Most of your travel time is spent waiting. You wait for buses to load up while, to lure in more passengers, the driver edges forward as if he is about to leave. He doesn't and you wait. At the last moment before departure passengers pile in with bundles that fill the aisles and you're off. You wait in the bus company restaurant while the driver eats. You wait while the conductor fills the radiator with water dipped from a roadside rice field.

The bus stops when the rain drowns out the windshield wipers. It stops for the driver and several of the male passengers to make a quick run into the bushes. It stops to pick up someone who is waving beside the road in the middle of nowhere. In some places, "rapid transit" means anything that could beat an ox cart in a drag race two out three times.

ccasionally you decide to splurge, giving up the local experience and some extra money for air-conditioned, cushioned comfort, which sometimes means a sandwich meal and a video in the local language. There are usually long distance "express" buses that don't stop at every town or for passenger en route. You pull out of the bus terminal and speed down the road to the nearest gas station where there's a line of buses waiting.

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