There were 5 in a bed and the little one said...'get me off this fricken bus'!

We've just had the worst overnight bus journey yet, and I'm tired and irritable - so to be clear, this will be a whingey blog.

Yesterday whilst waiting for the bus we spent time in every bar and restaurant down the little street where our hotel was in order to kill time whilst waiting for our bus (we couldn't go further as guess what, it poured with rain all day, AGAIN!). I did the usual thing of getting on the bus hungry and dehydrated so I didn't have to experience the toilets at the stops. However, this proved a bit of an error when the bus decided it would only stop once (in 14 hours!) And at a place that sold nothing but beer, so our dinner and breakfast basically consisted of a couple of Ritz crackers I had stashed away.

We waited on the hotel lobby from 16.30 as instructed and the bus eventually rocked up at 17.30. Then did the usual thing of stopping in a car park for an hour for no explicable reason.

Anyway, on to the really enjoyable bit of the journey. We got on the bus and were shown to our allocated beds, I was not over the moon when I discovered we were on the bottom bunk at the back which was essentially one big bed (I say big, it was the size of a king) for FIVE people.

It was lovely when our co-sleepers joined us, 3 Vietnamese people who to be honest, did not smell so fresh. Robin got to sleep next to them with one of them jamming her elbow in his ribs the whole journey. And that wasn't the short straw...I was up against the window where condensation dripped all over the right side of my blanket and my bed was cut short by the one in front, meaning I spent the whole journey scrunched up in what I can only describe as advanced yoga positions.

On top of this, you couldn't sit up because we were on the bottom bunk, we were over the engine so it was hot and there was no air con to speak of. Also, the state of the roads and lack of suspension meant that we slid all over the place constantly. I slept for a sum total of 10 minutes.

When we arrived we were dropped in the middle of nowhere (as per usual) and had to have an argument with a taxi driver about the cost to drop us into town, this involved both us and him walking off twice before we settled on a price.

On the up side the guesthouse Robin booked is an improvement on the last one, it kind of looks like a room in halls, but it's clean and the staff are nice and let us check in early. We're now heading for food then plan on sleeping all day!