How NOT to win friends and influence people. (Based on real first time encounters with people)

1. “Lucky we're all British in here, I can't stand Americans. (I'm not British) “
2. “Who wants to make a bet the I'll be the loudest snorer tonight.“
3. Unidentified person: “What have you been doing?“
                            Me: “I was teaching in Georgia the country."
                             UI:  “Oh they started that war they lost against Russia a few years ago."  
4.  “I just throw it out there, I hate Chinese people and I hate Italians.“
5. “Where in America are you from?“ (never assume)
6. “I guess you're kind of pretty.“
7. I spelt my name phonetically for someone who didn't speak English as a first language. Someone I met the night before corrected me and spelt it correctly. The person I was originally talking to, then looked at me like a was a psycho.
8. Anyone who sits on the aisle seat on the bus/train, so nobody can sit next to them. Not based on a first time encounter, but I'm on the bus and watching somebody do it, so annoying. 

The truth about long haul buses

It's so much cheaper and it only takes a little bit longer, this is going to be great, taking the bus is a great idea.

Wrong

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Buses operate with their own special kind of Murphy's law. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong and then some. Forget about sitting back, relaxing and enjoying the view. You will be driven to tears by someone you have never met and will never see again in your life, you will arrive in your destination feeling haggard and drawn, wishing you had just stayed home in bed curled up in the foetal position with a good book. It sounds more enjoyable then what you are about to put yourself through; if you decide to solider on through what will  be an obvious travesty, here are some simple rules, guidelines to prepare yourself for what you are about to embark on.

1. You will NEVER be comfortable. You've brought an inflatable neck pillow, you have worn layers to prepared for whatever temperature the bus decides to be, Ipod is charge, book at the ready. NO. This bus runs by it's own rules, the temperature will be scorching followed be an Arctic breeze that will blow through the bus every 20 minutes for the next eight hours. You WILL hit every pot hole possible, even when there isn't any, the driver will swerve off the road just to make it that little bit more uncomfortable.
2. There will be a douche in front of you, next to you and behind you. Any combination or all three at once. They will kick your chair at random intervals and often just as you have started to drift off to sleep, they will breath to loudly and even worse than that when you can feel them breathing on the back of your neck.
3. There will never be enough bathroom breaks. I won't drink any liquid in the hours leading up to the bus ride, nothing is worse than needing to use the loo on a long bus ride. But it's like your bladder knows you have settled in for the long run and decides this will be the perfect punishment for all the late night drinking sessions. You use the bathroom each time the bus stops but back on the bus and an hour in, you need to go again and looking around at all the sleeping passengers you know that it will be a while before you get your chance.
4. You won't time your snack eating well, and finish them way too early into the trip. You think you have enough to sustain yourself through out the trip, wrong. You're bored, so once you start you won't stop eating – leaving you hungry for the remaining hours of your trip.
5. You will encounter the jerks of public transport – they are on all and any forms of public transport: noisy cell phone douche, crying kids with parents who don't do anything, the sweaty slob, the smelly person, the general crazy who only wants to talk to you, and the drunk who will be on the verge of puking for the entire trip. Don't look for them, just know they are there, waiting for that seat next to you to become vacant so they can come and regale you with stories you don't care about. 
6. You will touch something gross: be it gum, a used tissue or just general filth. It's there and you will put your hand in it.
7. The seat you choose will be broken in some way. You spy a seat in the yonder, it looks too good to be true, no children around, plenty of leg room. But it won't be until your at least 15 minutes into the journey, that you realise it's broken: it won't recline, the tray table has snapped off, the cushion is wet with an unknown liquid, somehow it's not properly attached to the ground and you will go flying at every corner. (trust me, it's happened to me)
8. The traffic will only ever be bad if you are in a rush. This one is just a given.
9. You will never be prepared when it is your stop and everyone will look at yo like you are holding up the trip. You've known for the entire journey that your bus will arrive at the station at approximately 0700, you packed your belongings ready to go at 0650, but still when you pull into the station you are the last one off, struggling to put your jacket on and your luggage off without falling down the incredibly narrow stair case.
10. The music will be some sort of fusion between Chinese opera, hardcore drum and bass and Justin Beiber. It will be too loud, you can't drown it out and if you do manage to fall asleep you will here it in your dreams and wake up in a panic thinking all of your worst nightmares have come true.

NB: Buses with WIFI are fantastic.  

Crazies on the bus. Part 2

It has happened. Not once, not twice, but thrice times I have been vomited next to on public transport. The first two were small children and the third was a middle aged man.

Berat, Albania

1. I will start with the middle aged man because that occurred last night and is still fresh in my mind. The thing I don't understand is, he was a local adult, he could speak the same language as the driver. Why didn't he alert the driver to the fact he was feeling unwell? He could have pulled over calmly and this man could eject the contents of his stomach into some shrubbery instead into a plastic bag less than a metre from me. But alas, it wasn't until after he had spewed, that the bus stopped. 
2. The second time. I had probably one of the worse hangover I have ever had in my life. I was supposed to hitch hike with my friend back home, but I just wasn't feeling up to it so I decided to catch a bus. (This was the day after I got the blood clot, a story for another day.) The driver made me take the seat right at the front, in between a boy in his late teens and a woman with a two year old daughter. Before we left the mother gave her child a bottle of coke and this cake thing that is the equivalent of a twinkie. About two hours into a five hour bus ride, this little girl was sick. All over her mother, the floor and the chair. The smell was vile, I probably would have retched even if I wasn't hungover. This time the bus did not stop, we waited until the designated rest period. I entirely blame the mother in this instance. That was way too much sugar for a child.
3. Which brings me to the first time someone vomited next to me on a bus. It was a 12 hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh City to Nha Trang, during the day, this was not some cushy sleeper bus. I was with my sister who has the ability to sleep through anything so she was not phased by anything that was going on around us. Three hours into the journey a young family hoped on to the bus, two children under seven and a baby. The baby screamed - non-stop for five hours. The parents passed it around the bus and tried to make it hush but nothing seemed to work. Then it (I say it because it was wearing gender neutral colours) vomited. Everywhere. I don't know how it was possible for such a little person to create so much mess. But it was hideous, I started retching. Elisha told me to move away from it if it was going to make me sick. I would have had to step in it to get away. So I closed my eyes and dreamed of the beach. It will never be known if the child vomited because it screamed for five hours, or if it screamed for five hours because it was already sick. 

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

I don't remember the sun setting, ever, and especially not when I'm on buses. I don't know what I am so engrossed in that I don't notice a giant orb dipping into the ocean or sneaking away behind the mountains. I hope on and then the next time I think about it darkness has fallen.

Which brings me to my main point.

I don't think is possible or me to catch a long distance bus ride without their being an insane person somewhere along the journey. What brought me to this conclusion was today on what should have been a three hour (it was six) ride into Macedonia there was an older woman who was yelled at my chair companion. I'm normally the first person to hate the person I'm sitting next to. Something about being confined in such a small place with a person you have never met before and have no desire to talk to (there is exceptions leads me to blind hatred for no explainable reason. I think the reason I like this one is because she didn't make me take assigned seat 41, the window seat; the worst seat. But this older woman in the coat that made her  look like she had skinned a Labrador had the same seat number as one of us, there was 30 empty seats though so it made no sense for to be yelling and screaming about it. The conductor told her the what I'm sure is the Serbian equivalent of "sit down and shut up."

But the award for craziest bus passenger goes to a woman on the overnight from Ankara to Sarpi. Her "friend" (pretty sure this woman was just another crazy) had trouble getting her on to the bus to begin with, I personally think this was the sign that we should have just left her behind. Every time the bus would stop she would scream and fight her way off and refuse to get back on. Eventually her friend would coax her back on and she would, settled and when the bus was moving she was silent.

I don't know where she went to from Sarpi... nor do I care to know.

Niš Fortress, Niš, Serbia