"The more I travel in Thailand, the more I long for the NYC transportation system, which is sad.” This is a text message I sent my good friend and fellow PCV, Lizzy this weekend. And it’s basically because the transportation system in Thailand, if you could even call it a system, can drive someone nuts! When I lived in NYC, everybody complained about the MTA: ugh, services are cut again, the prices are up, the trains are running all screwed up, or the trains are filthy, or….there was always something to complain about. But, my travels this weekend made me long for a NYC subway. Ok, I live in Esan which means I’m far away from everything. The overnight buses are probably the greatest invention because, if you have to travel for 12 hours you might as well do it at night, sleep and not waste a day on a bus. So, in some cases, the bus transportation here is a beautiful thing. But, the ‘city’ buses are different story….here it is:
My friend and fellow PCV, Meechee and I are at the bus station in my provincial capital so we can go to our friend and fellow PCV, Kyle’s house. Kyle was hosting a Mexican night with delicious Mexican food, fun and friends. So, shall I preface that not only am I excited to get there, I forgot my book leaving me with nothing to keep me busy on the supposed short bus ride.
Meechee and I wait 1 hour for the 2pm ‘city bus’ that is clearly running on what us PCV’s like to call ‘Thai time’ because the bus actually leaves at 2:20pm. Tallied wait time: 1 hour and 20 minutes.
We drive around the block, yes folks, around the block to another bus stop to pick up waiting commuters. My bus driver, let’s call him Bob, has a few friends who own the shop right by the bus stop. Well, of course Bob has to get out and go hang out with this friend of his….God forbid Bob picks up the commuters and carries on his merry way. But no, we must stop for approximately 12 minutes and sit there while Bob shoots the shit. Total tallied time: 1 hour and 32 minutes.
This week, there is a festival in my provincial capital which means markets. We drove through the market at a speed in which a tour bus would take a group of tourists through a new place. One would think that the bus driver never saw a market before, at a festival he has probably seen every year for his entire life. Not to mention that every market in Thailand has the same stuff. Bus driver Bob, must you drive 1 mph with your head out the window as though you’ve never seen anything this exciting before? Takes what feels like an eternity to get to the next bus stop. Total tallied time: approximately 1 hour and 42 minutes.
Bus stop #2: well, now it’s been about 17 minutes since Bus Driver Bob has had a cigarette, so it only makes sense that he would get out at the stop to have a smoke. All Thai people know each other, so he is talking to somebody at the bus stop, probably his cousin, and they are looking at a magazine together. So Bob finishes the cigarette and proceeds to review the magazine with cuz. I’m staring this man down about to take over the wheel and drive ourselves there, and then he finally gets back to business and we continue: Total tallied time: approximately 1 hour and 57 minutes.
We finally get out of the city after Bob’s dilly dallying and me wanting to scream. We are on the main road and Bob is seriously crawling….people, the man is driving way too slow for me to remain sane on this trip. But somehow I find some calm in me, and tell myself that at least we are moving. I suck it up and reside to the fact that I lost this battle.
Thai people rarely get upset about things, but I often wonder if that’s sometimes a cover up. Because some of the commuters were looking around, wondering where Bob was, why weren’t we driving, etc, but didn’t look nearly as crazed as I did and certainly didn’t say anything. Could you imagine a NYC bus driver stopping in the middle of a route to smoke a cig, hang out with a friend for 15 minutes or read a magazine with his cousin? No, never, not in a million years. In NY, people would have been all over that bus driver, but not in Thailand. People don’t do that here, meaning, they don’t complain or get involved in any kind of confrontation period….they just let it happen and let it be. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it or if I’ll ever fully adjust. Sometimes, you can take a girl out of NY, but you just can’t take NY out of the girl.
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