Which clever clogs can spot the theme of these anecdotes?

-The time a Honduran soldier plonked himself beside me on a chicken bus crossing the El Salvador/Honduras highlands border, his assault rifle slung over his lap pointing at my kneecap. The chilly alpine conditions didn't stop the sweat pouring each time the driver hit a fresh pothole.

-The time a chicken bus I was on mysteriously started to bunny-hop up a hill without a driver.

-The time I dangled out the doors of a hurtling, packed Guatemala City commuter bus, grimly clinging one-handed to a rail to stop myself getting too intimate with the steep verge below.

OK, so the bus link isn't too tricky to spot. But it took someone to point out how often I said: "When I was on a chicken bus in..." for the story-telling importance of Central America's most colourful transport to click. "Is it just me?" I wondered. "Is it my line of work or do other travellers have the same chicken bus story ratio? Maybe I just have an uncanny knack for picking dodgy buses..."

Mind you, it's no surprise that these fume-belching, former US school buses spawn a few tales. Brightly coloured, especially in Guatemala, they are an intoxicating way to travel. The cabin is often part shrine, part soft porn. Semi-deranged drivers blast marimba music as they negotiate improbably narrow mountain roads.

"They are like the devil has just driven up from the underworld," one friend said to me as a particularly kaleidoscopic example careered past, its horn shrieking as it guzzled up the Panamericana highway.

It was all such a stark contrast to the sedate English train I settled into on my return. As my Pendolino eased toward the Midlands, I noted no wanton use of the horn, no three adults and baby on a seat intended for two US school kids and no itinerant 'vitamin' vendors. The only glitch was when the sliding carriage doors closed in my face.

It reminded me of the time when I was on a chicken bus in...oh, never mind.