the bus ride

I wrote this on February 27, on the bus ride to go to my father.


I took an ordinary bus from Alabang to Lucena City because (1) there was no aircon bus in sight; (2) I had been waiting for a bus for over half an hour; (3) it was already 8am and the trip would take over 4 hours; and (4) I have always enjoyed riding ordinary buses on long trips to the province. Let me tell you why.


As you get farther away from Manila, the air gets fresher, there are more trees, and the people get more relaxed. Of course the bus stops get longer, but no one really seems to hurry. Along the highway lay little towns with interesting houses, where you judge civilization with whether there is a Jollibee or not. I look at the passing scenery as the bus takes me farther away from my 8-month-old daughter who's barely learning to walk, towards my 64-year-old father who will now relearn how to walk.


At periodic stops the food vendors board the bus: boiled corn at 3 for P10 pesos (I note with amusement that the same corn sells at 3 for P20 pesos where I live), bibingka and buko pie, boiled and fried peanuts, buko juice and C2, boiled quail eggs and greasy chips. When I travel with my daughter I spend a lot on these vendors. Now I note my fellow passengers with kids and I think that parents on road trips all wear the same expression of frustration-mingled-with-amusement.


The bus is filled with a fascinating mix of people. A teenage girl beside me has a paper bag filled with teenage-girl makeup, and she is holding a bubble-gum pink cellphone. I see her sneaking looks at my Palm Treo, and she probably thinks it's a gray, ugly, bulky gadget compared to hers. There's a mother with two kids on her lap, all three of them eating corn and shing-a-ling, sharing a single bottle of water. They look like they're having the time of their lives, while beside them a young man frowns. The bus seats are only for two people, and the mother has squeezed in one of the kids between her and the young man. Now the kid is falling asleep almost on the lap of the young man. The young man looks pissed off, but says nothing. It's a long trip; if I were the mother I would have paid for the kids' seats, but then I probably should be thankful that I can afford to pay for my child's seat when we travel.


The bus radio is playing 25 Minutes by Michael Learns to Rock, and to my surprise, when the chorus came, almost half of the bus started to sing along, even the bus inspector. It's enough to make you smile. (And yes, I know the song too.) I look out my hot window. On the asphalt is what looks like a rat, squashed flat by all the passing wheels in the highway. There's nothing left but a blot of black with a scrap of gray fur and a tail.


I'm hungry and I wish I had bought the bibingka. Vendors would probably swarm the bus again later... yes, the fourth batch of vendors boarded on my second hour in the bus. I bought the bibingka, and although the vendor boasted that it has buko, I'm well half into the bibingka and I haven't tasted a shred of buko. It's good, though, in the way that roadstand food tastes good. You can't buy food like that at home or in the malls. Part of the good feeling comes from the experience. You ask anyone who grew up as kids in the province if eating balut from the vendor at night is the same as eating balut aboard one of the provincial buses.


In airconditioned buses the passengers keep to themselves. They are mostly well-dressed, wearing sunglasses and carrying neat little bags. They buy bottled water and they have brought takeout food and donuts in boxes, which they eat with measured bites. They carry muted conversations and they don't look at their fellow passengers. There is probably a foreign action film playing in the bus video. In this bus, the floor is already littered with candy wrappers, half-eaten corncobs, rolling plastic beverage bottles. The FM radio is blaring (Boy, I miss your kisses... all the time, but this is... twenty-five minutes too laate...). Luggage is piled in the aisle. I can see a sack of rice, a couple of fighting cocks in a box with holes, boxes tied with twine, backpacks. A kid smiles at me across the seats, his face half-smeared with vomit (looks like he overdid the corn). The man seated on my other side mumbles an apology about being slightly drunk on the bus: he says it's his wife's birthday so he has to go home. He keeps his hands clasped around his hotdog bag (it's shaped like a hotdog and seems to be universally favored by construction workers) and calls me 'Ma'am.'


I will get off the bus a bit sticky with sweat, with my hair in stiff tangles and my face gritty with road dust. But the other passengers smile at me as they walk past, hopping over the luggages and the trash. The conductor makes little jokes about slow old women while he carries their bags and help them off the bus. The mother drags her two kids and four bags, and the smaller kid picks off a corn kernel from the seat and pops it into his mouth. Amazing.


For some, four hours of this would be sheer misery. For me, it was fun. It somehow reconnects you with humanity. For four hours, each one of us was immersed in this experience, buying food when the vendors came, fanning ourselves when we're stuck in traffic, watching each other, making little talk when it got boring. Each of us has our own respective destinations, and when we get off, we scatter. We will go home to the wives, visit relatives, conduct businesses, enjoy cockfights, sell wares, meet friends, take care of sick fathers. But the bus ride allows us to share each other, to experience other people, to do things that we otherwise overlook or ignore in our ordinary lives. We let the four hours carry us away to where we are going, and it is a fine ride. For me, it always feels like coming home.