The Back of the Bus

I had lunch with my friend T today. T is a vivacious 30-something, originally from Mexico, now working in the horrific California mortgage industry in southern California. T has five kids and is married to a white guy. No matter how open-minded folks pretend to be, you just can't escape the cultural differences between a woman who grew up in Mexico and a WASP from the upper-middle class. This, of course, makes for interesting lunch rants during which we discuss the idiosyncracies of our very different cultures.

The lunch discussion today was about bus travel in Mexico. T wants to take the family to Mexico to visit her family. Flying seven people would cost an arm and a leg so T decided to check into tour buses. Some of you may be thinking, a Mexican tour bus, no way! Well, that is exactly what T's husband said when she proposed the idea. He has the common belief that the bus would be filled with peasants in straw hats and houarachi sandals, the top of the bus laden with chicken coops and livestock. The good news is that T and her husband compromised and decided piling everyone into the family SUV and driving the 28 hours themselves would be the best answer. Sounds excruciating to me, especially with five kids aged 2 to 17. The conversation reminded me of my own travels in the less-than-luxurious buses of a developing country...

Back in my days in China I did quite a bit of traveling throughout the region. Of course, I was living off a small stipend from the university and the local infrastructure was severely lacking so I often found myself on communist-run tour buses. I'm talking about the kind you'd ride as a kid - with low-backed bench seats, no facilities, no seatbelts, no shocks, no overhead compartment. There is nothing like a good old-fashioned kidney-jarring jaunt through the backroads of China with a guy in a Mao suit at the helm.

In a country with so many people, you can guess that the buses are generally packed to capacity. In the city buses it is always "butts-to-nuts" as they say in the military - standing room only, people pressed against eachother like sardines. of course, I was too young and dumb to know better so during my first month or two there I decided to take the bus to a "resort" on a lake that was about eight hours from my home. I went to the bus station, figured out which bus headed that general direction, bought my ticket (paid twice what the locals would, but 80 cents still wasn't bad), and hopped on the bus. When I got on the bus I was surprised no one was in the back two rows. I thought I had scored big time. I hustled to the back of the bus and claimed a prime window seat in the back. The bus filled and still no one went back that far. I figured they were scared of me, which happened more than you would think during my travels as many people in the coutnryside had never seen a person with fair features. I thought nothing of it as the bus choked to a start and began to roll and I settled into my own prime seat for the long journey.

Everything was fine for the first hour or two. Then a man stood up and headed back toward me. I figured he needed more room and wanted one of the prime seats. I was even a bit pleased that a local would find the courage to approach this foreign heathen. He made his way down the aisle and I smiled my biggest smile at him. He stared at me quizzically. then bent down and flipped the floor board in the aisle up on a hinge so it leaned toward the front of the bus. This revealed the axle and road below. He looked directly at me for a minute and I turned to look out the window as if this behavior were normal. He proceeded to lower his pants, pull out his willy and urinate through the open floorboard space. I tried to look away but was in awe. He finished his business, shook off, put the board down, and went back to his seat. Thus began the procession of passengers to the bus bathroom, of which I had a full view. I sunk into my seat and realized it was going to be a much longer journey than I had ever imagined. Add to that the fact that the bus never stopped and there was no way I was going to bare my white assets to the bus passengers and you can imagine how miserable the trip was.

Needless to say I have never since secured the back seat in a bus in any country.