One of my biggest pet peeves, when I decided to make the jump to Thailand, was the “wet room” style showers. Some people I suppose love having their own steam room but to me, it would be a little nicer if it was optional.
For the folks back home who do not know what I am speaking of, imagine your bathroom, now take away the shower surround but leave behind the showerhead. Now you have a typical Pattaya restroom.
A large majority of folks do not have bathtubs or showers that are separate from the rest of the toilet room. I have been here a while and have since moved past my hatred of it but there are still a few things that piss me off about the bathroom.
If you shower in the mornings, expect your toilet to be wet throughout the day. Sometimes there will be puddles on the floor, sometimes there will be condensation on the walls. You just have to deal with it and all the problems associated with it.
- If you wear flip flops, prepare to be leaving behind footprints across your bathroom floor to rival that of demons. We are talking about black. Black as tar. Black as the nights was before they discovered candles. You will literally have to mop your bathroom floor and wash your feet 500 times per day.
- Toilet paper? Yeah, you may as well get a Tupperware container or store it in a separate room if you want to avoid your paper becoming baby wipes. I cannot stress to you the number of toilet paper rolls that have died before their time since I have moved to Thailand. Probably more than I have used on my body.
- Back home my thing was to get dressed right in the bathroom where it was warmer than the freezing Arctic tiles that you had to run back across to get to the room. You can kiss getting dressed in the bathroom goodbye for the most part. If you get dressed in the bathroom here after your shower, you will emerge having looked like the champion of a water balloon fight. It is nigh on impossible to keep your clothes dry.
- The bathroom floors in Thailand bring a whole new meaning to the term “slippery when wet”. If you forget to mop the floor around the toilet after you have a shower you may be taking a trip down a slippery slope. The shampoos and shower gels that we use nowadays plus the standing water in the bathroom is like stepping onto a black diamond ski slope with one ski. If you aren’t prepared and trained in how to either catch yourself on the sink or brace your fall, it’ll get you every time.
- Unless you are like me and you blow your fan into the bathroom to dry out any remaining water from your shower, you will get a black mould that grows. The room stays wet and muggy constantly if you have several members of the household using the same toilet. This creates prime conditions for mould and mildew to get out of control if you aren’t on top of your bleaching and scrubbing.
- If looking in the mirror every morning and wondering if you are the fairest of them all is your thing, you should make sure to bring some glass cleaner with you and allow yourself 15-minutes of preparation time to get the mirror ready. You would be very hard-pressed to find a bathroom here that don’t have hard water spots all over the mirrors and faucets. It is just a way of life, you learn to deal with it, or you let it drive you crazy.
The bathroom being wet constantly is an annoyance but it doesn’t outweigh the feeling that you get waking up every morning and still being in the greatest city of the greatest country in the world (sorry America). Have a blessed day guys and remember to wash them nasty feet!