Adventures in Transportation

I waited too long to buy tickets to come to my little northern town for the holiday, Songkran, Thai New Year, number three, the "Water Holiday." Then somebody told me, just go to the bus station, they put on extra buses.

Mochit is a big, crowded place at the quietest of times, but Friday night it was a cyclonic storm of humanity walking, no, shuffling around in seeming circles amidst sellers of water, food, hats, everything, people standing against walls like drug dealers holding sheaves of makeshift tickets going for about fifty percent more than the usual cost.

And the buses! At all times there are a couple of hundred around to go with the over one hundred bus loading bays; Friday there were thousands. They were everywhere, every bare patch within a half mile of the station. After a group of people had purchases tickets (mine were to "Phrae/Nan"), a guy with a big plastic thing held aloft would start to yell "Phrae/Nan!" and we'd follow him to the dust patch were the bus was.

It took forever to clear the environs of Bangkok, the roads were so crowded, anyone with a pickup truck, and that's a lot of people, had filled theirs up with people going somewhere, maybe for friendship, maybe for profit.

Wowsers! What a scene.