The Reggae bus
In Barbados a few years back, swmbo and I decided to get the bus into town, rather than fork out for a taxi. There are two local types of bus - the blue ones, which are run by the council, and have fixed limits on the numbe of people allowed on, and the reggae busses. Which are bright yellow. Oh, and they play really loud music. And as they're owned privately, they want to fit as many people on as possible. Either way, the price is the same - 1 dollar 50, no matter how far you're going - nice and easy..

So, we walk to the bus stop and don't have to wait long for the first reggae bus. We'd got on quite early so picked the seats at the back. the seats are a moulded shape and hard plastic. The inside roof of the bus has a brilliant graffitti mural on it, and the hardcore reggae is loooooouuuuud. The bus starts to fill up (mostly with schoolkids, we must have been up early!), then this lovely but enormous black woman gets on, comes all the way to the back, takes the spare seat on the back row, along with half of each side of her (including the one swmbo was on).

a little further down the road, we hear a siren behind, look and see a police car. The bus driver pulls in, and the police car stops... They pull over busses over here? One of the coppers gets on, walks down the bus, stares at everyone, then gets off again. Weird....

A bit further down the road, we stop outside another of the hotels and two British retired couples get on... There are 4 spare seats on the bus, they're just spread around, so the 2 couples just stand, and it's painfully obvious that none of them wants to sit next to a black person..... I've never cringed so much about the behaviour of Brits abroad since another retired couple started line dancing to the pan-pipe band outside a spanish restaurant at lunchtime (seriously...).

Length? about 35 seats, but they do pack them in tight!
(vinny, Thu 2 Jul 2009, 10:27, 4 replies)

:-) I want to catch a reggae bus!
And pah! at the tourists... They've probably not caught a bus in Blighty in the last 40 years, so it's all a shock to them. Don't they realise that it's when you use the public transport that the real holiday starts?
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Thu 2 Jul 2009, 10:37, closed)

To be fair,
Are you sure they weren't the type who just won't sit next to strangers on a bus? I have a friend like that, and they once spent an hour standing because they couldn't plonk themselves down next to someone they didn't know who 'might be strange' :S
(Foxinsockssir, Thu 2 Jul 2009, 10:37, closed)

Yeah
Or maybe they just didn't want to get split up?
(Dangerous Disco Trev Isn't my real name, Thu 2 Jul 2009, 11:58, closed)

Hmmm.
I find it a difficult concept to grasp that people racist enough to avoid sitting next to black people would go to Barbados.

Although my mate used to be racist, until he went on a Caribbean cruise. A few months after returning home we found shit loads of ebony porn on his computer.

"Ebony and ivroy, come together on his PC"...
(ste_mc_efc, Thu 2 Jul 2009, 13:40, closed)