Song Teo Trips

Song Teo Trips

The village where I teach English as a Peace Corps Volunteer is about 35 km from the nearest town with an ATM and a place to buy items we think we can’t get along without – in my case, crunchy peanut butter and good coffee.  For safety reasons, PCV’s, as we called, aren’t allowed to ride motorcycles or drive cars, so we rely on public transportation and rides from friends. In my village, the song teo (small bus with two rows of seats facing each other) is the only public transportation. It’s not fast and is often crowded, but it gets you there.  Here is a picture of one just after dropping us off in the town.

The first time I took the song teo on my own, I was at the stop before 7 a.m., to be sure I wouldn’t miss it. It arrived at about 7:30 a.m. and I got on. The driver promptly shut off the engine and said it would be about 10 minutes.  I spoke to him in Thai, and he labored to answer in English. A member of my host family came by to check on me and verify the return time. The driver said proudly:  “I tell him, ten half” – which is indeed what he had told me, and I understood the return time was ten-thirty.  Referring to me as “him” stems from the fact that the Thai language has one pronoun for all third-person forms (he/him/his; she/her; they/them/their), so mastery of English pronouns doesn’t come easily to Thais.

Eventually the song teo started, with the driver blaring his horn and slowing down every few minutes in hopes of more passengers. Several people got on in the next village and the song teo was soon full.  The trip took a little over an hour.  From the song teo stop, I took a motorcycle taxi to Tesco Lotus, a Walmart-type chain based in the UK.  It was nearly 9:30 a.m. by the time I got there, so I had to hustle through my errands (ATM, groceries, top up phone) and find another motorcycle taxi to take me back to the song teo stop by ten half. 

Boarding the bus, I recognized several passengers from the trip in. Everyone had groceries. Sacks of fertilizer and several boxed items were piled on the floor. Passengers shared mid-morning snacks. Here’s a typical return trip:

The last passenger to board was a young man in army camouflage with a chicken (actually a rooster) under his arm.  I wondered if they had been at a cockfight.  The man had to stand on the little platform at the back of the bus the whole way. The rooster was very calm and well behaved – clearly well-treated by his owner.  The song teo dropped me off in my village at about noon.

Since then, I’ve taken the song teo numerous times and have gotten used to the fact that an hour’s worth of shopping takes all morning.  When I moved out of my host family’s home in mid-August and into a rental house, I had to buy several larger items (table, bookcase, wash tubs, clothes drying rack, etc.). The driver and other passengers always helped me get my bulky purchases on and off the bus.  The drivers often take short detours in order to drop passengers with large items at their doors.  One rainy day when the bus was very full, the driver backed into a muddy driveway to unload about a dozen 500-kilogram-sacks of fertilizer.  It seemed like a setup for getting stuck in the mud, but with much huffing and puffing the sacks were unloaded, and we pulled back onto the road.  Whew!

 I haven’t seen the young man with the chicken again – and unfortunately, I didn’t think to ask if I could take their picture at the time.  Here is a picture captured from the internet to give you an idea.