Thai bus stations all look the same across the country. Filled with the same familiar characters on their travels for whatever reason… The student, the soldier, the monk, the auntie, the uncle… Then there’s the toilet cleaner with her 5 baht tray, the conductor guy with his whistle, maybe a clutch of semi-stray dogs, occasionally a cat…
All under 10-20 white pillars holding up a slanted roof, you know exactly what it looks like.
The ticket counters with their mismatching design fonts, the snack shop with the bored auntie sitting behind, the dirty concourse with those awful plastic chairs on top. Often I secretly hope the seats are full, so I can respectfully lay down on that familiar concrete with my backpack beneath my head.
There’s a strange romance to it all.
Some people say airports are romantic, I don’t think so. Airports are fascistic, highly regimented, formalised, rigid, almost militarised. Once you’re in there’s no way out, a closed world of rules and locked doors.
The bus station is quite the opposite, open to anyone anytime. Just show up with a few hundred baht and you could pretty much go anywhere. All of those fading signs with curious names of obscure districts you’ve heard of but never been to, just a cheap ticket away… You can dream about them. You can wander around, smell the air, maybe chat to some aunties… Eat some Mama noodles.
There’s a rhythm to the bus station.
The initial quiet
The growing crowd at some platform starts to murmur
The loud rumble of an engine ignition
The polite shifting of the crowd onto the bus
The blast of sound and black fumes as it takes off
and then the same quiet returns.
I think we all have these memories at the bus station, both happy and sad memories.
Going on a trip with friends for the first time,
Moving to a new city for the first time,
Waiting for hours in the din of the pouring rain,
Waiting for hours in the oppressive heat,
Maybe excited to see a loved one,
Maybe sad to leave a loved one,
The desperate urge to get home,
The desperate urge to leave home.
Thai bus stations all look the same across the country. The student, the soldier, the monk, the auntie, the uncle…
As such, showing up to a brand new bus station is functionally the same as showing up to a familiar old one.
Everyone who takes the bus has these memories in some way or another, all at more or less the same bus station, be it in Chiang Rai or Songkhla, Ubon or Singburi.
It’s strange to think that someone hundreds of kilometres across the country, who’s never been to the same bus station as you, will share nearly exactly those same memories.
This is a shared anchored memory of some kind of another.
Maybe we could call it a consciousness.
The rich don’t take the bus. The rich drive their cars alone. The rich don’t know those same faces that we do. They don’t know the comfort of the familiar dirty concrete like we do, the 5 baht bathroom lady, the semi-stray dogs, the occasional cat, the shrill ringing of the uncle’s whistle or the very specific taste of Mama when you’re hungover in Lampang station at 10 am waiting for the bus to take you home… You, reader, probably know exactly the taste, the sounds, the smells, even if you’ve never been there.
These memories, this consciousness is something we share among our class, the bus taking class, specific shared memories of both joy and sorrow, it’s something that is uniquely ours. A class consciousness.