I arrived in Quy Nhơn yesterday.
Nothing happened as I thought when I wrote yesterday’s post.
The bus leaves at three o’clock
Around 10 am I checked how I was going to get to the next town. I realized that it was 323 km. 6 hours, I immediately said to myself. Then the ticket purchasing app gave me this prediction.
I also asked my accommodation provider what options he could offer. He also offered a bus for a similar price, but this had the advantage that someone would come to pick me up.
We started looking at the options there, whether it was a 2-row or 3-row sleeper bus. The 2-row is more comfortable, so it’s 100,000 more expensive. In the end, I decided to take this one. The bus leaves at one o’clock.
Then an hour later I got the information that this bus was full. The next one leaves at three o’clock. That’s fine with me.
Then a little later I got another information that it would be a minibus. The price stayed the same, of course. LOL. Well, maybe it would be better if I didn’t travel on a recumbent bus. I prefer to sit, even sleep sitting.
I went for a walk, to withdraw money from the ATM and to have lunch before leaving.
I ordered fried rice. After a short wait, I got my fried noodles. I didn’t even bat an eye at these changes. The food was extremely delicious, by the way.
I went back to the hotel at 2:30 PM, thinking that I would rather wait here for half an hour. The distance from the gate to the reception is 80 meters. When I got there, they were already waiting excitedly, saying, “The car will be here for me right away.” I turned around, and sure enough, it was already standing at the gate. So I immediately walked the 80 meters back and we set off.
We went everywhere, based on the principle of trust, I didn’t ask where or why. We dropped off a package here, picked up a person there, and dropped them off there.
The bus leaves at three.
At ten minutes past three, we had already gone so far that I asked the driver if he was going to take me to the next town or if we were really going to a bus. We went to the bus.
Yeah, no.
He pulled me over on the side of the road after 5 minutes. I was told to wait here, the bus would be here soon. It leaves at three, and at that moment it was exactly 3:15 p.m. I am already familiar with these “soon” ideas, so I asked what this meant, that it would be soon. About half an hour, was the answer.
The bus arrived 45 minutes later. And it was not a minibus. But a 3-row sleeper bus.
I have never been on anything like this before. This is different from the ones I have been on before, in that there is also a row of beds in the middle. I got a bed here at the front of the bus. The bed was so wide that my laptop bag could just fit between my legs. If I put my hands next to me in the bed, I was wedged between the two-sided railings. If I made the arm distance a little wider, my hands would hang out on both sides of the aisle. Which, due to the width of the aisle, meant that everyone who passed me bumped into me.
Regardless, the six-hour journey passed peacefully. I slept, listened to a book and music. And the woman lying next to me. She sometimes shouted to her partner in front of her with her mouth pointed towards my ear, sometimes she listened to music or a video. Loudly. Her voice – I don’t want to offend you – was like a crow’s. And she could only speak loudly.
But it really didn’t bother me, I’m just trying to describe the conditions on such a bus as realistically as possible.
We stopped twice. Both times, the stop was signaled by the headlights being turned on, meaning that the beams of light penetrating the brain of a peacefully sleeping person immediately cause alertness. To make sure things go smoothly, they even yell at him that it’s time for a pee break.
Quy Nhơn
We arrived in the city quite late, around 10pm.
I had three problems right away.
One was that I really needed to pee. There was no toilet at the huge bus terminal. I solved the problem the way the locals do. I leave it to everyone’s imagination to figure out what that meant.
The second was that my host asked me when I would arrive, but I couldn’t answer him because the app wasn’t running.
Finally, my map simply didn’t work. It showed the route, but the location marker didn’t turn, so when I got to the street, I simply didn’t know which way to turn.
After I couldn’t even order a taxi because it couldn’t find the hostel in the city, I realized that I had to restart my phone.
After restarting, I knew which way to turn, that it was about a two-kilometer walk from the hostel, and that I didn’t need a taxi. And the first problem was gone.
I arrived at the hostel at 10:40 PM. There were locked doors, lights off, and an empty reception desk waiting behind the glass door.
Then my phone rang. I got a message from the hotel. It was simple: “If you want to check in after 11:00 PM, find another hotel. Bye!”
I was standing there with this nice message next to a locked door, with two phone numbers posted that I couldn’t reach. Then someone brought someone a package. This someone opened the door from the inside.
I don’t even know if he was a guest or someone working there. He said he had only been here for a day. I told him I had a reservation and a message, and a big question about what to do next.
Finally, he decided to show me the room. I chose a bed for myself and went for a walk.
Control
While riding the bus, I thought about why I don’t have a problem with the completely random things that happen to me almost every day. I get something different than I order, it leaves at a different time than it says. It leaves at a different time than it says. I’m there for my room, which isn’t there…
It dawned on me that this random chaos is closer to the nature of life than the illusion that I have my life in my hands.
I used to believe that I knew the schedule a lot. Things turned out exactly as I planned many times. Other times they didn’t.
But today I felt that somewhere deep down I always knew that I had no, or not always, influence on what happens in life.
This probably caused tension in me before.
Now I have no tension. There are no expectations, or only very minimal ones. For example, about yesterday, all I had to do was get to the new city. It would have been nice to be there around eight o’clock, but what if that doesn’t work out? In the end, it doesn’t matter if it’s not that night, but the next morning.
The six hours passed on a 3-row reclining bus even though I bought a ticket for 2 rows and then waited for a minibus.
No control, no illusions, no tension.
I’m where I wanted to be, and the heavens wanted the bed I had in mind to be waiting at the end of the road.
That’s kind of how I experienced yesterday.
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