Bus Horrors: Episode IV

You would really expect us to have learned our lesson about overnight buses, but being the foolhardy optimists we are, we decided to try our luck again on a bus from Jogja to Jakarta.

It was, without a doubt, the worst bus experience we've had yet.

I should note, before I begin the tale, that our bus was scheduled to depart at 2:30pm the day after we spent all night climbing Mt. Merapi (because an overnight bus ride isn't enough of a challenge in itself). We really know how to plan 'em, don't we? Even though the bus was 30 minutes late, the ride started out auspiciously enough--no confusion about whether it was the correct bus, no uncomfortable chair deformities; I was feeling tiredly optimistic.

The trouble began with the first stop, however. Just as we were drifting off to sleep, we pulled over to pick up the usual band of jolly young musicians strumming guitars, loudly scraping metallic cans, and belting at the top of their lungs, who accompanied us for about 10 minutes down the road. Jen and I have excellent ear plugs which we researched on the Internet, and even they were only able to bring the music down to simply "loud". I half heartedly tried to sleep until the musicians came right up to my seat and one screamed "HEY MISTER!" I opened my eyes as their lead belter cleverly observed at the top of his lungs, "YOU SLEEP?" I glared while he grinned, and the rest of his merry band extracted coins from the other passengers. (I was surprised they didn't also ask me, but maybe he'd felt that they'd extracted enough payment as it was). Relieved that they were leaving, we were somewhat disconcerted to find they had merely been exchanged for another group, who, though kind enough not to single me out, were no more conducive to sleeping than the last group.

Eventually the entertainment ceased, and we were actually able to sleep for a few hours until our evening restaurant stop. This bus had no food vouchers for us, though, so Jen and I just split a fruit tea.

Upon returning to our seats, I discovered that a leak had sprung somewhere above me, showering my seat with a slow but steady dripping. A small crowd of onlookers gathered round, smiling and sympathetically shrugging their shoulders. A few indicated a dripping motion with their hands and said ayer--water--with helpful smiles. Mustering all the ad hoc engineering prowess we could on a few hours sleep, we tried to use our medical tape on two plastic bags to span the dripping and divert the flow elsewhere. This actually seemed to work for several minutes, and visibly impressed our fans who looked back and forth at each other with raised eyebrows and nodding approval. I probably should have guessed that some of the water had been pooling, however, and a few minutes later, the accumulation dumped on me all at once. (I have to admit I was too distracted to notice the local reaction to this new development.)

We had pulled out of the restaurant parking lot by this time with a new musical act to accompany my soggy defeat--a woman who sang indistinctly into a large boxy amplifier to a cassette tape of what sounded like Muslim lounge music from the 70's, if there ever was such a thing. As I attempted to sit comfortably in the relatively dry (though somewhat sticky) aisle, the woman inexplicably decided that it would be more equitable to the passengers in the back if she sang while repeatedly pacing the entire length of the bus, forcing me to hover indeterminately wherever I could manage.

Mercifully, she was soon paid-off and our bus driver pulled to the side to let her out again. And then, finally, it was quiet. And we continued to sit. Quietly. My curious neighbors all strained their necks to the front and several stood. After another few minutes of sitting, the bus shuddered briefly as the motor struggled to turn over in vain. Looking around, I was somewhat heartened to see that my neighbors (still standing) met the prospect of an impending calamity of their own with the same expressions of placid bemusement with which they had watched me earlier. We had been told by different sources that the bus ride to Jakarta could take anywhere from 6 to 12 hours. Maybe, I thought, this is one of the reasons why--just a built-in cost of taking the bus sometimes.

The cabin lights turned off, and we all sat in the dark for several minutes as nothing appeared to happen except for the drivers exiting the bus to smoke. No one else moved. The bus was extremely hot and stuffy. It was impossible to open any of the windows, and without circulating Jen expressed concerns about a possibly dwindling air supply. The others appeared quite content to wait as long as necessary, but, after a brief discussion, we elected to join the drivers outside. For all we knew, they had called for another bus to be driven from Jogja to pick us all up. For some reason, I remember sitting on a tree root outside our broken-down bus, in the middle of the night, and deciding that I actually felt quite happy.

As it turned out, another bus wasn't necessary. They opened a panel near the rear of the bus, releasing a huge cloud of smoke. We were ushered back to our seats (really, our seat and the aisle), and after several more lurching attempts, the bus started up and we were off again. Jen and I traded off turns in the aisle, and, after attempting to wipe the water from above me, I even braved the wet seat for a time (until the drip returned with a vengeance). As it turned out, our bus would break down by the side of the road two more times before dawn, each accompanied by sitting, a cloud of smoke, and our eventual successful re-departure.

I woke up just before dawn in the good seat. Jen was standing in the aisle next to me, whispering something excitedly about it almost being dawn. The development out the windows was also starting to appear denser and more like a city. Perhaps we were almost there! The bus made several stops on seemingly random street corners or small side-streets as Jen slept in the chair (we had switched again), and I drowsed in the aisle. After some time, we noticed that, though we had never (to our knowledge) stopped at a bus station, only about half the passengers were left. And we continued to wind down small streets, randomly stopping now and then to let the better informed among us out.

I felt confident that we were eventually terminating at the central bus station (after all, what else would they do?), yet the bus showed no signs of doing anything so reasonable. I thought about asking the driver, but it seemed difficult not knowing the words for "bus" or "station" or "stop". Eventually I wandered to the front, put on my best smile and said optimistically: suka saya Taxi, ya?--I like Taxi, yes? Then, pointing to the address of our pre-booked hotel, I said Di mana Taxi?--Where is Taxi?

The driver looked surprised and started laughing and shaking his head, saying Jakarta and pointing behind him. This seemed to us a bad sign, especially as it now dawned on us, looking around, that there were only 4 people left on the bus. Eventually, we worked out that we were now 20km past Jakarta, and getting back there would require taking a local bus to the bus station, followed by another coach bus back to Jakarta. This sounded complicated, and we had not slept well.

We decided to get off on a big street and try and figure out how to get a taxi back, cost no longer seeming a significant issue to us (it's nice how our trips seem to give us adequate psychological preparation for the sacrifices they eventually demands of us). The drivers gave us our backpacks, and, as we stepped to the ground, we said, with urgent voices: "2 more, yes?" and gestured to the underside of the bus where our other two bags were. "Ya ya!" they said smiling as the door closed, and the bus pulled into the round-about.

Screaming at the top of our lungs, we chased the bus for about a block before it noticed us and stopped again. To their credit, the bus operators appeared a little sheepish as they figured out what we had been saying, and they opened the lower compartments to get our other two bags.

An hour later, we had succeeded in taking a taxi (for the same price as the entire bus ticket to Jakarta) back into the city, arriving a neat 20 hours after we had initially departed Jogja.

As a denouement to the saga, the hotel we'd pre-booked turned out to be in a strange converted warehouse. The entrance to the hotel was a loading dock, with the front-desk sitting like an island in the middle of a vast open floor. Though the rooms did boast the advertised air-conditioning, they were also seriously infested with cockroaches. Our mini-fridge "mini-bar" from the advertisement was empty except for the infestation. We don't usually go to fancy hotels, but after our series of misadventures we felt well justified in booking the next two nights at the beautiful Ibis Hotel.

Even though this was our worst bus trip yet, it certainly hasn't hit the rock-bottom of my imagination, so maybe we'll roll the dice again another time!