This will be my tenth year riding Chinatown buses back and forth between Boston and New York. In the beginning, I was living in Boston and dating a beautiful New York Poet and so was breaking my budget going back and forth on the Greyhound to make kissy faces. A pal said, "Why don't you just take one of those Chinatown buses? Just go down to Chinatown and start walking around and you'll find a cheap bus to Boston." I was skeptical. It took me a little longer to work up the courage to find the small bakery in Boston's Chinatown where a woman was selling tickets to New York at one of the tables. But I immediately fell in love with the price and the speed with which we traveled. Get there in four hours on the dot? Now you're talking! At the time it was $20, but still a bargain. There were two lines, Fung Wah Bus (my favorite) and Lucky Star, and later they had a price war that took the price to $15 and it never went back up. Until the 2004 Boston Democratic National Convention (a real downer all around), they picked up in Chinatown. They've been at the South Station Bus Terminal ever since, where for many years their ticket counters faced each other, as they competed for each and every customer with pleading. Fung Wah was the bigger one and always my favorite. I just liked saying it.
There used to be small differences between the two lines. Lucky Star used to show movies, for example. They were loud and everywhere and this was a pre-Ipod time. During one dark and stormy night they had The Sixth Sense on which I had never seen and I was freaked out entirely and it was great. Other times it was cheesy movies that you just couldn't escape from. They must have had complaints, because the movies went away. It was a frills-free ride to New York and back. There were always anecdotal tales of explosions and flipping buses over, but in my millions of trips back and forth we had two flats and only one trip that was bad enough that I was actually freaking out. Long story, but it got very "Lost" for a while there (I was Jack). Thankfully, we had made it to a margarita bar near the exit in East Hartford. We got home eventually, but it was very confusing, just like the show.
These Chinatown buses function as a connector between the two Chinatown communities, and at times I've felt like a jerky interloper on them. Like, maybe these buses should just be for Chinese people; I'm white and an idiot, they might hate having me on these. These buses might be their secret thing. But I couldn't help it. I'm usually broke and, when I lived in the Boston area, I loved going to New York, to hear poets or just be in New York. Now I ride them in the other direction, from New York to Boston, to visit friends and family. I can appreciate the beauty of Boston and Cambridge and the North Shore, etc.—no place else will probably ever feel like home—but I'm less jacked for the big city and more like going to my nephew's 9th birthday party. Which, by the way, is where I was going when I first took the Bolt Bus.
The Bolt Bus is Greyhound-owned, which makes sense. It took them a while to figure out how to compete with the Chinatown Buses. I was initially skeptical. They purport to let you "Blow town for a Buck." But there's an asterisk the size of the sun attached to that offer. No matter, their regular prices seem to be almost comparable. I'd heard wild tales of these Bolt Buses, but I was solidly a Fung Wah man. (I wish Fung Wah would just sell t-shirts and stuff for Hip Folks like me to wear around. Maybe in Chinese, so only those of us in the know would be in the know. And we would be so cool about it. Like, aw yeah, cheap buses.) So I did not want to like this Bolt Bus. But everyone loved the fucking Bolt Bus and urged me to not take the Chinese kind that flip over and everyone dies in. But I never died once on the Chinatown buses! Although some nights I wish I had!
So this Bolt Bus, I don't know. My friends went on and on about it. And you know sometimes when your friends go on and on about something it's like Arcade Fire, which is sort of fine but I don't want to BUY it or anything. I won't be camping out for it. Do they serve seared mutton with capers on this Magical Greyhound bus that is going to put my Chinese friends out of business? Is it just the white Chinatown bus? And then they said, "There are plugs." Plugs! Whoa! My trusty Samsung Moment Android Thingie can be pretty fun with whatever I can do on it (usually just play Cribbage, I'm an old guy. If they had an "eating smelts" app I'd probably go for that, too). Plugs may be a game changer. Because my little phone's batteries usually go for about 45 minutes of fun and then yellow! And red! I think a phone's battery should have like a heartbeat EKG thing at the top of the phone, and when it gets down to the end of the battery it should look like it's Get Out the Paddles Time. What if I could go a whole bus ride going crazy on my phone? How cool would that be? Usually I try to sleep through Connecticut entirely, Connecticut depresses me. Since the Whalers left Hartford, I find the entire Connecticut business ringed with sadness. Although there is good pizza in New Haven that might be worth getting stabbed over. But would Connecticut be more fun if I had my phone alive and kicking to entertain me?
Impressions that first trip: The Bolt Buses certainly look fancy and new. They have seatbelts, for Pete's sake. What a joke. If that bus crashes are you going to want to be lashed in the burning wreck? Probably not. But it's a nice touch as it vaguely digs into your back unbuckled. Cupholders! Like the kind fancy people have on their backpacks. Armrests! These are crucial. These form the bus rider's buffer from the other bus rider. Image if Lichtenstein and Switzerland didn't have a border? There'd be Lichtensteinians all up in the Swiss's Elbow Area. And Switzerland would have to drop its historic neutrality and elbow those dudes right out. Maybe Switzerland wants to sleep! So armrests are a key. Pleather seats that smell kinda wallety. (What, they told me my wallet was real leather at K-Mart? C'mon!) And the plugs. Those wonderful plugs.
Sitting alone is always golden. Listening to A Pandora Louvin Brothers Radio Station, Playing Cribbage. We even took a different route to Boston! I'm so used to the slow crawl through Bridgeport, Stamford, New Haven and then up past Hartford to the Mass Pike. We were in upstate New York for a while on this fancy Bolt Bus. They have roads? Something called Route 684, which connected to route 84. We bypassed all those gray cities with their Ikeas and weird Insurance Office Buildings. It was afternoon, I had the two seats to myself. The sun was out. Good times. Lots of Hank Williams on the Louvin Brothers Station. Might have just been the Hank Williams Station. Pandora actually has a Rebecca Black Station, by the way, with no Rebecca Black but plenty of screeching.
I was pretty sanguine about the ride up. No traffic, no seatmate. My complaint was more like annoyance at having to overhear conversations about computers and stuff. Someone was explaining to someone else how they'd just rewritten some code, I don't know, they both looked 12. C'mon. Text each other. Mouths are so analog. The dude in front of me was watching Youtube on his laptop and his iPhone at the same time. This is what plugs do, they make us take scanners out on the bus. The kid ended up watching "Frasier" on his iPhone. I never asked to live in this world, but here we are.
So, a bit of a rolling Internet café, this Bolt Bus. Except you're stuck with everyone for four-plus hours. You buy tickets online in advance and then flash someone your phone so they see a text message with a confirmation number. Somehow I was a "C" on both trips I took. I don't know what "A" or "B" people did to get to be "A" or "B" people, but I don't like it. In Fung Wah, it's all dependent on how soon you got in line. And then got on the bus. Why should these fancies get to sit earlier than me? Didn't we all just buy tickets online or whatever? So they have no sales counter and I guess they save on that. Who knows what else they do to make a $15 bus worth it. Mule drugs, distribute sabertooth tigers as pets, I just DON'T WANT TO KNOW what you're doing to make the bus $15.
The way back was less fun. Maybe the novelty had worn off. Maybe the girl whose coffee accidentally spilled on me and who sat next to me with her laptop and phone in her lap who kept hitting me in the ear with her elbow as she was preening her hair was bringing me down. We stopped at a Roy Rogers or something in East Cruffandstuff, Conn., and she put her laptop down on her seat and went into the Roy Rogers. I wasn't going in to that hideous place, I would literally rather starve. I also don't like pooping on buses, it just is never fun. So I don't eat. I just want to get home. Should she have asked me if I was going to stay on the bus and could I watch her laptop? Maybe. I don't want to be responsible for the thing. I don't even know what the girl who was sitting next to me looks like, I've been busy with my phone plugged in trying to answer questions in the voice of Dora the Explorer and St. Peter. But, c'mon. If you're gonna twirl your hair and kinda spill coffee on me, I gotta watch your laptop? I'm from NY! I could be a psychokiller! This would never happen on the Chinatown bus. Everyone already treats you like you're a serial rapist on that thing. No one says, here you go, serial rapist: watch my Dell.
And, obviously, two outlets is not enough. Next time I will probably bring a power strip. To plug in a blender or something. People like having serious business conversations on the phone on buses. They will initially say they're on the bus, but then go into how "I'm really all about being there for my people" or something. I don’t know that this needs to be expressed out loud at any time ever. Either you really are there for your people and they already know it. Or you're probably not, you just like saying it. Hearing yourself say it! On a bus! Someone else seemed to be explaining code to someone else. Why did God invent texting and email? So you could shut up on the four-hour bus. My seat seemed a bit unmoored from the ground, and, naturally, some kid was kicking the back of my seat the whole way. Kids are good at that.
These cheap buses would be better off if they never touched Manhattan at all, in my opinion. Never wrestled any traffic to get to where no one will ultimately be ending up anyway. Pick up in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. That is where everyone is probably coming from who rides these buses anyway. Ending up on 34th St. isn't the end of the world, but why? The Chinatown Buses end up at the bottom of the Manhattan Bridge. Especially pointless, except that's CHINATOWN. But if you're gonna have a Brooklyn Alterna-Bus, end up on Bedford and Broadway or Union and 5th or something. All my friends live in Bed-Stuy. Maybe someplace over there.
And if there are going to be frills on a Cheap Frills bus, let's have some Snapples available to purchase or some shit. Wraps! I get greedy. If the bus doesn't have to be a harrowing missile, let's get some snacks up in here. Maybe earplugs! Made of sustainable cork. Shouldn't the whole bus be a hybrid that runs on American Good Intentions in the World? We'd glide along on the Greenest of Fuels, our own Good Mojo. Hooray! Maybe then we'd save on gas and tickets could be $12!
Breaking it down, the Fung Wah is the quiet car on the train. Even if someone is jabbering away on the phone, their battery will run out sooner or later. If you have an important presentation or want to teach someone how to beat various levels of Angry Birds, take the Bolt Bus. I think the woman next to me was writing a term paper and tweeting her friend through a break-up. If you have business to attend to and don't want to, say, re-read Larry Bird's Drive and stare mindlessly out the window, thinking of K., then Bolt Bus. If you can't stop tweeting about how you want to be the mayor of the Bolt Bus, Bolt Bus! If you want to hang with some Chinese old ladies in the front seats and sleep and maybe write a bunch of poems on construction paper, Fung Wah. Or the other one, they're pretty similar.
There may be no rules that govern how to behave on planes and trains and buses with all our various exciting technologies. At this point, we all have phones and computers and boxes and plugs and things. No one cares about what you're doing on your devices. You're probably just playing with Facebook. Why you'd need to have both an iPhone and a laptop out on a bus? Unless you're working on some kind of important paper that is totally due, I don't know. Certainly no one wants to overhear you doing it. Maybe Bolt Bus could install Cones of Silence on their second-generation cheap bus? Also, serve New England Clam Chowder on the way to Boston and Manhattan Clam Chowder on the way back. All forms of travel are kind of annoying. I take the Jet Blue as a treat sometimes, and man, if you're dressed as Santa Claus, expect the glove on your junk. But we can make it better for each other. Once they invent the one thing we can all use so that we never have to talk to one another again. The I-Clairvoyance.
Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.
DUDE. World Wide Bus to Alewife. Your North Shore peeps can take 128 to Route 2 and have you back in the bosom of your family in half an hour.
Oh that Roy Rogers! I always feel a little strange getting off the bus, and then I enter the Roy Rogers and the rogersmell makes me want to lie under a booth and die.
It's in North Haven, btw.
Once I ordered a slice of pizza from the Sbarros next to the Roy Rogers because I was about to pass out from hunger. The lady was like, "Oh we don't have any regular, I can give you a meatball slice." I just took whatever sustenance I could before dying of hypoglycemia on the floor and I got back on the bus and it WASN'T EVEN PIZZA!
It was some pita bread contraption with gray meat clumps on top, no cheese, just another slice of pita/sub bread on top of that.
Thanks for your Pandora inspiration. Though it's Louvin, not Louven.
Thanks! Fixed.
Breaking my awl commenting virginity to say... thank you for this! I've traveled back and forth from Boston to NY about six times in the past eight weeks due to a senior-year-of-college-get-me-the-fuck-out-of-this-place bout of homesickness. I've been terrified of what the kids call the Fung-Weezy because everyone tells me it's sketchy and that they've almost died on it.
My first Bolt ride was with the funniest driver ever who cracked jokes and looked like Santa Claus. So naturally I was like "BOLT BUS IS AWESOME I LOVE SANTA DRIVER." And then it kind of sucked from then on.
Why the eff do they always stop at the weird Roy Rogers? Every time!
I've had a few bad experiences. Like the extra from Jersey Shore who sat next to me, who sat with his legs faaaaaaar apart and his big steriody arms taking up my personal space. And the two girls from Dartmouth who talked about how smart they were and how great Dartmouth was the WHOLE FOUR HOURS. Or the tweenager who talked about some creepy boy and her friend's herpes outbreak the whole time. Or the mother fucking fourteen year olds oh god I wanted to fucking kill themmmmm.
But usually it's pretty good. The outlets are awesome, except when I sat next to the Pauly-D lookalike I didn't have outlets and I almost killed myself.
P.S. The ABC system is kind of like Southwest's, except for that there's like two A seats and five B seats on each trip. When you're leaving Boston it's a little more civilized but in NY people will cut a bitch to get in front of the C line.
And there is my thesis comment on Bolt Bus, sorry it's twenty six pages long.
I've spent far too much time at that Roy Rogers. Used to love the bus, but now I can't get on Fung Wah, Lucky Star, VaMoose, Bolt, Megabus, none of them, cannot handle the weird feeling all over my hands that I can somehow taste and it's all sickly sweet, sticky chemicals and ineffective sanitizers. Thankfully there ain't much reason to go to Boston anymore. Plus I can afford the train a little better now, so that's the play. Plenty of plugs and a bar car on Acela.
It's actually easy peasy to become an A rider; you just go through the free registration on Bolt Bus's website and remember to log in before buying tickets. You also gain punches on a like virtual punch card thing and eventually can get a free ride. I used to be a C and those were dark days!
I am a Bolt Bus devotee, but I am also a Philadelphia to NY person, so the ride's only half as long.
BoltBus Baltimore-NYC revolutionized my life! Waiting in NYC is always a mob scene though. I don't understand why they picked one of the most crowded fucking sidewalks in the UNIVERSE to dump dozens of tourists and their luggage to stand around aimlessly on. In Baltimore there's a real attendant and it's very well organized but NYC is where they need that shit. Maybe they ought to just go to Port Authority, but I guess the reason these buses are so cheap is that they aren't paying for berths at real bus stations. Maybe they should just drop us off at Penn Station in Newark or something and we can take the PATH in -- it would be much faster than the painful crawl through the tunnel, and, the worse, through Manhattan between the tunnel and Penn Station. COME ON JUST LET US OFF WE CAN WALK TO THE SUBWAY FROM HERE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
Other than that, my only complaint about them is that on the Baltimore end they always pick a new bizarre way to get from the highway to Penn Station, none of which make sense. But still, so cheap, internet, generally not too awful customers, sometimes you stop for snax on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Yes! The Baltimore station is so organized. And it's always that same attendant who runs it, and sometimes he comes running out of his friend's car 20 minutes before the bus time because he's late, but he's always super nice and friendly and tells all the boys on the bus to put the seat down for the ladies. Then coming from NYC is pure chaotic hell.
Love this so much. Jim Berhle, please hie yourself around on all different kinds of vehicles and then tell all about it.
Yes, please! I'd ask for Metro North but Jim might not have a reason to go to Kingston or New Haven.
If anyone is interested in a treatise on the B branch of the MBTA's Green Line, I've got 10,000 words. So far.
Why in the name of all that is good and holy do the BU students need a stop every twenty feet?
Get rid of bu east, St. Paul Street, and Babcock Street. That should help the train pick up a few minutes. So then with that extra time, you institute a firm policy of only opening up the front door, so people can't sneak in through the back without paying. I'm serious, don't even get me started about this train. I have to take the whole thing twice a day.
I feel your pain. I interned over there for a year and a half and had to go from Park St. to Packard's Corner and back three days a week. I can't imagine having to do any more than that.
I'm actually a B Line partisan, but I get to go against the commute, and I get on at the end of the line each time, so I always get a seat, and I can pass out if I want. But spending so much time on the damn thing, I get a lot of insight into how much more efficiently it can be run.
I can talk about this all night, so it might be a good idea to just go to sleep.
Oh man, I lived in Allston for a year took the B line from Harvard Ave to Park St every day. I still have nightmares about that commute. I once counted 6 trains go by in the other direction before one came going inbound, and then the one that does come is invariably super crowded, but you don't dare wait for the next one because god knows if and when it will ever come. The train may or may not be running if it has snowed. The shortest trains always run at midnight on Saturday nights, even though that is when there are eight million drunk college students trying to get to Allston. And don't even think about trying to get on the B line any night there is a baseball game.
Gah. As you can see, even 7 years after moving away, I am still scarred by commuting on the B line.
I gave up on that and ended up walking every day, twice a day from Kenmore to Cleveland Circle. You get used to it.
take the c line!
Pizza is a reason alone to go to New Haven, and Jim Behrle seems to know it.
p.s. am sorry to misspell your name! gah
Buffalo to NYC on a bus, any bus = six hours of magic EVERY TIME, guaranteed. Magic meaning that the bus pulls over on the side of the Thruway because inevitably some dudes try to smoke in the bathroom or the driver forgets the way to Utica.
p.s. I really liked this.
I have many many thoughts on this topic, and I'm actually a little miffed at the editors for posting this so late in the day. I had to get a Facebook message from a friend saying "They're talking about Boston-NY buses on the Awl! You need to chime in!"
For as much as I take the bus (I'm from north Jersey, but have lived in Boston for the past 8 years), I don't believe that there's any one option that's the best for all people. I'm a Greyhound man through and through. Jim, after you abandoned Greyhound, they instituted an online-only fare between Boston and NY that started at $15, then fluctuated between $20 and $26ish each way.
The things that Greyhound has going for it: 1) You can just show up and get in line, much like the Chinatown buses, which means oftentimes you can snag an earlier schedule. 2) Most of the buses DON'T have wifi and plugs and whatnot. I'm a sleeper and a reader, and the less gadgetry around, the better. 3) Greyhound goes from South Station to Port Authority. In the balmy summer months, this doesn't make a difference, but in the winter, or in the rain, waiting for a bus on the curb is a real drag.
One complaint: Reserved and Priority Seating is a sinister plot designed to cruelly instigate class warfare. If you get a Greyhound Priority Seat, I will look askance at you the entire trip. Fucking elitist.
Word. Peter Pan too.
Yes! This was awesome! That clam chowder idea is aces!
Some rules for the Fung Wah:
- there will always be 1 slightly-crazy passenger who will not sit down and will pace up and down the entirety of the length of the bus for the duration of the trip, stopping only to read stuff over peoples' shoulders.
- There will always be a crying baby; ALWAYS.
- 15minutes into your trip, someone will open up some container of food that will make the bus smell like duck sauce or curry for the rest of the ride.
- The gentleman sleeping across the whole row of seats in the back by the bathroom is on methadone.
I am that person with food, but it's usually just a bunch of pork buns or crullers. SORRY, I cannot resist E.Broadway.
I BoltBus NYC-Philly all the time (and sometimes DC if I'm really feeling down) and have found it to be relatively hassle-free, reliable, and cheap as fuck. I don't ride the chinatown buses because they smell weird to me and I just don't need that. There's also MegaBus on the Philly route and its almost indistinguishable in performance from that of BoltBus, with the one exception that Mega has some double-decker buses. There is no better way to measure a hangover than hurtling up the NJ Turnpike in the second-story front seat of a speeding commuter bus. Harrowing!
Does anyone know of a Chinese bus from LA to Phoenix?
Yeah, it's called "Southwest."
I just googled "bus," "Los Angeles," and "Phoenix" and found this: http://www.chinatown-bus.org/
You're set! As long as you're all right with Los Angeles being Westminster and Chinatown being Little Saigon.
It doesn't list Fung Wah on the East Coast, so it's not comprehensive. But the Megabus service appears to be discontinued. I don't know, try searching with cities in the SGV.
Also: you are nuts.
I guess out here we have the "Barrio Bus." It does leave from downtown LA.
p.s. still nuts, even with getting to the airport & through security. bus ~$45, plane ~$80
I think I will just rent a car with unlimited mileage. Though sometimes it's nice not to have to concentrate and just look out the window. I know it's cheap to fly but I would have to rent a car when I get there and it's only a 6 hour drive. Plus I need a road trip.
Oh, hi! The edit stripped out my link: http://www.tufesa.com.mx/index1.html which does cover the US.
LAX - PHX ends up being closer to $60 by air. Good to have another LA - SF option though, and I just remembered I need to check LA - Tijuana for dental work (really).
Check out the prices at USC and UCLA dental schools first. You can also negotiate prices with dentists upfront if you tell them you don't have insurance.
Hush, you! My first choice is Buenos Aires.
and you make the schedule, so no crazy rushing/forgetting/stressing-crap to endure.
THIS! Damn. I wish I were the entrepreneurial-type.
“These Chinatown buses function as a connector between the two Chinatown communities, and at times I've felt like a jerky interloper on them.”
BINGO! Fun-fact: It’s a bus line that exists to transport what is essentially slave labor between the cheaper suburbs of Washington, D.C. and Boston to NYC and such. It’s cheap because of that. Welcome to the new world.
Leaving DC once, the woman next to me yelled at me after I'd stifled a cough or two. We hadn't even left, and it was midnight and I was drunk and so tired, I didn't even fight her - I got up and moved. But that's what you get when you sometimes look terrorist-y.
Fantastic article! At $20 a haul, the bus is basically free. Relating to family and an elderly parent I do a fair amount of NY to BOS and NY to WAS weekend turnarounds. And being employed I afford myself Amtrak in one direction and a discount bus in the other. The advantage to the bus is that you know instantly whether there will be problems (A/C and heat issues, nutcase seatmate, restroom lingerstink etc.) and you can gauge what the trip will be like. The train is better is you're feeling fidgety and like hotdogs, but it keeps stopping and picking up new passengers which interrupts whatever traveling rhythm you're locked into. And train crowds trend toward noisy clusters. I've learned to load up on podcasts and quit facebooking or awl commenting while in transit on either mode. Just go mellow.
I used to take the Lucky Star (I think? I'm pretty sure) into the city all the time to see MY GIRLFRIEND when I was out at UCONN. I'd drive a few miles to the Vernon/Tolland exit where they stopped for 15 minutes, flash my boarding pass, then try to find a seat not next to anybody. It cost me the same as the guy making the entire trip, but it was loads cheaper than the Greyhound that actually stopped on campus for the fancy kids.
One time when MY GIRLFRIEND came out to visit me (me! in Connecticut!), either through a quirk of scheduling or the fact that it was cheaper led her to go with some other place she found online. When she got to the pickup place, imagine her surprise when she found not a real bus, but a fucking van. Boy was she a happy camper when I picked her up in Hartford.
In conclusion, many factors led to the downfall of the Roman Empire, and I <3 Chinatown buses.
Reins (or Riens?)Deli in Vernon!
Buses! I have lots of opinions about them, because clearly I am up and down between NY and DC like ..... like something that goes up and down a lot. Boltbus and Megabus, when they first started, literally picked up from my office building. It was glorious. Then they are further away, and now they have been moved to a not-at-all nice neighborhood and that makes them far less attractive of an option.
I haven't done the Fung Wah bus - by the time I had to start paying for my own transport to my parents' house, Bolt was in business. But, and I've taken maybe 50 trips on Bolt Bus? I have had the horror story bus rides. There was a trip in August with no air conditioning. There was also, coming back from Thanksgiving one year, an inexperienced driver with a broken GPS who took, literally, 10 hours to get from NY to DC. She was "avoiding traffic" and got so thoroughly lost that someone with an iphone had to go sit with her and give her directions back to I-95. That kinda sucked.
On the other hand! If you know, say, that you're going up to Boston from NYC for New Year's, and you have decided this in, like, October, you can stalk BoltBus' website and the very day that they post the schedule for that particular trip, you can indeed travel roundtrip for $2! I have done it.
And the plugs are good most of all so that you can watch movies on your laptop while on the bus. Or comment on The Awl! (No, really. I'm fairly certain I gave Garge wisdom tooth-related advice from a bus onetime. PS GARGE I MISS YOU.)
There are now a ton of buses that go between NY and DC now, which is great, because that increases the chances of the blessed double seat. There is also in the summer a bus that goes to Rehoboth Beach, which is basically like a bus to paradise.
Re the "not-at-all nice neighborhood": is H St and North Capitol a lot rougher than it was in 2006; are you considering late-night arrivals or departures; or am I missing something here?
Late night arrivals, mostly - I do weekends up to NY a lot in the summer, and tend to take a very late bus home on Sunday night. Also, Megabus is dropping off at K and N. Capitol, which, whatever, but the 4 blocks to Union Station are not ones I'd like to walk alone, with luggage, in the middle of the night.
Needs moar MegaBus.
A little bit of London on your interstate. Also, the Penn State one disgorges BATHROOM CLOGGING LINES at the Pilots on 80. Fff.
A high tech bus, looks really cool inside!!..
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OMG! An Awlbot in the wild! Can CAPTCHA be far behind?
This is excellent!
I love the idea of plugging in a blender on the next trip.
I think you meant fewest annoying.
I go Fung Wah mainly due to a Bolt Bus trip that took an hour to get 30 blocks in midtown. Also once I was on the Fung Wah and there was a terrible accident ahead so they closed 91. A state trooper boarded the bus and had us back up down 91 and onto the nearest exit. I thought the driver, without speaking any english besides "10 Minutes!", handled it really well.
Megabus people!!! WiFi and plugs. It is cheaper most of the time. I just checked and they had tickets for $3 to Boston.
Does no one ride the "Tripper" bus? Only DC area to New York, but I was charmed by the name.
This was brilliant. Thank you!
Coincidentally, I happened recently on this short musical tale of sweaty casual encounters on the Chinatown Bus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18PR5dA7nfI
Also, the last time I took one from D.C. to New York, someone stole my suitcase -- with my laptop! -- from the luggage thingy. I searched for it in the pouring rain on 34th St., to no avail, and ended up at the police station, the Apple Store (for a new phone charger), and finally, home to my tear-soaked pillow. It's been Bolt for me ever since that fateful day.
My friends and I were both headed up to Boston and left at the same time: the two of them on a 11am Bolt Bus, and me on an 11am Fung Wah. I got into South Station at 2:30pm and they rolled in at 4:15. The Bolt Bus is so slow leaving Manhattan. That plus my knee-jerk hatred of anything people get too excited about ("OMG BOLT BUS RULEZ CHINATOWN BUSES ARE SCARY!!11") equals me always staying loyal to Fung Wah for the rest of time.
Jim,
My Bolt Bus did not have a pluggy (uhm... outlet) on the way back and preventing my ass from sliding off the pleather seat with every tap of the break got old in just over 20 minutes. I'm happy about the trees in New England and I would do it again. PS. Let's approach Fung Wah about the t-shirts. Red with white chinese characters in front?
-Bajo