"A Thai bus ride up-country" by Bruce Melville

A Thai Bus Ride Up-Country
Bruce Melville c.1967

About 3:00 o’clock one afternoon I was accosted in the Chieng Rai market by a boy who asked if I was going to Thoeng. When I said yes, he added that the last bus for the day was about to leave. Well, by now I knew the bus schedule pretty well, and I was planning to catch the last large bus (belonging to another company), which left at 4:00. I assumed the fellow was just drumming up business. But, lo, when I arrived at the bus station, I was told there were no more buses to Thoeng that day. The boy had attempted to be helpful, and I had not believed him.

This left me with two alternatives: either get a hotel room for the night, which seemed like an unnecessary expense, or attempt to find one of those matchbox-like “buses” bound for Thoeng, something I had previously avoided. I decided to try the latter alternative first and headed back to the market area from which these dilapidated public carriers depart.

I enquired at one bus. Some people told me it was going to Thoeng; others said it was not. But this, on second look, seemed irrelevant because the bus already contained twice its intended load of people and other cargo. Besides, with that bulge in its rear tire it couldn’t possibly go far without a blowout.

The driver of another bus said he intended to go to Payao, but would go to Thoeng if he could get some more passengers. So I climbed, somewhat uneasily, into his little wagon and became his first customer. By 4:30, two or three more passengers had been attracted and a fairly good sized pig in a rickety basket was hoisted to the roof despite its protests. Around 5:00 the bus was filling nicely, and I, as the honored passenger, was invited into the front seat. I accepted. The driver climbed in and tried to start up. The engine turned over, but didn’t fire. Repeated attempts at this succeeded only in exhausting the battery. This didn’t seem to bother him. In fact, efforts to recruit passengers were increased. The bus started rolling, but only because several people were pushing it. The driver popped the clutch, the engine started, and we chugged out of the market at 5:15.

The sight of a bus making preparations to depart must have had a sudden attraction, for I could hardly see daylight through the people in the back of the bus. We hadn’t gone far when we pulled into a mill. Everyone except me got out. Not knowing what was going on, I was about to get out too, but the driver told me to stay seated. The reason for all this became clear when they began to fill the area where everyone had been sitting with 60 kg. sacks of rice. One of my packages was buried beneath the rice, but I chose to worry about that later. The passengers climbed back aboard again and took positions atop the sacks. We made one more stop a bit further down the road. I’m not sure what or who was put on or off there.

Sitting in the front offers an improved view and the comfort of a church pew with a thin cushion. The difference is that while most churches are stationary, we were moving, and in such a manner that we hit nearly every chuck-hole on a very bumpy road. The front seat also allows for closer assessment of the mechanical state of the vehicle. The gauges indicated that the engine was overheated and the gas tank was empty, but I thought maybe they were broken like the speedometer. The battery was recharging with such fury that the ammeter leads glowed red occasionally and burnt the insulation back a bit.

On the average, six full pumps of the brake pedal were required before any braking power appeared. The gas pedal tended to be sticky, and the clutch showed the fatigue caused by a driver who consistently resists downshifting—a common characteristic of Thai drivers. The air horns were silent due to a broken air line. Air horns I can very well do without, but for a Thai to have to rely on an ordinary electric horn is to measurably decrease his status.

As it began to rain, I noticed that our bus was not equipped with windshield wipers. After a while, I smelled something hot and saw smoke coming from under the hood. This was sufficiently serious to have us stop and take a look. We were lucky—we were only out of water, and there was lots of that around. Soon we were on our way again, but our progress had been slow and darkness was creeping up on us. We did have headlights, but something was loose and they flickered on and off. The driver did away with this annoyance by turning them off altogether. But as it got darker still, he realized this wouldn’t do. A couple fellows got out and tinkered under the hood. A short stretch of bumpy road made it clear that the trouble had not been cured, so this time three junior mechanics, armed only with a strip of cloth torn from the driver’s all-purpose rag got under the truck.

Whatever they did pretty well corrected the trouble, and it had to be bound up only once more as we approached the stretch of road that winds through the mountains. Somewhere past the halfway mark, we stopped at a house to unload the sacks of rice. The dislocation of passengers was minimal because most (including the pig) had already reached their destination. When we were ready to go on again, I checked for my package which had been under the sacks and now found it missing. I thought some passenger had appropriated it, but I asked anyway. Immediately one of the remaining passengers got out and ran back to the house and returned with the package. You need only ask a Thai for assistance and he will jump to help you.

The bus was now much lighter and moved a bit faster. The remainder of the trip was uneventful and there was nothing to do but think of the dangers of traveling on those roads after dark in the first place. At 8:15—having traveled about 40 miles in three hours—I stepped out in front of the temple across the street from where I lived, not a little surprised to have made it home.