The Chinatown Bus Experience

It's the year 2007, and judging from it's first 2 days it's promising to be a very busy year for me...

I spent the last couple of days in Washington DC to visit a few "longtimenosee" friends from back home who now live there. My main aim was to get out of Providence for a few days and relax before coming back to work - which worked out. However there's more to it:

Having traveled the road between Istanbul and Izmir for 5 years, I can easily say that I'm accustomed to various levels of travel conditions (which for instance include a 10 year old kid sleeping under my seat), mainly in buses... Therefore when I heard the availability of the Chinatown buses, I did not hesitate to consider them as an option especially when I heard their price.
When I started searching, I sadly found out that there are no direct buses between Washington DC and Providence. The only option is to go to New York and exchange buses there. Finding a bus between NY and DC is very easy, these guys are pretty well organized and you can even buy tickets from the net, though I don't think it's necessary. Here is a good Chinatown Bus search engine. I chose the Eastern Travel bus, costing 20$, for no reason at all and they turned out to be OK.

To get to NY from Providence is tricky though. I was hearing about this large van type of thing that leaves from Thayer St. early in the morning. I did search them on the web but found absolutely nothing about them. Luckily, a friend of mine was traveling to NY the same day and he somehow had the phone number of the driver - this is hardcore even by the Turkish standards. So here I'm unveiling the myth of this bus. It's a large van that leaves from Thayer St. in front of Store 24 at 730 every morning. The destination is 43 Canal St in Manhattan, very close to the East Broadway station where you can take the F train to practically anywhere. As far as I recall, it leaves the same address in Manhattan at 530 every day - although I might need to check that again - to come back to Providence. It costs 15$.

The return trip was a little more tricky. I was tired, I didn't want to travel during the day and I didn't want to exchange buses at night, so I came up with the Bonanza bus which in the website was scheduled as 315 am Mondays and Saturdays. After calling the guys to make sure that it was Monday, my friend took me to the station and boom - no bus. I went to my friends office to look at early morning planes and buses and suddenly found out that there was a bus to NY at 330 am in the morning by Today's Bus. I caught the bus, it was a little more shittier than the Eastern Bus but who cares at that point. I found an unoccupied couple of seats at the back and started to enjoy the ride, sleeping until I woke up to find out that we are in the middle of the highway picking up passengers. At first I thought it was Baltimore but then the lady sitting next to me said that another bus from the same company broke down and they were taking all the passengers in. It was unbelievable. There were around 10 people standing up for the entire journey and because the space between the seats are smaller then the usual (even the lady sitting next to me couldn't fit), I had to lean to my left with my legs on the corridor - magically I still was able to sleep.

In conclusion I still very much recommend the Chinatown Buses over the regular Bonanza bus. They're half the price and except pretty weird situations like my return trip, they're fairly comfortable plus you get to catch a glimpse of Chinatown in the cities you travel.