Sleeper bus - No Hue

Instead of spending another night in our $15 room, we hopped on the 10:30pm sleeper bus to Hue for $22 each.

When we first boarded the sleeper bus, we were floored. We'd had no real clear idea of what a "sleeper bus" was, and we'd assumed something similar to a "normal bus"... with comfy reclining seats?
No.

We boarded the dark sleeper bus, full of passengers lying fast asleep in their sleeper beds. The Bus Man pointed frantically at our feet until we understood to "de-shoe". He then led us past all the sleeper beds... all the full sleeper beds. Finally we arrive at the back row. The only row. The only non-singular bed. Not only was it not singular, but five beds all snug up against one another.


The row was as followed: Sleeping Man Number One, up against the window, directly against him lay Sleeping Man Number Two. After that, there was half of the bed number 3 unoccupied, followed by the other half of bed 3, all of bed 4 and half of bed 5. All of this currently occupied by Large Angry Sleeping Man. Not only was he the largest man we'd seen in Asia, he was the only large man we'd seen in Asia.

He snored extremely loudly and intimidatingly.

The Bus Man informed us: "Two beds left. Sleep here." And promptly left us to deal with our 2 half seat predicaments. The Nearby Friendly (not quite sleeping) Man helped us to shake Large Angry Sleeping Man by the feet in order to ask him to scoot over slightly.

Nothing happened right away. We wiggled his feet again. Suddenly, the disastrous, hilarious and fantastical unfortunate-ness of the whole situation dawned on us, and we began the fitful frantic giggle fit of the insane.

Finally, Large Angry Sleeping Man, Awoke.

"Um... hahahaha.... sorry..... heh.... 2 of us? Here?" (Much gesticulation)

LASM: "Grrrrrr?"

"Uh.... 2 of us.... here...fit?"

LASM: "GRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! NO!"

And he promtly fell back to sleep. We tried to squeeze ourselves on either side of him, though this was quite impossible. I ended up squeezing myself into the smallest creature I could become, smashed between the man and the window. My traveling companion was somewhere on the other side of this massively frightening individual. Now alone in the darkness, the manic giggle fit returned. How miserably absurd my life felt at that moment.

Thankfully, The Nearby Friendly Man saw one passenger hop off the bus at some unknown location, and he assured me I must take the vacant bed. I did, and swiftly drifted off to sleep, alone in the dark, bumpy, dirty bus bed.

I woke up somewhere around dawn, realizing my traveling companion may not have slept much back in the unfortunate situation I'd left him the night before. The guilt set in, but what could I have done? We surely wouldn't all fit, and hopefully once I'd left, Large Angry Man eventually scooted a bit and took up the ample space I'd left him.

As we finally arrived to rainy Hue, I found Kevin's journey had been far more unpleasant than mine.
He did not sleep much on that sleeper. Lots of spooning.

We hopped off the bus to the expected hotel pushers and grumbled our way through the crowd down the street. We planned to head to Laos from Hue, but wanted to travel to Hoi An for a few days first. We yawned and groaned and figured (as we found the rainy gray weather unappealing) we could head straight to Hoi An and check out Hue on our way to Laos. We stopped at a restaurant with an intimidatingly friendly and desperate waitress at the aptly named "Friendly Restaurant". She stared at us as we ate with wide eyes and a poker face, unless we made direct eye contact or spoke to her, to which she'd respond with a wide, manic grin. She told us she'd sell us our bus to Hoi An, and there seemed to be very little we could do about it. We agreed on $5 each (a discount from the original price she offered, though we ended up hearing of people buying tickets as low as $2, ah well).

The bus picked us up from the restaurant within 3 hours of arriving in Hue, and after our 12 hour journey the night before, we were once again on our way.
Although the bus had the loudest and most frequently honked horn of all time, we were at least grateful it was not a sleeper, and no large angry men growled at us.

We said goodbye to Hue, looking forward to acquainting ourselves with it on a later day -- hopefully a less rainy one. Little did we know what was to come.... rain being one of the many misfortunes we'd encounter in Hue upon our return.