Anyway, all the beds were taken so when the driver barked at us to "Sit down!" I replied to him,
"There are no seats!" He then replied "Ten minutes!" I turned to a kid behind me (German, judging from
his accent) and said "He said ten minutes, right?" and the kid said "Jah... ten minutes..." and sure enough
ten minutes later, we pulled over and were transferred to another bus where there were beds available and away we went.
After an hour the bus pulled over at rest stop. The driver said, "Thirty minutes!" and some of the
travelers disembarked. I was a little worried about security so I decided to stay on the bus just to suss
things out - plus I was chatting up a British bird. After about five minutes, I decided that I would stretch
my legs a bit, so I hopped off my bed and tried to go outside, only to find that the bus door was locked.
No worries, I thought, I'll just get off at the next stop. After thirty minutes, were on the road again.
After a few hours, I started to hear nature calling - i.e. I had to pee. Surely we were due to stop at
another rest area. I waited patiently.
Another hour passed. No stop. I think it was around midnight when I segued from rationality to full
blown psychopathy. I really had to urinate. The constant jolts caused by the meteor crater sized potholes
of Vietnam's roads didn't help. I looked at the half empty one liter bottle of water in front of me and
wondered if I should just pee into that, but then I thought, "What if I had too much pee? What if I filled
the bottle but still had more pee?" I didn't want to take a chance on having that kind of accident. Then I
thought about that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer didn't let Grandpa pee and the old man's
bladder exploded.
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THE CONE - ISSUE #5 - SUMMER 2015
Photo by Dragfyre -via Wikimedia Commons