The Cargo Hold (aka - a Laos Bus)

We've already spent many hours traveling in Laos -- I don't know what it is about this country... the slow pace? the relative lack of modernity? I don't know why the clock seems to tick slower...and the tocks seems to take longer. It makes for a long journey, especially on a bus.

Here, the bus is more like a cargo ship, loaded up with all kinds of live animals and boxes and baskets and bags; goods moving from one town to another, one market to the next. A man shows us the contents of a cardboard box. Inside, there is a giant catfish. "Can live for 5 hours," he tells us as he slides the box down the aisle. Seconds later, another man appears to be stuffing a handful of live chickens into the luggage well.

The people on board the bus are more like a footnote to the excursion -- it's a lucky thing the busses are manufactured with seats or people might never actually get into the bus (it would be loaded from floor to ceiling).

On one trip, the entire aisle was filled with large, 50-pound sacks of rice. There must have been 24 of them stacked 3-deep, forcing people to walk the length of the bus in a stoop so as not to hit their head on the ceiling -- their feet were level with my knees and made a squishing sound as they passed by. Some people started to use the rice sack stack as a sort of coffee table, placing their snacks and drinks upon it -- but this ended quickly when the bus seats were full and new passengers were forced to sit upon the uncomfortable rice sack stack. No-one ever complained, though -- human comfort is something people don't seem to pay any attention to. We are just like rice sacks, being transported from one town to the next.