Okay, guys. I’ve decided to start a new series here we’ll call How To (my creative abilities are impressive, I know). I’m going to give you step-by-step guides encompassing my many talents of doing really simple, ordinary shit.
Here is my how-to guide for taking showers in Malaysia:
1. Get Dirty- What’s a shower without a little dirt to wash off? You’re in luck. Backpacking will provide you with enough skankiness to make the Walmart hall-of-fame list for years to come.
2. Book a Hostel Room- You’re going to need an actual shower for this whole thing to work out. As interesting of a story as it would be, I wouldn’t recommend rolling around in the local drainage ditches. For one, they look like poop-chutes of terror (also, for some reason they are always completely uncovered and just ready for unsuspecting children to tumble into) and for two, you will most likely emerge from your “bath” as a new host for some kind of microscopic party. So let’s stick to conventional bathing.
3. Let’s Start that Shower- You would think this would be the simple part. But alas, this step must be divided into several sub-steps in order to catalog its process:
- Locate a shelf of some kind to set your shampoo bottles, etc. onto.
- Why the hell aren’t there shelves in here? I guess I’ll just set them on the floor.
- Alright, let’s get this water going. Let’s see, here’s the hot water knob, we’ll go ahead and get a good temperature going here…
- Fuck, that’s incredibly cold. Must take a minute for it to get warm.
- Any minute now…
- It is becoming clear to me now that this water is not going to be getting any warmer. Why did they even bother with a hot water valve? Why not just put a garden hose in here and hang it from the ceiling?
- Okay, I’m just gonna go for it.
- FUCKTHATFUCKTHATFUCKTHAT- jump backwards like a gazelle escaping a crocodile.
- Stand in corner of the shower stall and stare at the water, contemplating options…
- This whole shower looks like it’s coated in something gross. I am really going to have to wash myself off at some point.
- I am doing this. I am doing this. I am doing this.
- Lose all confidence the second the water touches your skin… lean forward so that you can wash your hair.
- Sigh…
- Fling your body under the water haphazardly, quickly cover yourself in soap and scrub with all available limbs as if you’re being stung by a thousand bees.
- Turn off water.
- Catch your breath.
- Gather shower bag and exit shower.
DISCLAIMER: This section of my site is meant to be satirical in nature. I can’t think of one single place I’ve visited that I truly disliked.
8 Responses
Tom, I want to go travelling with you, you have all the japes!
I always manage to have a good time! The last person I traveled with did not appreciate my humor as much XD
PAH! Well they were no fun. No bridges though! I’d probably end up with a face covered in ants.
He was a strange one alright. “A face covered in ants” made me laugh. Is your face coated in candy or sugar or something? haha it’s not really the ants you have to worry about when sleeping under bridges anyways, it’s the trolls… and homeless people… and homeless trolls.
Such a funny read, I’m happy to hear that you don’t loose your humour when being doused in Antarctic water. Almost always I just end up just sucking it up and paying a bit more for a room with a hot shower. Cold showers should be illegal brrrr…
Ugh, I agree! I was on a super-stringent budget so i was stuck with my ice water =/ haha
Brilliant! I don’t mind cold showers now, sometimes its nice after a sweaty day, but I agree, not the cleanest of showers in Asia. Why do they always have a shower/toilet combined also, confuses the heck out of me
That confused me as well. The thing that really sketched me out was the showers that did have a hot water heater, but it was a little electric box thing hanging from the shower head. Call me crazy but electricity + water doesn’t sound like a good combo! haha