April 27 To bus or not to bus

There should be some standards for map dots. You know, like DIN numbers on
film or something. Here I am, selecting what cities Id visit in China based
on the smallest dots on the map (not wanting to visit huge metropoli) but
there are no standards. So when I looked at map of China, I selected
Jinghong because it had a tiny dot, not the circle symbol indicative of
larger cities. It was comparable to the dot Luang Prabang looks like on a
map of Laos; or Hoi An in Vietnam. But a tiny dot in China means seven
million people. (A circle means it has the population of Canada.) It was
nothing but huge office buildings and wide boulevards and tons of cars and
busses honking all the time. So I opted to get out of Jinghong as soon as
possible. I was making my way east to Hong Kong so it made sense to get an
overnight bus or fly to Kunming. Most overnight busses are sleeper busses -
extra-high busses that look like luxury coaches from the outside but are
actually lined with two levels of beds along each wall, and one row down the
middle. My guidebook said this particular stretch of journey is a long,
bumpy, smoke-filled ride, with people spitting all the time so of course it
sounded like the perfect travelling experience.  Plus, it was way cheaper
than a flight.

Dragging my knapsack on board I was a little worried Id have to sleep with
it on my lap but, giving various people my best sad-eyed-can-you-help-a-poor-foreign-girl
look, a few people rearranged some luggage under one of the beds on the bottom row and
I was able to store my bag there. This was very lucky because normally you have
to get on the bus an hour beforehand to secure space for luggage. Since there are two levels of beds, usually only the people on the bottom beds get to store their belongings, which may include several boxes of mystery goods.My first impression of the beds was, "Hey, these are great!" This was based on the fact that, having purchased a ticket relatively early, I was able to get a bed by a window. The beds are fairly hard -- sort of like sleeping on a Thermarest when camping -- but they are covered with a sheet and you're supplied with a pillow and "comforter" so they looked pretty well set up. The only problem is, at five feet, seven inches long and about
10 inches wide, they are were obviously designed in Africa for pygimies. Luckily, with all the walking and minimal eating I was doing, I had actually shrunk to pygmy so I had a whole two inches of length to spare. Anyone with a spare ounce of weight would not survive unless they were prepared to spend the entire trip on their side with their nose pressed against the window. Judging from the permanent, nostril-shaped marks of condensation on the window beside me, I concluded that more than one traveller of girth spent the night this way.

Settling into my little sleeping stall, the bus starts off and I begin to
see why this is not so great after all. The bus is hot so I have the window
beside me open. But the guy sleeping in the bed in front of me is smoking
and flicking his ashes out his window. The ashes make their way along the
breeze outside and back directly into my window. Every now and then a spark
lands on me and, given my limited amount (read: none) of Mandarin, I have no
way of communicating this to the smoker. I resort to closing my window. Then
the guy below me lights up, along with the guy in the middle next to him and
soon our little section of the bus resembles an airport smoking room.

Then the hoarking and spitting starts. I'm not sure what it is about Chinese
digestive systems that causes them to spit so much. Perhaps they like they
dislike their own food and have trouble swallowing it. But all through the
trip, men are hoarking up gobs of spit and, if near a window, sending flem
flying through the night air; if not, the floor is as good a place as any.

As the day gets later, people quiet down and the hoarking gets minimal. Then
the kitten starts up. Someone has brought a little kitten on board and that
someone was right behind me. Now, much as I adore kittens, they have their
rightful places and inside a box on a sleeper bus is not one of them. And
this one was intent on making sure that no one slept. It would stay quiet
for a litte while and as soon as it sensed that people were drifting off, it
would start crying for 20 minutes. Then quiet again. Then crying again. I
have rarely felt an urge to wring a tiny little animal's neck as I did on
the trip from Jinghong to Kunming.

In the morning, bleary eyed, stiff from bad sleeping positions and
suffocating from the smoke, I drag my bags off the bus into the confusion of
sound, traffic and people that is Kunming's bus station.