Courtney. August 8, 2010 @ 12:31
Right now I am on a bus with Jacqui, Walker, and our French Canadian roommate, Annik. Annik is sitting next to a Lao man with a random child on her lap that someone handed her. Jacqui and Danielle are standing up, squished between 2 people on each side of them. I'm sitting in between a tiny Lao child that is smacking his Lao candy at a volume that could be heard from 7 miles away. If he were my offspring he would be sent to his room for 6 weeks. The kid is pretty much sitting on my lap and his loud ass mouth is literally 4 inches from my ear. 97-year-old granny over here is a savior because, before she offered to move over and make her 2 person seat into a FOUR person seat, the bus driver was shoving me toward a 1x1 foot slab of wood, telling me in Lao and sign language (neither or which I speak) that that was my seat.
This bus ride that we're on right now to the Buddha Park (it better be a MAGICAL place after this) is an hour long. And granny has turned on me for some reason. When she offered her seat to me she smiled. That was 5 minutes ago. She is now scowling at me and I don't know why. Maybe iPod touches, which I'm typing on right now, are offensive in Laos. Maybe Steve Jobs is a full on racist or just hates Lao people.
The bus driver just slammed the brakes on. I can't see 2 feet in front of me let alone out of the window, but I'm assuming he stopped for a cow because, in Lao, cows hold daily gatherings in the middle of the highway and the experience of decelerating from 50 MPH to a dead atop is something you become familiar with quickly in this country. When he slammed the brakes on the 7 people who are occupying the square foot behind me all dominoed into each other and then me.
I would like to sit here on my iPod Touch and complain more but I just remembered that I am traveling the world for 2 years and that the 50 or so people who are with me on this 20-person bus are probably on their way to the rice paddies to work a 20 hour shift for the 30th day in a row so that they can send one of their children to school for one year of their lives. So I'm going to put my iPod touch back in my purse right now and enjoy the smell of 50 showerless bodies.

P.S. Granny just fell asleep on my shoulder. I hope to Buddha she's just sleeping.