From somewhere between Korat and Khon Kaen, Thailand: "Thai Efficiency..A Bus Story," by Ryan

This story originally appeared on Adventure Thailand.  This website no longer exists.  A copy of the original story appears below.


On was on my way from Korat to Khon Kaen, two cities located in Esan, not too far away in distance, but in Thai public transportation, round 6 hours from my village in Kalasin. I boarded the bus, a typical air conditioned Baw-kaw-saw bus built around the time when Peace Corps Volunteers were first coming to Thailand. I sat myself in the rear of the bus where a couple of monks and Thai soldiers sat. As the bus got going I noticed a peculiar rumbling sound on top of the constant blast of karaoke music. It was a very loud clanking, a sound that would have worried me, but because of the obvious mileage on this bus I assumed this was just a normal well used bus sound.

The bus took off and like all baw-kaw-saw public transportation buses we stopped for every person on the side of the highway and at every bus stop to pick up even more people. The buses felt like a busy cafeteria during a lunch rush; constantly filling up to the brink and quickly emptying. As more people came onto the bus the ticket man squeezed by passengers, sometimes climbing over seats to get collect everyone’s bus fare. This continued for the first 45 minutes of the ride, eventually leveling off to an equal person to seat ratio.

The clanking noise continued the whole way. Suddenly, as I was deep entranced into a novel that I was reading, the clanking came to a sudden burst of squeaks, groans, and thumps and then a sudden BOOM! I thought it was a tire that had burst at first. The once smooth, but noisy ride became rather silent, but bumpy and then came to immediate halt. The driver barley made it to the shoulder of the road when the bus had stopped. People sat contently at first, not really knowing what to do, or if this was going to be a long ordeal, or a quick fix. A few people stood up to the windows to get a look at what was going on outside, but the majority of the passengers remained in their seats as I did. It didn’t take long before everyone became restless. The driver turned off the engine and it was only a matter of a few minutes before the rather cool bus turned into a sweltering sauna. The driver boarded the bus and told everyone to gather their belonging and get off. I was a bit surprised at this. I just figured they would replace the tire and we would be on our way.

When everyone was off the bus the driver instructed us to wait on the side of the road, behind the bus, as another bus would come to pick us up. At this time I became very curious to why this wasn’t a quick fix. When the driver walked by me I asked what he problem was. He gave a big smile and described something that had broken. We squatted down together near the middle of the bus and he pointed his finger at the obvious source of the problem. I immediately saw the axle that had completely broke in half. After seeing the axle I was amazed that the driver hadn’t lost control of the bus and ran it off the road. It was in serious disrepair.

As we waited for a bus to come pick us up I was imagining how long it might take. Since things here usually take much longer than ‘normal’, but then again I am often amazed how fast some things here do happen. Not more than 10 minutes passed bye before another, almost identical bus from the same bus company came to a screaming halt just in front of our broken down heap. The two drivers talked for a few minutes. I assumed that they were discussing what to do and how to get all these passengers on our way. The bus that had stopped was as full as our bus that we had been on, with probably more people standing in the aisles. Soon the drivers waived us to the bus and told us to get on board. I waited to be the last on board, watching in amazement as everyone squeeze into the narrow aisle of the already full bus. I wasn’t too excited to be stuck in the thick of it. In under a minute the bus once again was packed to complete capacity. I was shocked that we could merge two over crowded busses into one. Only in Thailand, or Africa, or Burma…well, anywhere outside of Europe or America would this ever happen. Safety matters aside and personal space tossed to the curb, the bus sped away in that type of Thai efficiency that I have become blindly accustomed to over the past two years.