Worst Bus Ride in China (part two)

Sanjiang to Zhaoxing:
An exercise in patience, this trip was doomed from the beginning.

We all got up at 6am for the 6.45am bus out of Sanjiang, and staggered to the bus ticketing office in the dark with our heavy packs, still bleary eyed, and spoke to the ticket lady (the same one we had spoken to the previous day, and who had told us to come back at that time), only to be told "mei you" or don't have. You can't imagine our excitement and joy at hearing this news... but they did have the 11.30am bus. This was only a relief up until the moment when we actually saw the beast.

It was so beat up it was scary. One of the seats inside the bus was more like a rocking chair, and the actual seat board/pillow kept flying off whenever we went over really large bumps (ie. every 2 minutes, no exaggeration). The overhead luggage racks weren't attached properly at the rear (this bus obviously did this route a lot) and rattled constantly - which, bizarrely, became quite comforting after a couple of hours. There was even live chickens stuffed into the racks, just to complete the picture.

The ride was supposed to take 4.5hours but ended up taking 6.5hours. One of those hours was used moving the piles of rocks (again, from the landslides) that we would come across every 20 minutes, and probably not surprisingly, the other hour was spent waiting for a team of monkeys to fix our two burst tyres.
At one point, while trying to make room for a dump truck, the bus driver got us stuck on a rock that apparently damaged the exit door, so we had to stop again a little further on and wait while someone bashed it back into shape with a mallet.

Waiting for the tyre and roads to be fixed.

This bus ride, like all bus rides, was also conducted at breakneck speed, and where possible we overtook every slow vehicle, given the opportunity. Clearly our views and the bus drivers' views on what constituted an "opportunity" differed somewhat. Having said that though, our bus driver was excellent... the messes he would continually get us out of was truly amazing.
When not staring out of the windows with a mix of horror and awe (the scenery was beautiful), Martin, Tim and I entertained ourselves with debating which of the two bus rides were the worst, and we couldn't decide.

Some of the beautiful Dhong villages we passed along the way.