Local Buses - Charging Fares Like It's 1975
Thailand’s Local Buses: Rolling Chaos on Four Wheels If you really want to experience Thailand like a local and possibly lose track of time, space, and your original destination, hop on a local public bus. These colorful, clunky beasts are part transport, part time machine, and part mobile sauna. They're either slow or terrifyingly fast, confusing, weirdly charming, and cost about the same as a bottle of water. What’s not to love? Let’s start with the obvious: there is no schedule. The bus arrives when it feels like it. It leaves when it feels full(ish). You don’t track it on an app; you track it with a deep sense of intuition, desperation, and possibly prayer. It might show up in 5 minutes. It might be next Tuesday. The buses themselves are a mixed bag. Some are bright orange, government-run numbers that look like they’ve survived several coups and at least one minor flood. Some are red smoke-belching monsters from the Cretaceous era. Others are dusty blue-and-white classics that ...