For a while I found myself counting the seconds between honks. One second, two seconds, three seconds, honk. One second, two seconds, honk honk. The furthest I got was to six seconds, at which point I decided to spend my energy more wisely, on selectively blocking out the sound altogether.
I found myself on a night bus between cities in Vietnam, and it was painfully obvious that the seats were not made for people my height. My legs were crammed into a small plastic leg compartment, having to bend in weird places to fit. Sleeping in the aisle next to my seat was a Vietnamese man wearing a plaid shirt and long pants, snoring loudly into a beat down, discolored pillow. He was the second driver who would take over half way, or whenever the first got tired. Every once in a while when the bus hurtled around a left corner in the dark, or dodged a moped sans headlights, his leg would bump into mine, and my not having the heart to wake a sleeping man, I simply waited til a right turn when his legs would swing the other way.
From a metal bar across the windscreen hung a bright-red tasseled picture of Buddha, swaying with the motions of the bus. It was bathed in a thick cloud of smoke herded into a slow spiral by the wind from the open driver seat window. Some of the smoke would be urged on by the wind to travel down the aisles, leaving everything smelling of cigarettes. The driver seemed to be craving a cigarette at all times of driving, knocking off ash into the night air out the window whenever he could spare some time between honking.
Sometimes the honks would erupt like the coughs of a sick man; sporadic and urgent, perhaps to scare someone smaller off the road. Other times, when to honk or not to honk seemed a mere choice situation, it would be a more melodious performance. It was as if the bus driver entertained himself on the fourteen hour drive by rendering songs with his horn. I had long ago realized that I would not get much sleep, and I briefly wondered if it had been a mistake to have passed so hardheadedly on the Valium every backpacker in South East Asia seemed to be on.
Engulfed in smoke and darkness and with a leg bumping into mine I finally drifted off into a swaying, honking sleep on a bus flying through the Vietnamese night.
A Picture With Words 