Holiday in Cambodia

Things I Did To Pass The Time During My Horrible Never-Ending 14-Hour Bus Trip From Bangkok to Siam Reap

1. Try to rationalize that wheel-well seat on the bus is not so bad - must have been highly coveted on the school bus in grade six for some reason.
2. Try to adjust and find place to sit where driver cannot look up my skirt. Abandon this after 15 minutes when realize it is futile because of wheel-well seat. Give driver dirty look in mirror every time his eyes venture to my crotch.
3. Catalogue every teacher I ever have had. Try to remember one distinct thing about each one.
4. Make list of every boy I have ever kissed. Edit the best characteristics of these boys into one super boyfriend. Edit the worst characteristic of these boys into world's worst boyfriend.
5. Invent imaginary "ultimate mates" for each person on the bus. Create Austrian skier and urologist named Hans for German girl next to me. Wonder what their children will be like.
6. Develop rationing strategy to stretch my precious Oreo cookies for what is only supposed to be a 10 hour trip. Abandon strategy 5 hours into the trip when, in a fit of dispair, utter boredom and hunger, I eat all 10 cookies at once.
7. Contemplate childhood sports I have not thought about in years - soccerbaseball, the shuttle run, t-ball, wallball, crabsoccer, the parachute, double dutch, fitness circuit... Debate merit of each sport and likelihood of ever being accepted into the Olympics. Decide that soccerbaseball has best hope and that fitness circuit is least hopeful.
8. Impress self by composing first Haiku since grade 5:

Inhale hot rust air
Rattling to Siem Reap
Green fields burn cayenne

9. Try to decide what bus ride feels like. Feels like I have been in a never-ending magnitude 10 earthquake for hours and hours. Feels like I am a kernel in a hot air popper. Feels like I have played 20 of the roughest games of hockey in my life...back-to-back. Feels like infinity.
10. Realize why all Cambodians at the border were pointing and laughing at our bus as we drove past - it is because I am on the world's shittiest bus.
11. Begin to consider what could make bus ride worse...then doors fly open after a particularly large pothole - resembling a crater on the moon - knocking bags into the dust on the "road" and will not shut again for rest of trip. Hours later bus gets two flat tires, dragging trip on longer and making it even bumpier.
12. Wonder if an equation exists to calculate how much dust I have inhaled.
13. Stare out window into darkness for last three hours and sweat while tossed around.
14. Numb. Numb. Numb.