I hate busses
Jul 24th, 2007 by Peter
18th July 2007 Harbin/Yilan
7.00am and we were awake. Actually I’ve been awake a number of times. I had slept just as bad as the day before and had feverish dreams to booth. Some people dream about monsters, dragons, devils, the undead, but I dream about. Ronaldinho. Ok – he’s a cool soccer player, but I just can’t stand looking at him. It was horrible. He was overjoyed and followed me around a maze. Mix ‘overjoyed’ and ‘Ronaldinho’ and you’ll get lots of smiling and laughing. Those of you who have seen him close up and feel like me about him will get my point.
We spent 1½ hour getting up. I said goodbye to the husband who had to go to work. Nice guy and happy to have met him. C made up for the lost years of talking to her friend oldskool on the bed. Just like it was supposed to be. I, on the other hand, was feeling pretty bad. Not as bad as the day before, but definitely not well enough to do anything else but sleep. But sleep I couldn’t. My back, shoulders and hips were wasted from sleeping on the floor, and I was feeling very warm and couldn’t really sweat.
C and her friend left for work and shopping, so I jumped at the chance to sleep in a real bed. I slept a bit, but not that much. The noise from the street was simply too annoying and it was too warm to close the windows. The vendors on bicycles were shouting constantly to advertise their service or product. There was a constant honking and talking/shouting from the street that is everyday China. Stuff I would normally be able to ignore by now, but I was ill and my tolerance level was lowered.
C returned at 1.00pm with more goods. Some books on “fancyfying” nails, random cheap stuff and 2 pairs of pants for me. The pants, as could be expected, were too tight. In the morning I had told C that we shouldn’t buy pants until we got to Yilan again, as I was in no mood to go shopping with a fever and Yilan had just as good and cheap shops. But I might as well have spoken to a wooden door. C tried guessing my size and was inches off.
2.00pm and we were out the door as we had to catch a bus 1 hour later. C left some fresh fruits and a thank-you note for her friends.
We took a cab to the bus station, close to where C also bought the pants. C wanted to return the pants (I thought), so I agreed on a little walk even tough I was clearly not feeling that well. When we entered the shop I realized that she expected me to try some new pairs instead, which I declined. Sorry to say so, but I was feeling like shit. The 2 minutes we stood still in the air-conditioned mall was enough for me to cold-sweat like crazy down my back. C was discontent, but winged it and changed the pants to some bigger ones. We were back to the bus station and ready to board. Outside in the gentle breeze I felt a bit better again.
In the bus the air-condition was great. Only had one problem: You couldn’t turn it off. The Chinese busses I’ve tried all suck. They are designed by crappy designers, made by crappy material and. well – basically I guess they are just crap. The valve for the air-condition on 95% of all vents were broken due to poor plastic quality and lousy design. You may not have to be a rocket-scientist to know that this would be a big problem for a fever ridden dude like me. After 1 hour I was freezing. Stuffing napkins in the bloody hole only helped stop the draft, but I was already stricken with the fever chills again and it wouldn’t stop.
That bus ride gets a shared number one on being the worst bus rides I’ve had ever. Its companion is the one I took a few days before a 3.00am. This time my chills were helped on the way by the airing of a Chinese Craptacular on the bus’s TV screen. The voice was cranked up, so the noise got tweaked over. The transmission was also frequently bad, making it even more annoying.
One thing is not being able to understand the spoken words, but you don’t have to understand Chinese to know that it was “banana-peel-humor” at its worst. When 2 men uses 10 minutes on “Miauwing” at each other in different pitches, while making idiotic faces and postures its pretty obvious, right? I’m sure it was famous actors here, but I already hate them. I was cold and ill. The sound sucked, they sucked: ergo the show sucked. It was a hell-ride for sure.
Back in Yilan we jumped into a taxi and headed home. I was in worse condition than when I was in Harbin, but I actually expected that. Somehow C didn’t. It was only 7.30pm and I was already turning in. C nursed me with a wet towel and wanted me to go to a doctor, but I politely said “No thanks”. I didn’t want to, since I already knew why I was Ill. I was too exhausted from many weeks of walking and had slept too little and too bad for 3 days. Then to top it off, I finally had to pay and decided to thank Mr. Flu with a 4 hours bus ride with sucky air-condition. It had to worsen and what I needed was some days of rest and some nights of good sleep. I just hoped the bus ride hadn’t made it so bad that I needed medication.