be careful what you ask for...you may get it.
hey, is that a chinese saying?
i thought florida was the 3rd ring of dante's proverbial hell, but i think i have found the 4th ring. it is called the chinatown bus.
first, let me state that for $60 round trip to nyc, you can't beat it. it would have cost $120 in gas alone to drive there for austin and i. throw in the tolls in delaware, the jersey turnpike and parking in nyc, and you have a lot of money involved, more than the individual bus fares. i also did not have to worry about negotiating the holland tunnel in morning and evening traffic or figuring out how to get in and out of nyc. if we had flown or taken the amtrak, the $120 we did spend would have made 1/2 of either fare for either train or airplane. so, that said, if i have to go back to nyc for any reason, i would still choose this option...reluctantly...but knowingly that i will have to remember three things: toilet paper, sit in the back of the bus, and drug yourself before you go...
staying up until 1 a.m. was a given, as that was when the bus was supposed to leave from the dollar general store on w. broad street. we arrived in plenty of time, as the bus did not show up and leave until 1:45. tony, a chain smoking, non-stop pacing/talking chinese, snatched the $5 from us to park at the dollar general store, and we took our place on the sidewalk with all of the rest of the refugees.
sometimes it doesn't pay to be a stupid, naive white person. i should have guessed we were in for a treat when the driver showed up with food (hmm, why are you late?) and then wouldn't let us on the bus until it was "cleaned up." tony had assured the rumbling crowd that it was a "new bus," but i am thinking that must be a mistranslation b/w chinese and english. also add the word "nonstop" to the list of misinterpreted words.
nonstop apparently means stopping several times to pick up stray chinese people. try fredericksburg (2 at the wawa), d.c. (2 more), baltimore (1 more). try stopping at a rest stop in the median somewhere in maryland so that we could mercifully go to the bathroom. this was after being informed "no toilet paper. too many people go bathroom!" this included austin, who had the runs and asked about the toilet paper. apparently this is also a chinese only piece of information, as those chinese who went back to the bathroom brought their own toilet paper.
besides being "nonstop" the bus had a driver who was barking chinese into a cellphone the entire first 3 hours of the trip, enough so that he didn't need a cellphone. i figured out later that he was apparently talking to the chinese bus network on the east coast to fill up the bus with the stray chinese. unfortunately for the person in baltimore, the bus was full...even though he had paid for tickets. another translation issue. apparently if you want a seat on the bus and don't want you ticket sold out from under you, you must show up at least an hour or more before the bus leaves. so the new translation: 4:30 p.m. really means 3 p.m. but, i digress...
charlie chan got lost in the rest stop...literally. he could not find his way out of the parking lot, having first turned the bus down an exit going to I-95 SOUTH, vs. the northernly direction we were supposed to go in. to correct this problem, he backed the bus slowly back up the exit ramp, turned around and ran over the curb, and then began to search for the real exit, which he missed yet again. mercifully, he heard austin and my whimpers of "no, no, no...go LEFT" and heeded our advice. after that, both of us fell asleep, sort of. i am vaguely aware that we did stop someplace else, but i don't know why or what for. at that point they could have been throwing off one of the stray chinese, perhaps in philadelphia. i woke up in jersey city as we negotiated our way to the holland tunnel.
we were unceremoniously dumped someplace in chinatown not near the actual place we were supposed to be. i still do not know where we were, but we did manage to drag our pathetic selves to a subway entrance.
the return trip was not quite the nightmare the trip down was. first, we had to find the place to go, which we did. secondly, we got there, but there appeared to be no seats on the bus according to austin. i checked, and saw no empty ones either. when i inquired i was told "plenty seats! you find seats!" we did...austin in the last row in the back by the toilet paperless bathroom, and i a couple of rows up (i had to ask as something was in the seat.) the chinese guy got on to get the tickets, which he had seen when we got on, but i had dropped mine on the floor in front. he allowed me to go up and down the aisle looking for it, not assisting me or saying anything (at this point i had moved next to austin i the back, as the guy originally sitting there had been on the wrong bus...and then subsequently kicked off.). we sat next to a nice guy who was moving to richmond. his experience summed up the whole problem: we were not chinese. apparently, he had gotten there at 3 p.m. and was first in line, but when they opened up the doors of the bus, he was subsequently flung out of the way as a mad dash of chinese people stampeded onto the bus to take the best seats...which they did in the first 2/3 of the bus. he went to the back, along with all of the other minorities. this was discrimination at its best: a chinese wanted a black woman's seat so he could sit next to the other chinese in the row. she was asked to move. she did. at the back of the bus were austin and i (the only white people), black people, an indian and two mexicans. the guy in front of austin was apparently a drug dealer and making deals on one of the two cell phones he was talking on ("yeah! ok. you have to put the $15,000 up front...") austin also learned that the dealer's younger brother was in jail and he was trying to get him out. i guess the two cellphones was a tip off.
the trip back reminded me of why we liked to sit in the back of the school bus when i was a kid. it is sort of like being on a trampoline. we got tossed up, a lot. but that was ok, as at least i could stretch my legs out and have a corner to lean in that didn't involve having a chinese person stretched out in front of me . (on the way up, he did, and i basically could have eaten a meal off of his head as he was almost totally in my lap.) nonstop once again had a different translation. we stopped at the median rest stop again in maryland where 30 chinese all smoked cigarettes. things were fine until we got past d.c. and began to have the chinese firedrill once again. stops in garden spots like dumfries, and again at the wawa in fredericksburg. i thought we were home free until he began to pull off the exits in RICHMOND...atlee/elmont at a 7/11 for a lone chinese, then the very next exit at parham at the DQ...same thing. how irritating! had i known i could have gotten off or on there, which is closer to home, i certainly would have done it. however, i lacked the knowledge, and therefore could not do it.
so, all that given, would you ride the chinatown bus? if you are cheap and have been to florida for an extended period of time, you would say YES...
No comments:
Post a Comment