Bus Boy part 2 of 3

Do the math.

We certainly didn’t.

The overnight bus seemed like such a great concept. But, the bus left at 10:00 pm. It’s a five-hour trip from Kunming to Dali.

Do the math.

That puts us in the Dali bus terminus at 3:00 a.m. What exactly are we supposed to do and where exactly are we supposed to go at 3:00 in the morning. Not exactly the best time to show up at out small, owner-operated bed and breakfast. We hadn’t exactly thought this detail through.

Fortunately, the overnight bus operators had.

When the bus pulled into the terminus, the driver didn’t kick us all off. Instead, the bus sat in the parking lot where the driver idled its engine for the next several hours allowing us passengers to get a little more sleep. Why not? The bus had nowhere else to go. It’is tricked out as a night bus with sleeping berths. It’s not as if it converts over to seats for day-time use.

Slowly, the passengers started to trickle off the bus over the course of the next few hours while my family and I tried to grab a little more sleep. By 6:30, we were the last four passengers on the bus. We would have stayed a little longer, but really bad, really loud Chinese opera music started blaring from the loudspeakers outside of the bus station as I am sure it does every morning at 6:30 a.m.. Simultaneously, the bus driver came back and informed us it was time to disembark. We were able to communicate with him where we wanted to go and he was kind enough to point us to the bus that was going to Old Dali.

As we settled into our seats on the local bus, I used the opportunity to re-organize my gear. Wallet. Left pocket. Check. Cell phone. Right pocket. Check. Camera. Small bag. Camera? Where’s my camera? Oh shoot. I dashed back into the parking lot ready to scour the overnight bus, but it had just left. I dashed back onto the local bus which was ready to leave. I had to make a command decision. I ordered my family off the bus. “I’m not leaving without that camera.”

In a panic, I went to the counter in the bus station. Surprisingly, our Mandarin phrase book actually had the phrase “I have lost my camera” in it. The man behind the counter looked at our overnight bus receipts and made a phone call on our behalf. Meanwhile, I used the phrase book and some pantomiming to explain to a sleepy looking security guard what had happened. If I had left my camera on the bus, I was going to track it down.