a close friend of ours...you guessed it...jason ramm aka @mrbusdriver2u...is a bus driver. sometimes he has bad days, some days he has good days. like the day he got a huge bottle of wine from a regular rider at christmas. if you ride the bus, you should think about bringing your driver a bottle of something. can you imagine being in winnipeg traffic, hour after hour, day after day? putting up with drunks and stinky people? it's enough to send anyone to drink!
so j.r. how would you like to drive bus in bangkok? 
unairconditioned, ancient buses with wood plank floors and the only way to stay cool is to open ALL the windows, ALL the way. yes, i know, most winnipeg buses are not a/c'd either BUT you really only need a/c 1-2 weeks out of the year. in bangkok, you would suffer 365 days/year! to be fair to bangkok, there are buses with a/c but they cost more to ride and i didn't take pictures of them.
one amenity that winnipeg transit doesn't offer...a garbage can. what a concept! oooh...but you'd have to get used to right hand drive.
you might like this feature, too, j.r...thai public buses have fare collectors. passengers just jump on the bus, usually by the back door and the fare collector finds you to pay up. the fare ranges from 7-14 baht (22-44 cents) depending on if its window vented or has a/c and how far you are going.
plus you don't even need to have the correct change! the fare collector has a tube full of tickets and coins which she expertly distributes while balancing in the aisle. she takes the ticket and uses the lid of the tube to cut a line through the ticket. there are numbers on the ticket but neither jay or i could figure out what they meant. the cuts seemed kind of random.
so j.r. how would you like to drive bus in bangkok?
unairconditioned, ancient buses with wood plank floors and the only way to stay cool is to open ALL the windows, ALL the way. yes, i know, most winnipeg buses are not a/c'd either BUT you really only need a/c 1-2 weeks out of the year. in bangkok, you would suffer 365 days/year! to be fair to bangkok, there are buses with a/c but they cost more to ride and i didn't take pictures of them.one amenity that winnipeg transit doesn't offer...a garbage can. what a concept! oooh...but you'd have to get used to right hand drive. you might like this feature, too, j.r...thai public buses have fare collectors. passengers just jump on the bus, usually by the back door and the fare collector finds you to pay up. the fare ranges from 7-14 baht (22-44 cents) depending on if its window vented or has a/c and how far you are going.
prepared for a 10 hour bus ride from bangkok to chiang mai...sometimes you just gotta grin and bear it.
sawatdee-ka,
corina
1 comment:
Thanks for the plug and the awesome blog post. It would be nice to drive those buses even if they are ancient as they seem to have forgotten how to make the new buses last long enough nowadays. As for the lack of air conditioning, its something you would get used to. You may not like it, but you would get used to the heat. Of course, I wouldn't have to deal with snow in Bangkok now, would I? lmao
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