Turning to the bottle?

“We should get some plastic bottles to wee into”.

It wasn’t a typical suggestion from Lara. But then, we weren't in a typical situation.

We found ourselves crammed in with 30 other Chinese people on a sleeper bus down to the south of Yunnan province.

Catching the bus at Dali, we found the bus almost full. The choice of beds was thus limited…to the very beds any traveller wishes to avoid on China rudimentary rural roads - those right at the back.

Squeezed into our five-foot berths, clutching our bags tightly to our persons, we weren’t exactly eagerly anticipating this journey. 15 hours, through the night, on a bus reeking of BO and full of scary-looking types. Oh and with no toilet on board.

We had been warned about these buses: ripe for thieves; poor safety records; drivers popping funny-looking pills to keep themselves awake.

Perhaps we should have headed back to Kunming rather than attempt this shortcut, skirting along the edge of the Burmese border all the way down to Xishuangbanna in the tropical south of Yunnan.

A tubby chap in front of us didn’t seem to share our concerns. He yawned, scratched his crotch and smoothed his whispy moustache, a soup-strainer teasing the corners of his mouth.

Tubby wore the usual attire of polyester jogging bottoms, a worn-out t-shirt and pungent nylon socks. No wonder the bus stank.

After an hour and a half on the road, the driver turned off and steered his vehicle into a dusty yard. On opposite sides dirty fuel tankers were lined up. A couple of mangy dogs drifted about in front of them, sniffing each others’ behinds.

At one end I could make out what looked like a public lavatory, at the other a chap in a old cream suit and spotty tie implored this new batch of potential customers to savour the delights of his dingy restaurant.

I plumped for the WC. I soon wished I hadn’t. A stygian nightmare of a place.

Stepping inside I was almost overpowered by the reek of a thousand digested stir fries.

Beneath bare bulbs a line of grunting men squatted, their behinds clearly visible to all for each ‘cubicle’ consisted of a low wall, minus door. Above an overspilling trench, which had clearly long since had a good flush through, they crouched, shouting to their mates and even smoking cigarettes.

I desperately searched for a free, and perhaps slightly sanitary spot and made my leave as soon as possible. Back on earth’s surface I staggered out into the yard, gulping in air like an asphyxiated asthmatic.

Walking over into the half-light of the restaurant entrance, I came across Tubby and his wife. He stood proud, his legs far apart and hands on his hips, making half-hearted stretches and fully-committed guttural sounds.

Tubby’s copious burps rattled the windows, his hocking-up rocked the ground. The earth nicely coated in his spittle he raised his t-shirt and patted his rotund midriff contentedly.

At last, when he had run out of cigarettes our driver reappeared and squeezed into his seat behind the wheel. We were back on the road.

Many passengers chose to eschew the charms of Jackie Chan on the temperamental on-board televisions and got down to the serious business of sleeping. We did similar. Or tried to. A good night’s kip on this night bus soon proved to be rather elusive.

The road conditions were atrocious, with more bumps than flat. And our driver seemed to have a taste for offroading. Indeed, speeding through the mountains, I wonder whether our bus touched asphalt at all during that long, long night.

Lying in my prime anti-gravitational positions at the back of the bus I seemed to spend more of the time in mid-air than on my bunk.

Whilst Lara had wisely found a belt of some sort with which she managed to strap herself firmly to her berth I contented myself with shooting up into the air at every bump. Crashing back down onto my bunk I winced with the impact

Sleep, or at least more than the odd doze, was impossible. Instead, in between the snatched periods of semi-conciousness, I grasped the handrails and admired the landscape, bathed in the light of the full moon.

The road intermittently followed the course of the Lancang River, destined to become the mighty Mekong at the Laotian border.

Having already come across this river, on the fringes of the Tibetan plateau, this river will soon become an old acquaintance, as we follow it, on and off in the next few weeks, through Laos, along the border with Thailand, across Cambodia and down into Vietnam, where it finally empties into the sea, chanelled through the Mekong Delta.

Leaving the river behind for now, through my sleep-deprived haze I watched the mountains of the north gave way to smooth green hills, decked with rice terraces and rubber plantations, interspersed by banana plantations and the odd remote village.

We had crossed the tropic of Cancer.

By first light the scenery was decidedly tropical and I was decidedly disoriented as we pulled into our destination, Jinhong, a staging post for our journey down into Laos.

Still, mustn't complain: at least I didn't need to turn to the bottle.