Inle to Bagan (THE BUS JOURNEY)

So again it was time to leave, booked our bus to Bagan!  It wasn’t until the evening so we found a great little French café, and pretty much spent the whole day drinking hot drinks to try and stay warm, eating croissants, and pasta and generally just chilling and chatting. 

So the bus journey… oh my god what a journey… another trip that will stay much with us the same as “The Crossing”.  We got on the bus, and by now we where well use to the fact that these trips where always cold, so we had already dressed with trousers and jumpers… As soon as we stepped onto the bus, you straight away saw those already on, shivering and wrapped up in every available clothes they had… It was like stepping into a walk in freezer, while being sat underneath the chiller unit blasting freezing air at you for the entire journey.  

I attempted on three occasions to speak to the driver who just grunted at me and waved me away.  To try and stem the blast of artic air we managed to wedge a top into one of the blowers, leaving us with just one firing freezing air down our necks…  This on its own would have been enough to make a long journey miserable, but then add into the mix a driver with a seriously heavy right foot, on the accelerator or the brakes… then add to this 2 hours’ worth of the harshest and steepest switch backs, lurching us all side to side, back and forward, up and down… passenger in front and behind throwing up… and lets not forget the spitting!  

Wrapping up from the artic wind blast on the coach!! 

With little bags on the back of every seat to collect this red mucus with its wicked stench.  So there we are freezing with every layer we own on, rolling side to side desperately trying to hold our own food down, to the chorus of puking noises, and retching, hacking & spitting, with a stench of sick and bile floating through the bus. 

Luckily and huge thanks to Ems sickness pills we manage to fall asleep… Just.  After what honestly feels like a week of travel we arrive at Bagan, 10 hours of travelling.  We had already booked our hostel and we had been told that we would be picked up from the bus, however we where 20 mins early.  So as the bus comes to a stop we can already hear the clamouring of the tuk tuk drivers (with a difference), shouting to be off service.  Once again they make the drivers in Cambodia look like saints, and Thailand look like angels!! As we keep getting asked, our no’s slowly get less polite and much aggressive, must take the hint but a few persist, and then… a shout goes up, your ride is here… and ride it is, into sight trundles a small horse and its wooded trailer, the sort you could properly imagine the peasants in medieval times travelling on… it was absolutely incredible and an amazing end to what was the most memorable journey of our trip!!