Last Bus to Hell: All Aboard

I can barely write this... this Yunnan "road" of washed out mud will take 4 or maybe 5 or maybe 8 hours (depends on how many more traffic jams are caused by rabid Chinese trying to pass each other from all possible angles).  We are traveling from Lijiang to Dali ostensibly, though I might decide to get out and hike.  The road is better suited for that.  We are going about ... ouch!  I think the bus just bottomed out... it suddenly slammed to a stop as it scraped over something.  OK, now we are back to up to about 5 mph, and yet somehow we are bumping up and down hard enough to make my ass leave the air occasionally.  (I fixed the typos in this post later.)

Train, where art thou?!

Just as we were leaving for Destination: Hell, I was informed that there was a train that could make the journey.  It left at the same time and took only 2 hours.  I pictured it, quietly sailing along smooth level track, free of traffic, ignorant of crater-sized potholes or car horns, the picturesque landscape filling the large clean windows.  Alex, the person I am traveling with at the moment, says he loves buses.  This is the same guy who ate something resembling a fried vulture last night.  Hard to tell.  But I decided, out of solidarity, to ride the bus.  Maybe there was something great about bus travel I had forgotten.

At this moment while my ass is being pulverized and ears assaulted by a speaker two inches away blaring a Chinese movie, I have the pleasure of having my nose incinerate from the Chinese body odor pouring off the sweaty man next to me.  His breath smells like garlic dipped in a Chinese toilet, and he has been hulking large brown loogies into a bag in his lap about every 5 minutes.

I also found out earlier today that I should be able to travel entirely by train for the next few months.

I swear, at this moment, being of weak mind and poor body, that I intend to do precisely that.