Saturday 3 October

I simply love love love this place and am so glad we got to stay here. We eat and pack our bags and relax on the roof. The roof is such a nice space. We ask the owners to arrange a taxi for us to town and we share it with some other ppl making it quite cheap indeed. It's pretty much straight off the taxi into the bus and it's a noisy bumpy ride. The horn is so blaring and the driver seems to have many many occasions to use it. The toilet at the bus station is little more tiled ditch in the floor where the stool walls are only half a body high. Still better than going in the street like the children do. Malcolm thinks maybe the toilets are free here because they wouldn't be used if there was a fee like so many other countries!
We fit a seat in some shade and have some lunch. Some girls ask us if they can take our picture saying 'so beautiful'. I wonder what they see. Maybe different is enough to be beautiful. After a while we head to catch a bus to the train station. It's tough getting a bus but eventually we do and I nap. Traveling with heavy bags in hot heat is tiring. The river side is very pretty and well cared for. It looks park like. Too bad we have our bags with us. Off the bus it's a short walk to the station. We are quite early, but we get in. The ticket checker at the door calls someone over to check Malcolm's ticket. We see some ppl turned away. Maybe they don't know how to say 'too early, come back in 3 hours' in English. There is a cool spacious waiting room where we can wait. After sabbath I buy some noodles and we move to the upstairs waiting room. It seems to take forever to board. Just 10min before the scheduled leaving time. We get on and there are quite a few spare seats so we take them. For about 2 hours and then heaps and heaps of ppl board and we have to stand, or more like cram in together. My stool is still in my bag so I can't use it. We stand for a few hours and then Malcolm manages to get the stool and we squish it to the floor. Ppl are squished standing and sitting everywhere. It's so crowded. Every time someone wants to go to the toilet everyone as to move or get up. We get tiny snippets of rest.