Way back when…before I was out here on the field, I would often read blogs to try to get a glimpse of what life was to be like this year. Every now and then I'd stumble across one of those blogs, about the horrible travel days, and racers experiences on them. This is one of the lesser enticing parts of the race, and I hoped I wouldn't have any of these stories to share. Unfortunately, things happen, or frankly, sh*t happens.
So we left Phnom Pehn, the Cambodian capitol, on Saturday and took a fairly short bus ride across the border of 8 hours and arrived in Ho Chi Mihn city that evening. Then my team was to catch a bus headed north, a three day trip to Vietnam's capitol, Hanoi. We finally worked out a bus ticket on a sleeper bus, and the pictures were all nice, but when we got on…. It was kind of dirty and it got very crowded as we went on with many rude locals, but it wouldn't be the worst, though at the time we thought it was pretty gross. Particularly nasty to me was this place that went under the back of the person in front of you's seat, where you were supposed to put your feet. It was a dark, enclosed plastic box that I named the "foot box". This thing was dark, creepy, and the sort of place where mice, roaches, or other critters might live. Needless to say I didn't put my feet in there.
This first bus ride was about 25 hours, and we arrived about half way in Hoi an, a very nice beach town. We stayed the night and spent the day there beach side, and ate some amazing seafood before catching another bus north. This second bus was nice like the pictures, and had mostly tourists on it. We were very happy and thought the trip would be much smoother from here on…wrong! We rode this bus for only four hours before we had another stop for lunch. Then we thought we'd get on another nice bus. We waited at the bus station as bus after bus drove by and the workers would say, no not that one. Finally this bus rolled up, I'm talking ghetto, jank and we were like you gotta be kidding me. This bus made the first bus look really nice. We reluctantly picked our seats as the dread set in for the next 17 hours we'd spend on it.
Laura, LeAnna, and I like to sit in the back cuz there is more room, and so we don't end up by strange people, but on this bus there was a bathroom in the back by the seats, but we bravely decided to sit there anyways. Once we got comfortable, we noticed a lot of scribbles on the walls… "Get off now!" "The bathroom is a death trap" "Broke down [insert date, there were many, the ,most recent being march 2014]" "Have fun sleeping with maggots and rats" and other encouraging things.
These types of busses will stop for meals and bathroom breaks at these open-air restaurant places that are everywhere here. There's not much selection for food so we ordered rice and egg compete for dinner. I could tell my egg was kind of strange, maybe undercooked or rotten, but its no time to be picky when you don't know how long until you'll eat again, so I ate it like everyone else. A few hours later on the bus I started feeling sick. It might have been the weird egg, or maybe something else, but I had full on nausea. I tried to sleep so it would go away. Next thing I know, I woke up abruptly, climbed quickly over Laura and LeAnna's legs to the toilet, but the smell was so bad I grabbed the trash bag and hurled. However this wasn't just any hurl, but the most violent puke I have ever had in my life. It was horrible. Now I would be the nasty girl who threw up 🙁 Then, to make matters worse, I had to go number two right after, which meant climbing into that tiny closet of a bathroom, where I couldn't stand up all the way and the door didn't latch. One bump throws the door open and everyone sees you doing your business!! Luckily, everyone was asleep while I was doing mine. I finally make it out of there and lay down, only for my stomach to still be hating me. I drank water to try and stay hydrated, but it wasn't twenty minutes later that I ralphed up all that too. I still felt bad and one last time my body tried to expel whatever badness was left, but my poor stomach was already all empty, and so I just sobbed and waited until it finally stopped.
This all happened around 5 in the morning, and we were set to arrive around 6:30, but when 6:30 rolled around, we were still in the middle of nowhere. My only comfort during that time was that if it was only one more hour, I could make it. My sanity wavered as time went on and we didn't arrive. The air conditioner had also broken sometime in the night so it was very hot, smelled funny, and I was feeling horrible. I contemplated many things during that time but finally just tried to sleep it out.
We finally arrived around 9 that morning, and made our way to our house. I don't know if a shower ever felt so good, on top of that, the house was super nice, and the air conditioners work great!
So I did live to tell the tale, although at the time I just wanted to die. Sometimes "Bob" gives you just the strength you need to face your life at that time, and he really got me though on this one.
PS Hanoi is the prettiest, nicest, and cleanest Asian city I have been to thus far. We really like being here!!
