus.  It was less money and about as fast.  The train is still the way to go.