our third departure from the kunming bus station, a sleeper bus to jinghong. should we encounter the guy again trying to get money for our 'excess, heavy' backpacks, we've decided we'll speak french and just pretend to not understand him at all when he speaks to us in english. of course he is not there this time, so we don't have to deal with him. he's lucky, we were ready for him and his money making shinanigans. but then, our bus driver decides to give us an extremely hard time about bringing our 'small' packs on the bus with us. they have our laptops and cameras, etc in them and in no way are they going in the under storage or anywhere away from my body. after much non-communicative arguing with him and another fellow with him, he was not going to let us take them on. after a while, we think, he thinks we're going to leave them in the aisles, which are already narrow on a sleeper bus, so we tell him by hand gesturing (hugging our packs) that we'll hold them in our bunks with us. the bunks are tiny, there's barely enough room for us, let alone, us with our backpacks but we always seem to manage on previous buses. after he understands what we are trying to tell him, he nods in frustrated agreement and motions that we can bring them on. phew! we were ready to not board the bus and skip going that evening. after all that, the driver was really chilled the whole way, the ride was pleasant, and our bags always crammed with us on our beds, wrapped by our legs, where they were not in the way of the other passengers.
btw: after speaking with another traveler later on, we discovered that the guy at the bus station apparently speaks really good french as well. haha! but we did hear that he got arrested and hopefully he won't be harassing any other foreign travelers any more. stay tuned....
No comments:
Post a Comment