I now have a new “interesting fact about yourself” line. It will probably go something like this:
I once rode an 8-hour bus for 43 hours.
It seems as though my charmed traveler aura has reached its demise. With an extra day in the Philippines to kill before meeting up with a friend in El Nido, I decided I’d be able to land in Manila, head straight to the bus station for an overnight bus up to Banaue to catch a glimpse of the grandiose rice terraces, then catch the night bus back to Manila, and on to the airport for my connecting flight. Seemed easy enough.
Sometime around 6am, as the tropical sun began beating through my window, I noticed the bus was no longer moving. After waiting for my legs to stop tingling from being crammed into the seat made for perhaps a normal sized Filipino man, but definitely not a western bloke like myself, I stood up to confusion. Traffic seemed to all be facing the same direction, save for the sporadic, over-occupied motorbike running in the opposite direction. In addition to that, the two lane road was somehow filled with buses, semis, and cars 4-wide.
By 7 am it was sweltering, and the freezing cold aircon I’d cursed during the night seemed to stop working once the sun came up. Convenient. I decided to try to sleep more, assuming this was normal and that we would arrive eventually, perhaps a couple hours late. Not to worry, I’m a pro at accelerated sight-seeing. By noon we’d moved about 100 meters, so I figured it was about time to get out to stretch my legs and survey the situation. There were mixed reports of a truck turned over in the road that was causing the delay. Surely this could be taken care quick enough, but what I couldn’t understand was why traffic was stopped in the other direction as well, far beyond the scene of the accident. At this point, I made an effort to soak in the scene around me: young boys riding on top of semi-trucks, hanging off of buses, motorbikes stacked 4 to 5 deep, and buses that looked even less comfortable and more crammed than mine. Everyone seemed happy enough though, so this must be normal.
I walked until I was too hot, and probably sunburned, and a bit hungry after missing out on the last serving of white rice and glazed mystery meat at the roadside bodega, before running back to the bus as engines began to start. We were finally on our way.
For about 5 minutes.
15 hours into the bus ride, we reached the source of the delay. We sat for another hour in front of a small patch of road work with nobody holding the Stop-Go sign. The two-lane road turned to one lane for no more than 100 meters. That’s it. I passed by expecting to find a large truck turned over, but no. Just a small patch of unpaved road with nobody working on it. Right.
An afternoon monsoon and half the journey still ahead, we arrived in Banaue well past nightfall, just in time for me to walk outside to stretch my legs and get right back on the same exact bus to go back to Manila, to hopefully catch my flight. I sacrificed seeing the terraces, but at least I wouldn’t miss my flight, as I still had about a 5-hour margin to make it back in time.
I should have known better.
To spare everyone the pain of reading through more cycles of sweating, freezing, stopping, and starving, suffice to say I didn’t make my flight, as the bus back took even longer than the bus to get there. Staying in busy, sweaty, dirty Manila for the night was only slightly more enjoyable than the 43 hours on the bus, but I made it out alive, relieved to finally be sitting on my comfy plane ride to paradise the next morning.
I have to admit, up to this point, I’ve always been slightly arrogant about jam-packed itineraries, making connections, and everything more or less working itself out for the best. As it stands now, though, in the past few days I’ve lost a jacket, a travel pillow, my Under-Armor, my hat, left my sandals on a remote island beach (they were recovered), had those same sandals stolen (though I did track them down and steal them back. You can only run and hide for so long on a Thai island), cracked my glasses, gave myself a mild hernia, wasted multiple days in undesirable cities, battled stomach pangs, been cussed out by a taxi driver, and breathed enough exhaust fumes to make a California environmentalist turn in their grave.
So much for sunshine and roses…