The Goat Bus
So.
Our trip is nearly over. We've actually been on a beach north of Nha Trang, Vietnam for a week just zoning out and being peaceful. We needed time to convalesce after our trip from Savannakhet, Laos to the Vietnam border. That trip is a story worth telling as it was by far the most fun I had on a local bus anywhere in Southeast Asia.
Picture this:
My girlfriend and I rise before dawn in Savannakhet, bleary-eyed but ready for what we know will be a challenging do-it-yourself-to-the-border kind of marathon day. We get a tuk-tuk to the bus station as the sun is rising and get on a rickety, aged bus full of sacks of rice. And I mean FULL. We sit there for awhile, contentedly watching them load rice, shaking off the sleepiness -- but then a feeling of wrongness descends over us. Is this the right bus?
Nope.
Luckily, we abandon the rice-bus and hop on the correct bus just in time for it to
...sit there for awhile. And then, eventually, like all local buses, it shrieks into life, shudders, farts a cloud of noxious black smoke, and we trundle out of the dirt lot called a bus station on our way to the border. Gradually.
We almost immediately have to stop to fill up the tank with petrol, and the driver has to jaw with his buddies hanging out at the petrol station, then we continue on again -- for about twenty more minutes. Then, just a few miles outside of town, we're pulling over to the WRONG SIDE of the highway, lazily drifting into oncoming traffic (which are mostly motos whose drivers know to get the hell out of the way of an oncoming bus with bad brakes) and stopping for what looks like...an extended stay.
We look around. What could we be loading onto the bus NOW? we think, as the bus is already quite full of sacks of rice, various musty boxes and containers, children, the elderly, etc.
WHAT, then?
Well, I'll tell you: GOATS.
That's right, goats. Not IN the bus, mind you, which would have been less surprising to our disbelieving eyes, but ON THE ROOF of the bus. And get this: a lady comes out of a clapboard shack, wearing the obligatory sanitary face mask, long pants, a long sleeve shirt (and it’s already 95 degrees farenheit!) and a pair of heavy gloves. She marches with purpose, trudging resolutely over to a ramshackle pen containing at least sixty emaciated goats. She sizes them up. Then, her decision made with sudden fierceness, she pounces into the fray and begins dragging out the uncooperative goats one by one, wrestling them toward the bus with fearful, forcefully wrought yanks upon the ropes tied around their necks. They struggle, bleating like the stupid cretinous beasts they are. Next, to our astonishment, the bus driver is handed the rope-ends and promptly begins dragging the goats up the back ladder of the bus. This (not very big) Laotian fellow, it seems, was not only a grade-A bus driver, but apparently an ad-hoc goatherd. His method was to drag them by their collars up the ladder behind him, as if they were hairy sacks of rice. The goats, terrified, struggling, and nearly choking, cried and shrieked with an ungodly vigor. We were speechless. The driver, in a final flourish of indifference, then heaved them to the ROOF with a thunk, and deftly tied their leads to the metal rack.
We were faced with roof-goats.
That’s right, GOATS on the roof, for real. Roof-goats. And not just a few roof-goats, mind you, no. We spent about an hour loading goats onto the roof of the bus. Can you guess how many goats these intrepid goatherds hoisted onto the ROOF of the bus?
Oh, about forty GOATS, I would guess. On the roof of the bus. All pissing and bleating that human yet inhuman blather as they trounce each other and create a cacophony of hoof-beats on the ROOF. An unholy stink. And it's not even 8am.
So, with about forty goats on the ROOF OF THE BLOODY BUS, we continue on, creeping at an excruciatingly slow pace down the potholed road, without A/C, or for that matter, seats designed for humans to sit in. Every so often there is a clunking sound, and you are treated to the sight of goat-legs dangling limply just outside the window. That's when you remember that it is hanging helplessly by ITS NECK -- and the driver has to pull over and go yank the goat back onto the roof. This happens numerous times, so many that I stop counting.
You can see streams of goat piss cascading off the top of the bus.
Just amazing, really, how much of it there was. We both agreed.
Once we stopped at a roadside stall, so the driver and his buddy could browse the offerings there. They had a fine selection of carcasses: squirrel, rat, various birds, frogs. And there was this young girl, maybe 14, lovingly arranging the dead animals just so, as if for optimum viewing effectiveness. Eventually, the guys settled on a large plastic bag of LIVE FROGS, which they happily brought onto the bus with them -- and all the while I'm crossing my fingers and thinking, "Please make a break for it!" because the image of a bus full of loose frogs with goats all over the roof (plus a pair of sweat-soaked, whitey backpackers) is too excellent not to consider. But alas, the frogs made no attempts at jailbreak and seemed resigned to their fate.
Later, we stopped at a dirty little cluster of grass huts, at which time we silently observed the villagers burst forth in a flurry of haste. They came on board and carried off an old woman, who was basically unresponsive -- although despite her catatonic state, or perhaps because of it, another old lady stood over her, shaking her finger and yelling loud admonitions at her all the while. At any rate, our concern for this poor old lady was serious, but the villagers, in the nonchalant way they hefted her off the bus, seemed unfazed and even somewhat bored. This was apparently a common occurrence. We never did find out what the hell that was all about, of course.
Eventually we pressed on, watching dusty plains become slightly less dusty foothills. We pulled over once again, and for the two of us, finally. Apparently this is our stop.
The side of the road. At first, my girlfriend refuses to get off. She doesn't trust anyone at this point. Somehow they explain to us that it's only a few kilometers to the border. We reluctantly trust them enough to get off the bus. As we watched it trundle off down a side road, spitting dust and fumes, bristling with goats, we emitted a collective sigh of both relief and loss.
Well, we made it to the border around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, having hired two moto drivers to shutlle us to the finish line. So there we were, standing in a deserted passport control terminal, pained by ambivalent emotions -- did we love, or did we hate, the Goat-bus? (By the way, the goat bus is the fondest memory I will ever have now that it's over forever).
The border control guys were totally enamored of my guitar -- they just loved it. Everyone wanted to pick it up, show it to their buddies, strum a bit. A fellow inside the control booth got on his computer, found a YouTube video of some Korean guy playing classical guitar, and turned the monitor towards me, pointing and smiling as if to say, "try and do better than that!" No, he was actually very nice -- but he still may have been thinking that. I'll never know.
So to cut a long saga short, we're going to try to find this water park in Nha Trang and just act like tourists for the day. I feel we've earned it.
This day promises to be 100% goat-free, and that's OK with me.
Copyright 2010
E.W. Borg
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