Monday, October 4, 2010

A hands-free shower, please

I like to read reviews on hotels, or to listen to people's opinions about hotels that they have stayed in. It is always interesting to see what people find as the ultimate requirement to make the hotel that they are staying in acceptable or not. I was once a bit annoyed with a British tourist complaining about the softness of his eggs, while two weeks before that I was told by the chef in another hotel that he did not have matches to make me an omelette. Then you ask yourself if some people are just more finicky than others, or if am I getting used to sleeping in far below standard hotels. Whatever the answer may be, if there is one thing that I usually check out first when I enter my room, then it is the bathroom. I don't sit with my naked bum in any hotel bath in Africa, and I don't use those crouching Muslim toilets. This is fortunatley not that common in most countries, but finding a proper shower usually is not either. Most of the hotels in West Africa have the shower inside the bath, with a moulded stained shower curtain that has no purpose other than to stick to your body once you have decided you are clean enough to get out. I will still accept the bath-shower with the sticky shower curtain, but on thing that really pisses me off is when the shower head is one of those handheld types with a broken bracket that cannot keep it up against the wall. This means that you cannot shower using both hands, you have to hold the head in one hand trying to soap up with the other, or have one hand to wash your hair and one hand to close the lid. Try clinging the shower head between your legs and soon you have the whole floor under water. Last night I slept in a room with one of these unfunctional shower brackets, and this morning I thought to myself that if I want to stay friendly today, then I need to solve the problem. I had to give up my face cloth, but at least I had both hands free to enjoy my shower....


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