After four months in Asia, your expectations on travel days are pretty low.
We have gotten used to long bus rides (anything less than 22 hours is considered short), peeing on the side of the road, no A/C, and no food given (even on some long airplane rides).
Our bus ride from Bangkok to Kohn Kaen was the exception in every way.
We boarded the bus and Hillary (Hill) and I were assigned to the back row.
The woman who showed us to our seats was dressed like a flight attendant, so we thought we were on an airplane. And we basically were!
The first amazing discovery that we made was that there was a bathroom on board!!!! In all five Asian countries we have been to so far, this was the first bus with a bathroom (Even the overnight sleeper buses don’t have them…)
Second amazing discovery was that the seats reclined really far back! That was discovered partially on accident when Hill scared herself by falling a bit too far back a bit too fast. And THEN we discovered our seats were actually massage chairs.
SAY WHAT!?
We don’t even have that kind of luxury in America! To be fair though, when the bus was moving, you could no longer feel the massage chair because the motion of the bus was enough of a massage.
Hill and I were joking that since the woman on board looked like a flight attendant, that we should be given a drink and some peanuts. Not five minutes later and we got our wish!! We couldn’t believe that we were literally being fed on a bus. Serious luxury. We were also given a blanket and water bottle. Maybe we really were on an airplane!
The only sad thing was that there was no wifi on this bus (our last form of transportation was a 10 passenger van which had wifi so we assumed this bus would as well). But no problem! We just decided to sit back and watch FF6 that was playing on the tv screens in the bus….until we realized it was only going to be in Thai with no subtitles. Back to playing solitaire I guess.
All other long bus rides we have taken have gone through many stops for bathroom breaks and lunch. Just as my lunch hunger was getting to me, the lovely bus attendant brought out lunch to us. I’ve never been more amazed. And it was delicious too! Rice and chicken and cucumber. Good job Asia.
The only downside to the bus ride was that we literally had no clue as to how long it would be. We assumed five hours but it turned out to be much closer to nine :/
But praise the Lord we made it to our destination safely and our lovely hosts were there waiting for us!
God has kept us very safe on travel days and I pray He will continue to do so.
Some of these things may seem silly, but you truly learn to appreciate the small things after leaving America.
Travel days in Asia are always an adventure so I can’t wait to see what Europe will have in store for us next month!
