A Stomach Churning Journey

Nick Edmunds
5 days ago
6 min read

A bus trip I'll never forget

Warning: Not for the faint-hearted. Reading this may cause an involuntary clenching of the buttocks

During my first year working as a doctor, I had a week off in the June of my medical resident job. decided it would be a good idea to go to Crete, on my own. I’d been once before on a back-packing, ferry-hopping tour of the Greek Islands with my best friend from school. That trip was a whirlwind scoot from place to place, with hardly time to savour the majesty of the locations as we searched for the next bar where we could drink retsina, or the next beach to sleep on.

One of the last on board, I had to sit through the five-hour flight in the smoking section of the Dan Air jet. I reached Iraklion in the evening, and had a couple of beers in the bar next to the bus station, where I met a British Leyland worker from Birmingham who told me he was there while on strike. Deciding to set about finding somewhere luxurious to stay the night, I wandered into a hotel. Five minutes later, I was on the street again. A night in there would have used up most of my week’s spending money.

It was around nine o’clock by that time, and the light was fading. Still determined I wasn’t sleeping on a beach or bench this time — I was a doctor, after all — I went for a pizza and asked the waiter if he knew any small hotels where I could find a room for the night. Of course, he told me the only rooms available in the whole of Iraklion were in his uncle’s high-class establishment — round the back of the pizza bar.

My room was clean—if you didn’t look. The other residents of the salubrious joint I had happened upon had six legs and wings. Some of them chose not to use those wings, instead scuttling across the tiles like dark brown dodgem cars as soon as I dared to flick the broken light switch. The others buzzed me like Stukas. I was looking forward to travelling to Chania the next morning, and promised myself the hotels would be cheaper there.

I was knackered. I had finished work that morning at nine o’clock, before making my way to Edinburgh airport. It hadn’t fazed me—over the last ten months, I had grown accustomed to only a few hours' sleep in every 48.

This, though, was possibly the first time I had been able to relax for months, and noise from the bus station and the discotheque through the wall were never going to disturb me. Even the dive-bombing mosquitoes had a lulling effect. I slept soundly. But not all night.

###

My brow was sweating as I reached a busy town square in time to catch the nine-thirty bus, but not from lugging my rucksack in the stifling heat. I also had a niggling gut and an acid, garlic taste in my throat.

Boarding the faded blue four-wheeled passenger vehicle that passed for a bus in Crete in 1983, I squeezed into my seat, sharing with a malodorous hulk. The aisle seat I perched on

meant numerous dunts from baskets and from the hips of black-clad widows as Cretans flowed past trying to find a seat, all the while bartering and exchanging gossip.

For twenty minutes or so, anxiety about my rucksack occupied my mind. I’d been instructed by the driver to leave it on the pavement. Minutes later, through the small section of grimy window that wasn’t shaded by Gigantes Hulkopoulos, I saw it flying upwards. The driver had lobbed it onto the bus roof, to take its chances amongst boxes, suitcases and cages containing live chickens.

My anxiety shifted, though. A new focus: my colon. More correctly, my internal anal sphincter, which felt in imminent danger of failing at any minute.

I had hoped I was empty: there had been no explosions since 6 am, two hours after I had woken with my head under a toilet pan. Naked on cold tiles, I was cold and sweaty. When my shut-down faculties began to stutter back into action, I worked out I was on the floor of the shared bathroom along the landing from my room. A fetid reek was stinging my nostrils.

Putting my years of medical training to use, I diagnosed that I had fainted. The cause of my collapse became apparent seconds later, when crippling abdominal cramp doubled me up, threatening to blank me out again. I had to fight to stay aware enough to scramble back up onto the icy porcelain. Just in time.

The next couple of hours were spent creeping back and forth between my room and the barely flushing water closet.

Three thousand years before, nearby Knossos had been flushed away by a deadly deluge. Now, as the bus pulled out of ancient Iraklion, I was dreading another one and gripping the flaking chrome rail on the back of the seat in front. And gripping every pelvic muscle I had. Holding on for the dear life of my Y-Fronts and the sticky vinyl seat, I pictured the salad I had taken with my pizza the night before, regretting it more than any of my many past foolish decisions.

The cool rail soothed my boiling forehead, and crushing it with my feeble hands seemed to strengthen my anal defences for a while. I knew I faced a four-hour journey with only one stop. There was bound to be a toilet I could use in Rethymnon, I thought. If the bus stopped for long enough. And if I could hold on that long.

My hopes were dashed, though, by the queue for the single W.C. in the ticket office in Rethymnon’s town square. I stood in line for a few minutes, hopping from one foot to the other, my jaw clenched like the rest of me. Over my shoulder, there were already obvious signs that the driver was preparing to set off again. He was arguing with an official in a grey cap, presumably the bus inspector. Pointing at his watch, shrugging and gesticulating, I saw him spit on the ground and turn to go. I’ll have to stay here, I thought. Catch the next bus. There are only two more in the queue in front of me. Stuff it, Chania can wait.

Then I caught sight of my rucksack, perched on the roof rack. Tied onto it was the red bandana I’d been given in San Sebastian a year or two before. If I didn’t get back on the bus, I’d never see my belongings again. Or my passport.

The second half of the journey was only more bearable because Gigantes had left the bus at Rethymnon. I had a longer rail to grip, and could spread my arms wide. Not my legs, though. They had to stay locked together.

Two hours later, the stunning scenery and cerulean sea I had barely glanced at began to be replaced by the outskirts of a large town. I was in Chania. Nearly there.

But traffic was building up, and progress slowed. The last few minutes before I left that bus were the most excruciating. The bus was crawling along, with still no sign of Chania’s spectacular semi-circular harbour with the cafés, restaurants and tourist shops I remembered so well. And toilets.

I came to a decision. I had to get off. As we approached a taverna with a grapevine veranda where a few men sipped coffee and twirled worry beads, I went forward to the driver and indicated I wanted him to

stop. He grunted, pulled up, and grudgingly climbed the ladder to retrieve my rucksack from the roof. My fellow passengers tutted and sighed. They don’t know how lucky they were.

Blessed salvation: a sit-on toilet, a bottle of water, and plenty of other stops for relief on the two-mile trek onwards to Chania harbour. I’m glad to report that the rest of my holiday was better than the first 24 hours.