The simple things

A few days ago I was on a public bus in Java, Indonesia, for just over five hours. This is a bus that travels between major cities, but has its doors open at all times (literally) for people to wave it down and jump on, or tell the "door man", for lack of a better word, whenever they want to jump off. He makes a shrill whistle (by the third hour I was able to sleep through it), and the driver knows someone wants off, and thus pulls over. FYI - there are two doors, with the door man controlling the back of the bus - most people get on and off via the back door - and the driver controlling the front door. Once the passenger is on or off the bus, the door man shouts the Indonesian equivalent of "go" and the driver continues. There is also a "fare guy" who walks up and down collecting the fare, which is dependent on the distance you want to travel. All the while, people selling goods will jump on and off, and even local musicians jump on with their guitar, play a few songs and collect a few rupiah from the passengers. As a result of this regular stopping and starting, what should be a 3 1/2 hour bus ride turns into just over 5 hours. That's sounds like a complaint, but it's not - I could have taken a shuttle bus that would have been direct, but where's the fun in that? The people who take shuttle buses pay twice the price, and when travelling, I feel there is an inverse correlation between how much money someone spends and how interesting they are. On the local bus you can walk on with your cigarette, live animal, or several small children all for one fare, provided they all sit on your lap. You can't get that on the shuttle buses.

Anyways, as I was on the bus I had to marvel at the order and precision in what could be seen as a constantly chaotic jumbling of passengers - some a few blocks, some several hundred kilometres. I couldn't help but smile as I looked around at the faces, many missing teeth and looking like life's been rough, but all quick to smile as they make eye contact with me. Like in Malaysia, nearly everyone smiles from ear to ear a friendly, genuine smile, whether they are missing teeth or not - more often the former (I feel there could be another correlation there - the more teeth one is missing the more interesting they are... Any thoughts?). It is these types of experiences that I hope to remember long after I've left these countries - they are the moments that cannot be captured by a camera, but tell more about a country than any picture can. Often when I tell people of my travels at home I tell them of the "highlights", ie. climbing Mount Kinabalu, seeing orangutans, etc, but simple things like bus rides can be even more remarkable in the day-to-day life of a traveller.