Laying My Bus Life to Rest

I never planned on writing this particular post. I thought I had exhausted everything there was to write about transportation in Southeast Asia. Given that we're not exactly seeing sights or doing anything particularly exciting on buses, I would have thought that these posts would be intensely boring if I even decided to write about them in the first place! Nevertheless, I have discovered that I am completely incapable of sleeping on buses (and when I do begin to nod off, the bus drivers usually takes this as a sign to either stop the bus for a break or have his attendant collect tickets from passengers...both causes for me to wake up.)

So, given my handicap, I find myself with extraordinarily large chunks of time that I can use to admire the scenery or just think...no reading, as that makes me feel like crap.

We'll start with the obvious observations.

1. Bus drivers honk a lot.
I think I mentioned this a bit earlier when talking about our Camry ride between the Cambodian Border and Siem Reap, but bus drivers are much worse. They honk at everything - multiple times. They honk at people walking along the side of the road. They honk at houses for leaning too much. They honk at the sky for being blue.
I actually tried counting the number of times one of our drivers honked in one of our marathon trips and passed out from exhaustion and my complete bewilderment that there were numbers beyond trillions.

2. No bus ride here is complete without a movie ... or let me re-phrase, a video.
Calling what we watch a "movie" would be generous. Our trip from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh was taken up with karaoke of depressed young men sitting in exotic locations (atop waterfalls, in grassy fields that look out over mountains, etc.) while longing for a girl they have lost. None of them are happy, but their insistence on isolating themselves into these remote places, I think, does not help much with their situation.
On that same trip, we watched two martial arts movies: one with Jet Li and one with Bruce Lee. As far as I can tell, despite different characters, both movies dealt with the exact same subject in which a karate prodigy (Li or Lee) leaves his school and returns after having learned about the death of their master - who dies under shady circumstances and thus leads the prodigy to retaliate in a fit of rage to reclaim the honor of his master.
Finally, on our last trip from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City, we watched a most puzzling selection of excerpts from action movies (Terminator, a random Van Dam, and a virtual reality something) while 80s love songs were played in the background. (Early in this viewing session, David turned to me with eyes full of bewilderment and we just hoped that the ride would be smooth).

Which it wasn't.

For the first half of the trip, I tried my absolute best to sleep. I had only had two pieces of toast earlier that morning (a recipe for disaster for my stomach) and I started violently struggling to pass out so I wouldn't have to confront the whims of my stomach. Regardless, our trip on the Cambodian side was spent jolting up and down (I feared my hair was being rubbed off by my head rest). We shifted, reclined, straightened, and stretched in an effort to find solace, but most of our time was spent looking at one another helplessly as we bounced up and down in our seats.
The Vietnamese portion of our trip was much better and there is very little to say of it. It felt like there was a lot less countryside before we entered the sprawling suburbs of HCMC.

Based on first impressions, it seems like a cool city. More motorbikes than I have seen in my entire life. We'll be here for five weeks...it's such a refreshing feeling to know that we are finally getting settled somewhere.

Will write again soon. Miss you all, and hope all is great where you are.