Kindness

In a day otherwise filled with eleven hours of riding along bumpy, winding roads in a van, a small moment of kindness outshone everything.

At 8am, we had once again packed all our possessions onto our backs and hit the road. Unfortunately, the luxury of instant—and incredibly cheap—ride share services in China is now in the rear-view. As is the way in which long-haul travel between towns is made seamless by high-speed rail. Thus, today we were committed to walking for an hour to the bus terminal.

The glaring issue, as we would only realise later, was that said bus terminal didn’t exist. The coordinates sent to us by the bus company lead us to a building that had been closed for over a year.

There were signs. There was no title assigned to the location on Google Maps; just a set of coordinates. The road we turned onto felt like a desolate rural highway, with more stray dogs than people. As we breathed a deep sigh of relief at finally arriving, we noticed a massive landslide or something similar on the other side of the road. Whatever it was, the earth had given way and there was no road left. Seems like a logical reason to move the bus terminal.

Anyway, things clicked into place when an aqua-blue Suzuki indicated towards us. For better and worse, we’ve very much steered clear of anyone offering us a lift. Perhaps rudely so, but with safety in mind. But this was different. More trust was established than usual for two reasons. First, it was a woman driving the car. Second, she was wearing a finishers’ shirt from the same event I’d run in days prior. That was enough for us to hear her out. Good thing we did.

She had received multiple calls from friends who had spotted us—we really really stood out, fortunately—and were concerned that we might be walking to the old bus terminal. It was a reasonable guess, and accurate in this case, of course. We’d pretty much crossed onto rural roads, beyond the city limits. There weren’t too many places we could’ve planned on walking with backpacks equipped. Plus, there are no walkers in sight here. Motorbikes only. Most road infrastructure is not designed to accommodate pedestrian movement in the slightest, really.

One such friend we encountered earlier. About twenty minutes earlier. In hindsight, it was painstakingly obvious that he has trying to tell us the terminal was closed. But between the broken English, our general wariness in scenarios like these, and mounting fatigue in the draining heat, we kind of just shuffled our way out of the interaction without really stopping to try and digest what was being said to us. In hindsight, we should’ve. In the moment, his somewhat pleading tone drove us away, but it came totally from a place of concern.

Alas, our saviour, Ying, explained all of this and offered us a ride. She had just dropped her son off at an activity nearby and had heard we were approaching from this direction. Perks of a small town, I suppose. As an aside, I still have no idea why the bus station was so far away from centre to begin with. There is no train station here. Anyway, I exchanged a glance with Mary and we jumped in.

If not for this lifeline, we’d be screwed. Completely stranded, with all our bags, and no bus to show for it. Moreover, if we missed this bus, we’d also miss the following van at Hat Yai, never make it to Surat Thani tonight, have to scramble to find accomodation, miss our bus and ferry connection to the island early the following morning and, basically—it would’ve been an absolute mess.

So, we’re here on this second van right now, schedule to arrive in Surat Thani around 8pm, solely because of a few very kind people. Ying—whose name almost certainly isn’t spelled like that—even phoned the bus company, came into the makeshift bus stop and chatted to them in Thai on our behalf to make sure we got our tickets, gave us a hug, and didn’t ask for a single thing in return.

People are amazing, and, for the most part, really really kind.