Hopping around the world

$10 vs. $50...The $40 difference doesn't seem like much, but this is Indonesia. The choice, a night bus or a flight. Asian bus rides are a necessary evil; an unaviodable part of the experience that is a rite of passage for backpackers. But this bus in particular sounded bad. They said to fly, that the “night bus of terror” wasn't worth it. But how bad could the bus be? It had to be a cooincidence that everyone called it “the night bus of terror.”
First step, leaving Bukit Lawang, a jungle village, and heading back to Medan and a bus station. But our driver dropped us off at a shack on the side of the road – not a bus station! He assured us that it was a bus stop and despite our trepidation we agreed to wait for the bus. Already I was starting to doubt the wisdom of my plans.
Four hours later a bus finally arrived. We got in and immediately started layering on clothes. The air conditioning was set to a temperature to rival the Alaskan tundra, not a tropical jungle. Despite that, we were relieved to be on our way.
And then the terror started. The driver sped up. Constantly honking, he wove in and out of lanes while we zipped past slower traffic. The bus driver spent 12 of the next 15 hours hitting the horn. The only time it wasn't loud was when the bus was stopped. And it stopped constantly even though it was theoretically a direct route. People got on and off. Sometimes we stopped for food, sometimes we stopped for beggars. At one point, inexplicably the driver wandered off for an hour. We were the only foriegners on the bus, but I could tell the other passengers were worried too. When he came back there was no explanation given; he just hopped in and started the engine.
We noticed that the windshield was cracked when we first started. It was a miracle he could see anything through the spider web of lines across the glass. And then it fell out. The whole thing just dropped. The driver just kept on going as glass splashed across the road behind us.
Awhile later we sideswiped a truck and took off the side mirror. We didn't stop for that one either, though the front of the bus was scratched up. It's important to stay positive in the face of death. We were on a snaking cliff road at that point, with a flimsy guard rail to our left, at least we hadn't yet toppled down the hillside.
Mercifully we survived that night and I promised myself I would never get back on the night bus of terror again. I booked flights back that afternoon.